Here's a quick hypothetical question for some of the real big-brained, go-getters in life.
Say you're an aspiring demigod hero in the making, your best friend an Abrahamic Devil fresh from another world, and the two of you have just demolished a group of blood thirsty monsters who, while totally underwhelming in an embarrassingly flimsy kind of way, had been right in the middle of cornering the same exact satyr you were supposed to be meeting up with in about ten minutes, and for some gosh darn important quest-related reasons too.
You know, the usual.
What do you do next?
…
…
Alright, I'll clue you in, just this once:
Obviously, you hit up a McDonald's.
No, seriously.
Ten minutes after we dusted - literally - the mismatched pack of Tartarus's least finest on the dot, there we were, just the three of us, sitting around a small table at the fast food joint a couple corners away.
Truly, the wisdom of the elders was on point - all roads do lead to Mickey D's.
It was that or finding a Starbucks, and this was closer.
There were a few other people around, but aside from a handful of bored looks, everybody seemed happy enough to mind their own business, and it probably didn't even have anything to do with my spellwork.
Still, none of us ordered anything, at first.
Instead, we spent the first few minutes finishing what we'd been doing since the tense as a brick wall of introductions we'd popped off with back at the alley: sizing each other up.
At first glance, Gleeson Hedge was… about what I expected, and also not.
He was five feet tall, so Sairaorg and I already towered over him in height, but he was also jacked like he'd been lifting weights since before he'd stopped crawling and never skipped a day at the gym since.
Respect - We weren't shrimps ourselves or anything like that, not by a long shot, but points for effort, because that right there?
Trust me, that takes work.
He was decked out in a bright orange shirt underneath a short, unzipped jacket, dark workout pants, white trainers, and a large baseball cap that just barely hid the horns growing and curving out the top of his head.
He also had thick and slightly curly hair, a wispy goatee, and beady eyes complete with serious bags under them, the kind you start stumbling around with after powering through one too many restless nights and headaches by the bucketload.
They matched the vibe his voice gave off over the phone, and so did the roughed-up edge to his looks, the stiffness in his spine as he sat across from us, and the set to his jaw so tense it was almost a whole other person with attitude out the wazoo.
First impressions?
Gleeson Hedge looked like someone who'd reached the edge of his rope a while back but was too damn stubborn to quit and roll over, and so here he was.
My kind of people, basically.
Though the way he stared at me like he was trying to nail me to my cheap plastic chair through sheer force of will was a bit much.
The way his eyes kept snapping to and back from Sairaorg like he couldn't decide if my best buddy was a ticking bomb getting ready to blow up in his face or a side-character he wished would exit stage left and never show up again?
That much more intense, and neither of us had any earthly idea why.
But the awkward, loaded silence wasn't helping any of us get anywhere, either.
"So." I clapped my hands together slowly and smiled winningly. "Anybody want to grab a bite or anything before we get started? Coffee? A couple of hashbrowns? No?"
Predictably, I got zilch for an answer.
"Great."
Go time.
"Then I'll start us off, officially this time." We'd already had stunned, strained, blink and you'll miss'em introductions back at the alley, but I guess the third time's the charm for a reason. "I'm Daniel, we talked on the phone."
I nudged Sairaorg with my elbow, and he nodded all nice and proper.
"This is my friend, Sairaorg."
"Nice meeting you."
He didn't offer a handshake, because he could read a room just the same as me, but he did throw both thumbs up in greeting, and we both knew better than to drop his family name.
Even on the sixty-forty chance Gleeson didn't recognize it on the spot, sharing that little not-secret with all the potential… stuff that could come from it down the line if some things carried over from one world to the other was just asking for all hell to break loose when we least expected it.
Pun, very ominously intended.
"...Gleeson Hedge." The satyr crossed his arms and tipped his head back a little, even though his back stayed ramrod straight - then he went back to looking at Sairaorg funny. "And friend?"
He sounded skeptical, but there was an incredulous bent to it too.
And I didn't know why.
"There a reason I shouldn't be?" I copied him and crossed my arms over my chest and let my brow shoot up pointedly even though Sairaorg's polite smile hadn't twitched an inch. "Sai here's pretty cool, you know. Has a heck of a right hook, great for fighting monsters, but I guess I don't have to tell you that."
He'd seen it for himself.
Sure that punch back there had been on the lower end compared to the stuff we usually threw around in our spars - way, way, way lower - but it still counted.
As an object lesson in how awesome he was, at least, so I'd have to show it up whenever I had the chance to.
Just for the principle of the thing, really.
Gleeson turned to look at me.
"What? Am I missing something I shouldn't be?"
Translation: Why the heck are you calling my friend Anathema, and why shouldn't I take it personally?
Not that we didn't have any ideas, mind you - we weren't slow.
They were just… concerning to think about.
On multiple levels.
But back to Hedge now:
He stared us both down some more, lips pressed into a tight line, his jaw working back and forth in obvious frustration.
Not aggressively or anything in that lane, but there was plenty of 'how is this my life, and where can I get a refund?' energy aimed our way.
On our end, we just waited expectantly.
Patiently.
…A little.
A few seconds later, he hissed out a tired breath through his teeth and leaned forward, arms braced against the table and looking for all the world like he was five seconds away from palming his face with both hands and groaning in annoyed exhaustion.
That, or cursing someone out.
Harder to tell those two apart than you'd think.
"Di Immortalis." The goat man spoke, and the old-school oath was an angry whisper. "You don't know. Of course you don't know… even David wouldn't have known to teach you…"
Sai and I frowned, exchanged a look, and panned right back to him in a single beat.
"Know-?
He shook his head before I could finish asking.
"You know about our world. The Monsters. The Mist. The gods."
"... Kind of hard not to at this point, considering everything."
"Don't get smart with me."
"Can't help the way I was born." His eye twitched, and I raised my hands in surrender. "Sorry, habit."
It should be clear by now - Some people get tense and nervous, and sometimes mildly to moderately terrified.
I'm Greek, hard-headed and contrary by nature, so I get snarky instead.
Somehow, it always seems to work out for me, even when it probably shouldn't.
Exhibit A - I could have sworn I saw Gleeson's lips twitch into something that may have been the ghost of a dearly departed smirk, but he strangled it before it could go anywhere and snapped his fingers pointedly.
"Pay attention. The Greek Gods exist and always have. Monsters are around and kicking. The Mist makes sure the mortals don't lose their minds and turn into jibbering wrecks about it." He repeated. "That's textbook. The basic stuff. The beginner's guide you read about on the brochures so you don't get turned into a tasty snack by a thing with too many teeth and a stink like a flaming garbage truck."
I nodded.
"Right."
It was nothing I didn't already know.
"Here's where it gets more dangerous - satyrs like me." He patted his chest meaningfully. "What do you know about us?"
…Not what I expected him to ask first, that.
"You find and protect demigods." I offered, and went on when he nodded back at me. "You take them to Camp Half-Blood when things get dangerous. Some of you guys also go out into the world looking for the-"
I paused carefully
"-missing god of wilds and nature, right?"
Gleeson blinked in surprise.
"David told you about Pan?"
Saii and I both grimaced on the double.
"What?"
"Can we not drop any names, please?"
"Names- ah."
He actually nodded approvingly,
which was the first purely positive reaction we'd gotten out of him yet.
Go figure.
"Good instincts. You never know who's listening in from up top, but it's different with Pan."
"Different?"
That got another snort, and this time there was a dry, mildly rueful edge to it.
"If calling out to him was enough to draw his attention, we satyrs would have found our god a long, long time ago."
That's...
Sairaorg and I exchanged another awkward look.
"Sorry?"
The idea of having and keeping faith in a very real but very absent god who'd apparently checked out half a million years ago and hadn't so much as texted in the time since wasn't something either of us could relate to all that much.
Sai came from a 'pantheon' where the very concept of his entire species was on the opposite end of the spectrum from all things holy, and for all that I had plenty of divine influence in my life, that was less personal faith and more family drama with a godly bent to it.
This wasn't.
I vaguely knew there was more to it than Pan just taking an extended vacation out to the middle of nowhere, but the satyrs didn't, and they'd been waiting for an answer since before the local Greek Gods had packed up and hightailed it out of Greece.
Gleeson just shrugged it off.
"Some of us satrys go out to search for him, and the rest of us keep busy with all the other important stuff that needs doing. It is what it is, and you won't hear me whining about it." The look in his eyes grew a little sharper. "And now that we've got that out of the way, let's get back to business - the rest of the gods."
"What about them?"
"The Olympians, and friends-" Meaning the seven hundred thousand other minor and not so minor divinities in that particular private lane. "-are the head honchos. The big guys in charge, running the world from behind the Mist. The... you get the idea."
We nodded.
"Everything special, strange, and downright freaky comes from them or because of them in some weird way - the monsters, the magic, the rules that lay down how everything works, and all of the rest of that noise. That's what we're all taught right from the beginning."
He took a deep breath.
"Nature spirits, satyrs, demigods.... heck, even clear-sighted mortals know about this stuff, and it's how the world is."
Gleeson paused again, just for a second, and the abruptly ominous weighed something north of fifty tons.
"Except sometimes, it isn't."
And then he turned to stare right at Sairaorg, and even someone blind, deaf, and with an IQ score in the single digits couldn't have possibly missed the implication there.
Sai didn't flinch under the look - mutual goofiness aside, he'd been a devil noble in training not too many years ago, and if he could keep a straight face when a dragon the size of an Airbus and a half looming over us, this was nothing.
"Problem, Mister Gleeson?"
"None of that Mister crap. Call me Hedge if you have to." He didn't miss a beat. "And yes, there is, and I'm staring right at it."
I almost bristled on reflex.
"Hey-"
Gleeson was already raising a hand to cut me off.
"Hold your goats. It wasn't an insult, and it's nothing personal." He turned from me to Sai and back again. "I told you, the gods tell it how it's supposed to be, and everything in and from our neck of the woods is supposed to be the end of it. Mortal and divine and everything in between. Except sometimes, the pieces don't quite add up. Think about it."
He even tapped his temple for good measure.
"Whether it's looking for Pan, guiding a demigod, or running errands here, there or flipping everywhere, we Satyrs get around. We travel more than just about anyone else - it's pretty much part of the job description, and when you end up in some of the circus shows some of the rest of us have done, odds are you'll see.. things." He grimaced, like he was reliving a bad memory that tasted like styrofoam and bad juju at the back of his tongue. "Monsters that don't belong in any of our stories. Magic that doesn't make any sense, even by our standards. Stuff that has no business existing at all, also by our standards."
Another very careful pause, and by then I was already beginning to put the pieces together.
From the look of dawning realization on his face, Sairaorg was too.
"Greek standards." Gleeson finished quietly, and there it was. "I never understood much of it myself, because my old mama smacked enough sense into me when I was a dumb sprog to know when to leave things well enough alone, but not everything there is to see out there reads the way the picture on the cover of this book wants you to think it does, and since it was the gods themselves who put the picture up there and wrote the damn thing..."
The words trailed off, hanging in the air between us... in as much as they really could, given that ominous or not, I was still ninety percent sure we knew more about what he was talking about than he did.
He wasn't done, though.
"I'm not the only one who knows about the strangeness. It's an open secret between some of us satyrs and our wilder pals here and around, and I'll eat everything I own in alphabetical order and order seconds if a handful of the old bleating bats on the council don't know more than we do, but that's the real kick in the teeth - nobody's stupid enough to ask." Gleeson shook his head and clicked his tongue for effect. "Rule number one about one of us little guys knowing something the gods want buried? You keep your mouth shut and pretend you don't, or you end up buried - and that's if you're lucky, because the Twelve don't do patience and restraint when it's time to twist puny mortals who've ticked them off into pretzels."
...Well, he wasn't wrong with that last bit there.
While we're talking about books, if there was ever a one on cruel and unusual punishments out there, my godly folks probably wrote and signed it... and the minimum twelve editions that came afterwards over the millennia, one for each of them, before they eventually calmed down a little.
Sort of.
Relatively speaking.
" I don't know who or what you are." Gleeson suddenly stuck his thumb out at Sai, sharply enough that my friend blinked at him in surprise. Then he tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger "Not a demigod, not a chance in the Pit, or a nature spirit, or even a proper monster... not a descendant of any of them either. The nose would know, because it always knows."
Somehow, that sounded only mildly corny.
"You don't smell dangerous - you smell other, like something that's not even supposed to exist. Anathema - that's the word we have for things like you when we risk whispering about it every once in a blue moon, and as far as I'm concerned, even if you're not trying to bite my face off like the rest of the rabid mutts me and mine deal with every other day, that makes you bad news."
"I-"
"Again, it's nothing personal, but it's the Pan-damned principle of the thing, or whatever the brainy types want to call it. From where I'm standing, anything like you-whatever that's supposed to be- is always, always bad news ."
And that's where I draw the line.
"Okay, enough." I cut in, arms crossing a little harder than before. "Let's get one thing clear here."
I looked him dead in the eye when he snapped back to me, simmering with quiet frustration in just about exactly the same way I was building up to be.
"Sairaorg isn't a problem. Here and now, or any other time and place, so if you could maybe tone down the whole unspoken accusation schtick?"
Cue more intense staring.
"That'd be great."
"Nothing about this, here, is great, kid." Gleeson didn't skip a beat, even if his voice stayed perfectly level. "It's not even halfway close to decent, so forget about good, and 'safe' is a rusty pipe dream already buried and forgotten out in the middle of some random patch of nowhere at this point - but that last bit's just standard fare for us and ours."
I didn't miss the way he said 'us' and 'ours' at me specifically, or the way he turned back to Sairaorg right after that like he was trying to prove a point.
Real subtle, that.
Thing is, he wasn't totally wrong, either.
Facts on the mental table time:
There was some kind of Olympian-grade conspiracy to hide the existence of all the other pantheons in the world - and I knew for a fact those were around, even if Gleeson didn't for anything close to certain - and the people who could literally smell something fishy behind the scenes had enough of a clue about it all to look the other way and whistle innocently if they also knew what was good for them.
Go figure.
At first glance?
If you looked at it from the outside?
With that kind of context, the standoff-ish vibe Gleeson was giving off was justified.
More than that, even.
If we're being perfectly level here, he was taking this a lot better than I would have, say, ten months ago.
But knowing that just gave me a little more perspective to work with - it didn't change the fact that ironing out all the facts right this second was impossible for a whole bunch of reasons, and a total waste of time either way.
"I'm not really sure what all it is you're talking about here-" A bold-faced lie, and I think he at least suspected as much, because his left eye started twitching erratically "-but I'll say it again, just so we can all get on the same page quickly: Sairaorg isn't a problem or a threat or any kind of danger to anybody here, whatever or not your nose has to say about it."
A beat.
"No offence"
See?
Diplomacy.
"You-"
"I've known him for the better part of a year now." That finally seemed to stump him a bit, because you couldn't fake stunned surprise that was genuine. "We've been looking out for each other for all that time, and he's my best friend. He's not 'bad news', and even if the gods would say otherwise..."
I let the words trail off and shrugged as nonchalantly as I could.
"I'm not seeing any of them around here right this second, so it only makes sense that they don't get to call this shot, and us arguing about it is just a headache and a lot of wasted effort waiting to go right down the drain, because - and again, no offense intended- you're just not convincing me otherwise."
"..."
"..."
"...'They don't get to call this shot?'"
Gleeson repeated the words making a face like they were leaving an aftertaste that refused to wash out - which was reasonable, given that was technically blasphemy right there, but you all know what I'm about.
"Probably not the best way to put it, but you know what I mean."
"I know something alright." Then he turned to glare at Sairaorg - not violently, but as intensely as ever. "And what about you?"
"Mr. Hedge?"
"I already told you not to call me that, and I want answers."
"Which ones?"
Good question.
Gleeson paid it back with nearly half a dozen.
"In twenty words or less, and until I say otherwise: Who- what are you really, and what are you doing sniffing around this one?" He pointed back at me before either of us could get a word in edgewise. "And while we're on that, how did you end up with him - whatever he is - and where have you been?"
Yikes - that last one alone cracked through the air between us like a whip, it was that sharp.
Neither of us flinched, and I think he was kind of expecting us to - that, or he thought we'd stall and dance around it a bit more.
Instead, Sairaorg did a Sairaorg, because he doesn't roll that way if he doesn't have to.
"I'm his sparring partner."
"Sparr- Say what now?"
"I'm his sparring partner." Sai shrugged. "We both train together all the time, with the same teacher and everything."
Gleeson's eyes lit up sharply.
"Teacher?"
"I didn't learn to punch as good as I do just by working out, and Dan didn't get as mean with his spear as he is right now just by waving it around really hard."
"I'll take this one." He snapped back to me as I raised a hand, and I decided to bite the celestial bronze bullet. "In the effort of full... or just disclosure in general, and so we can stop playing competitive Twenty Questions and just get to the reason we're all here anyway, I'm going to give you the cliff notes of the cliff notes version, real quick."
I reached out and patted Sairaorg's shoulder.
"This is my best friend, again. We met the day after three Cyclopes and their pet hellhounds sniffed me out after basketball practice back in Maple and decided to give me a crash course on how the average demigod's life expectancy out in the wild just absolutely sucks."
His jerked in surprise and his brows shot right up.
"And you survived?"
"I ran home like the hounds of hell were after me, because they literally were, and then my uncle told me who my dad was and shoved a bow and quiver into my hands in less time than it took my heart to stop doing the wild tango," I admitted shamelessly. "I told my folks to scram and I stayed behind to deal with the murder brigade and buy some time, and between the built-in instincts and sheer luck, things pretty much took care of themselves after that.
"...Atta boy." And he really did sound impressed, all of a sudden. "Must have been a damn good showing."
"I don't know about that." I rocked my hand in a little so-so move. "It started off solid, but I got hurt real bad towards the end of it."
And by bad, I mean that half my insides got puréed like they'd ended up on the wrong side of a demented lawn mower.
Just a nice little reminder there.
"Still, I survived, and I got better. My dad bieng who he is-" I paused. "Hang on, you do know who-?"
"Yes."
Flat delivery, but good to fact-check anyway
"Yeah, well, being his kid comes with some perks, because... healing, and all that."
I saw him process that slowly, and I knew the acceptance wasn't far off because it made sense - even if it was totally off-base.
Technically, I hadn't lied there - being Dad's kid did come with some perks, even if I was letting the words I picked imply that I'd gotten back on my feet because of my own Apollon-themed divinity, which I hadn't.
That was thanks to Chiron, who only put me back together again after Dad had found me bleeding on his metaphorical front porch because of said divinity and started pulling some strings right from the get-go.
"I met Sairaorg the next day after that, and we've been together ever since." I patted Sai on the shoulder again. "Training, getting stronger, surviving all kinds of wild messes, monsters and all - it's been a real doozy of a year."
Understatement of the century, and with more holes than a target at a shooting range, but there it was - and Gleeson seemed to accept that too, at least for now.
"Where were you?"
"Oh, all over the place." I brushed past the question as quickly as I could "But I bet you're not going to want to know where I was nearly as much as you're going to want to know where I'm headed next."
"No."
I paused.
"No?"
"No." He grunted, and when he crossed his arms again, it somehow felt like I was watching a brick wall go up in real time. "You're going to Camp Half-Blood, and I already know it because I'm taking you there myself."
I resisted the urge to wince, but just barely.
"Ooh, yeah, about that... see, I've heard a lot about Camp."
"Good." He said flatly. "Saves me an explanation."
"Uh huh. Sure does. Thing is, though, the place sounds like a real experience and everything, but-"
"But what?"
And whoo boy, he absolutely knew where I was going with this, because that was the tone people used when they wished my words had a face so they could smack them.
"But I'm not going," I finished, and then I raised my hands up quickly before he could blow the gasket I could almost see swelling up inside his skull. "And that's because we're on a quest."
"!!!"
And cue the record scratching track, because that was instant stillness.
He went from steaming to pulling his impression of a marble statue in an odd history museum so quickly you'd think he'd just looked Medusa right in the eye, and I took the chance for it was.
"Before you ask, I can't tell you all that much without consequences, and I mean big ones, for all of us." I put that card on the table right from the start. "But it is a real Quest with a capital 'Q', demigod's honor, and it's important."
And all kinds of personal.
Gleeson took a minute to process that. Then slowly, mechanically, he pressed his hands against the table and rose from his chair, looming over us from across the table.
Or trying to, anyway.
No judgment here, but after the giant scorpion, Smaug, and everything in between, it wasn't all that intimidating.
His height really didn't help there either.
"A quest." He repeated, all slow and quiet and dangerously furious in that eerie silent way some people "A quest."
"That's what I said."
"Issued by who?"
No one but ourselves and sheer necessity.
"Can't tell you that either."
He looked like he was about to flip the table over at that.
"It was our teacher." Sai cut in with a peace offering. "But we can't tell you who he is - we promised not to, and we can't break our word."
Which was actually true - Chiron had warned us not to bring him up at all, just in case.
"An oath?"
"As good as."
It wasn't a vow on the River Styx, but it didn't have to be - and not just because implying it was something like that would make Gleeson back off.
Chiron didn't make traditionally binding oaths with anyone outside of the rarest circumstances, even if you couldn't swing a cat around ancient Greek history without hitting at least twenty different stories where some poor schmuck could have really used one.
As far as our teacher was concerned, If you're not as good as you word, everyone would know exactly what you're worth where and when it counted.
Gleeson wasn't done with the questions, though.
I expected him to push on the Chiron angles and try and drag some other flavour of answer from us, but he changed tracks pretty much on the spot.
"Why?" He demanded roughly "Why a quest?"
And that was a solid question, too.
"We're looking for something important." I didn't hesitate, but only because there wasn't much point of hiding this next bit. "Someone we know is in a bad way right now, and there's an artifact we need to help them get better. The Golden Fleece."
Gleeson stared.
"That's…the healing treasure. The one whatshisface went looking for on his magic boat."
And that was one explanation I didn't need to give, apparently.
Honestly, my first instinct was to beam in sheer excited relief, maybe whoop a little, because he hadn't snapped back in double take and gone "Wait, hold up, what kind of stupid are you? That thing's back at Camp!"
It wasn't an iron clad confirmation yet - he might just be out of the loop, which would suck like a punch to the gut and nobody's business all at once - but it was a start.
We might be in the green here!
My second thought was whatshisface?
Really?
"Jason. The boat was the Argo."
Quick summary: Deposed prince who was raised by Chiron after his uncle yoinked his dad's throne, got trained by him until he was good and ready to do something about it, and then he lost a shoe, stumbled into becoming Hera's sort of champion for reasons and went on an RPG-style quest on his big honkin ship to get the Golden Fleece and prove his right to kingship.
Don't ask about the shoe, it was a thing and it was weird, but fun fact?
The dude pulled off his whole gimmick with, like, at least half the great and greater heroes of his generation, and a handful of the ones from before it too.
Heracles, Orpheus, Peleus, Atalanta… the list goes on and on for something north of a quarter mile, and nearly every name on it is written out in solid gold.
The quest and what came after it didn't end well at all for him or a good bunch of them, mind you, but kudos for effort and sheer quality of party-members if nothing else.
"That's what I said." That was not what he said. "Do you have a prophecy?"
"Nope."
And no thank you.
He barked out a laugh that sounded a little too close to manic for comfort, even though I hadn't said that last part aloud.
"Then what do you have!?"
It sounded derisive, disbelieving and only a handful of shades of paint away from apoplectic all at once.
"The luck of the devil, mostly." I answered honestly. "Both good and bad."
Sairaorg twitched.
Yeah, I said that with a straight face.
Bite me.
Gleeson twitched too, for an entirely different reason.
"Stop. That." He ground out the words like he was chewing on gravel. "This isn't a joke. Tone down the wisecracking and take this seriously, damn it!"
And he sounded angry enough about it that it killed whatever spark of laughter that inside joke welled up inside of me better than my spear could have.
"Believe me, I am." I didn't make a song and dance of apologising this time. "We both are, and that's why we're here, asking for your help."
"My help. Hah. What exactly do you-?"
"Handy as it is, the survivability of a cockaroach isn't the only thing I inherited from my dad." I cut him off on my way to the point, finally. "We don't have a prophecy for our quest, but I do have… let's call it a touch of foresight. Prophecy adjacent, bootleg future-vision."
Or something technically close enough that it wasn't a complete and total lie - just mostly one.
The news landed… relatively well, really, in the sense that he didn't freak out at me.
We were past that, I think.
Instead, Gleeson's face went through a whole round of spiralling emotions like one of those goofy choice wheels on the game shows my aunt likes to watch every Sunday night, and finally settled on something parallel to exhausted resignation.
"Oh, for the love of all the gods." He dropped back into his seat and tipped his head just far back enough to groan, deep and from the soul. "Of course you do."
Yeah, that was a about the best reaction I could have hoped for, given everything.
I went to say a something polite and reassuring, because it was only downhill from here - we were just getting started, after all - but abruptly, my mouth snapped shut.
Hard.
My attention sharpened the second I felt something weird and strangely telling prod at the edge of my sensory range.
No, wait.
Several somethings.
Plural
When I glanced at Sairaorg, he was already looking back at me and nodding.
He'd it felt too, but that was no surprise. If I wasn't actively trying, his passive senses stretched a little farther than even mine.
Or 'deeper', at least, if you want to get picky about it.
Senjutsu enhanced Touki was neat like that.
"Huh."
Alrighty then.
"Yep." Sai rose from his chair and made a show of rolling his neck lazily "I'm gonna go get some air."
"You do that."
I glanced back at Gleeson as he walked off with hosbhands in his pocket, and the satyr had already gone back staring at the pair of us suspiciously over the bags under his eyes.
Fair, that.
Its been a interesting day so far on his end - and we hadn't even hit noon yet.
"Bet you wish you took that coffee now."
He gave me a dull, unimpressed look - he was quite good at those.
"If I were drinking anything right about now, it wouldn't be coffee, and there wouldn't be enough of it in this zip-code to help."
Also fair.
His eyes tracked Sairaorg as he headed out the door, the bell jingling as it slammed shut behind him.
"What's happening there?"
"He just wants some air, apparently." We both knew that was a steaming pile of doodoo, so I segued right back to the serious stuff from there. "But lets keep talking about what's really important here."
"Right." He drawled, finger tips drumming against the the table in a way that was just a little too forceful to be smooth. "You and your not-prophecy, whatever that fresh load of hydra crap is supposed to mean."
"Foresight. Not prophecy."
"Same difference."
Big difference, and I'm not arguing semantics here - just ask Prometheus, or my dad, or anyone who's meddled with one or the other at some point and managed to come out of it relatively unscathed.
Do not ask the Fates.
Odds are it won't end well for anyone involved, and possibly a whole bunch of people who aren't involved anyway, because Greeks are all about stupid collateral damage like that.
"Sometimes, if you squint." I agreed reluctantly, just to move things along and over the finish line. "But there's the only part that matters - this quest of ours can succeed, but only if I can ask you some questions about the state of Camp Half-Blood right this second. Just a couple of details I need to iron out."
Gleeson took that in slowly.
Glacially.
Then his brows furrowed heavily.
"I'm going to need you to run that back for me again, real slow." He said, his voice sounded sharp and complicated again, more pointed. "Because sharing information about Camp has to be done carefully, and with limits - you've never seen all the ways a mortal parent or an uprepared demigod can lose it at the right details, and trust me, you don't want to."
"Uh…?"
"That, and sharing anything about campers themselves is completely forbidden."
The word landed like iron, with the strength to match.
He saw me lean back in surprise a little and he nodded seriously.
"Oh, you better believe it. Solid no-no. The camp and the gods whose kids run around the place left and right don't lack for enemies, Winchester. Six times out of ten, nothing you say where a lousy old monster or something on the nastier end of things can hear will give anyone a worse day off than usual, but better safe than sorry." His face pulled, like he was remembering something particularly grisly. "It's always better safe than sorry. Some of the stories I've heard…"
He trailed off grimly.
Right.
Not going to ask.
I had enough to deal with as it is.
Satyrs and some other nature spirits around that place were protectors, first and foremost.
That made sense, because somebody had to be, and the local Olympians and Co were so hands off you'd think their arms would explode if they reached out to help their kids past the bare minimum, if even that.
The rule made sense too - but that didn't exactly help me out here.
"I don't need to know anything specific. Just a couple of broad points."
"I'll have to be the judge of that."
I raised my hands up and tried not to smile too obviously, because that hadn't been a no.
Go time.
"Fine by me. First question then - Do you know for certain that the Golden Fleece isn't already at Camp Half-Blood?"
"It isn't where now?" the stunned incomprehension didn't last, and it seemed to him like a baseball bat upside the head."Wait, prophecy-"
"Foresight." I couldn't help myself.
His mouth fell open as he looked me dead in the eye - Seriously, the amount of whiplash I was giving the poor man couldn't be healthy.
"That thing's supposed to end up at Camp-!?"
"What is or isn't supposed to happen is up to the Moirai." Meaning the Fates, for those of you not in the know, and that there was politically correct answer in every sense of the word. "I just have a teensy bit more perspective than most other people on what could happen, and that's why I'm fact checking here. So-"
I clapped my hands together
"Camp: Fleece or no fleece."
"… No Fleece." He said slowly, like he was grudgingly shelving the latest hot topic reveal for later inspire of his better senses. "Definitely no Fleece. And I would know, because half my friends live at camp and nobody does gossip better than cloud spirits."
Ah.
"If the Fleece was at camp, one of them would have talked my ears off about it when I called in to check on some things this morning, because that'd be big news - think highlight of the decade big, and then some."
Yes.
"If there a Quest issued for it from Camp, even so much as a day ago," He nodded at me meaningfully. "I would know that too, because I couldn't not. Damned things are all the rage in our world, and everyone back at home base would know and pay attention to something like that, right from the start. Everyone."
So.
Remember that thing I was trying to do, by staying all nice and… relatively quiet for a bit and actively trying not to show how much of our hopes hinged on this conversation?
Nearly went flying out the window and over the edge of a cliff after that one.
I didn't do anything just yet, but the temptation to punch fist into the air and cheer like my team had just won the Superbowl was there, and wow was it strong.
If Gleeson noticed, he was nice enough not to mention it.
"What else did you want to know?"
"Nothing much." I swear it was like my ADHD was revving up like an engine in my brain, and I almost tripped over the next few words. "Just out of curiosity, there haven't been any other major quests recently, have there?"
He shook his head carefully, and I could almost hear him turning over the obvious asks.
'Were there supposed to be any?'
'Are there going to be any?'
"No. Not for a few years. The last one... didn't end well" His expression tightened some more. "A kid was sent out looking for a golden apple."
Woah.
"The immortality kind?"
"No, a Golden Delicious." He scowled at me in irritation. "What do you think, Winchester?"
"Sorry. Stupid question."
It wasn't entirely.
When they hear about the the golden apple tree, the first place a lot of minds tended to go to wete the magic fruits that granted you eternal life and health… within reason.
Totally understandable.
For some reason, though, a lot of people seemed to gloss over or forget about the tiny detail of what - who - guarded the thing in the myths.
Ladon, the Hundred-Headed dragon.
Also known as the 'Seriously, was the Hydra not enough?' dragon.
A hundred snarling heads - I know, shocking - half as many tails intertwined into one serpentine body, bronze-gold scales that were nearly indestructible and claws that could turn an aspiring hero into bloody confetti at real range.
The one from Sairaorg's birth world was one of the most powerful monsters to ever live in his neck of the woods.
Not a Heavenly Dragon or even a Dragon King, but absolutely on the upper end of the scale as far the rest of the excessive murder lizard species was concerned, and it had taken their Heracles to finally put him down.
If that had also carried over into this world… the quest still wouldn't have been a walk in the park, because monsters come back on the regular here and there's not a chance in Tartarus that the Queen of the Heavens would leave her prized tree unguarded anyway, but since I'm pretty damn near certain it hadn't-
"They failed, and they didn't come out unscathed." Gleeson explained flatly, and it made something in my stomach clench unpleasantly. "There hasn't been a big-time quest since."
…
I've said it before, but I don't think its ever going to not bare repeating.
No matter which way you slice it, the local demigods have it bad.
Not a happy reminder that, and not one I wanted or really needed, but I shoveled it away for later.
Whoever 'they' were… at least it looked like they survived.
Better than nothing.
I could settle my curiosity and the weird niggling at the back of my head with that, along with the second confirmation I'd been low-key hoping to get all along.
No other big time quests since.
If that was true… then a certain son of Poseidon hadn't come out to play yet, and all the stuff he was due to get tangled in hadn't hit the fan either.
Good.
Fan-friggin-tastic
Depending on how things played out, those would or wouldn't be problems for future Daniel to deal with for me, because that guy is always reliable like that.
Current Daniel has work to do.
"Then that's almost it." I said, and Gleeson abruptly straightened. "One last question for the road?"
"Yes?"
He was right to sound so cautious, really he was - just not for the reasons he was probably thinking of, though.
"You wouldn't happen to know a quick and easy way to get to the Sea Of Monsters, would you?"
"…"
"Because I have a few ideas myself, but all of them sound like way too much hassle out loud, you know?"
"…"
"…"
"…Hrkh."
That's about the point where he let out this strange, half-wheeze, half-snorting sound.
Too resigned to be hysterical, too crammed with emotion to be understandable beneath that, but a good old college try at something anyway.
Eventually, he got himself under control.
Relatively speaking.
"If I wasn't already convinced… yeah, that'd do it." He sighed, long and hard, before the light in his eyes changed a little. "You're Evelyn Winchester's son alright, and no one else's in a thousand years."
I stiffened and stared.
He…
…
…
What is it with people comparing me to my parents in that tone?
Aunt Artemis, Uncle David, and now Gleeson Hedge?
…
Just kidding.
I don't want to know.
"Say, did you ever see my mom take on a little over half a dozen really dangerous monsters, all in one go?"
The dread that flashed on his face was proof that he was quick on the uptake.
The satisfaction I took in it was only a little mean.
Just a bit.
"Why?"
"Because we're about to be surrounded by a whole pack of'em."
Where did you think Sairaorg was going?
The things that had been closing in on us were coming in hot right this second, and I could see the exact instant Gleeson clocked them too, because he sniffed once, paled, and finally did flip the table over like it was made of tinfoil.
"Sonuvva-!"
"Don't worry about it."
I was already heading for the door, and I heard him scrambling out after me over the din of all the startled customers looking at us like we were a pair of maniacs.
"We've got this."
…
It started with the mist, and I don't just mean the magical kind.
It was mid-morning in the middle of summer, but by the time I stepped outside and next to Sairaorg the stuff was already nearly everywhere, a cloud of pearlescent, off-white fog pouring out over the nearest rooftops, between the closest alleyways and spilling out onto the street in front of us like someone had tipped over a giant bag of flour and watched it explode into the air.
Naturally, the monsters came with it.
Empousai were eerie creatures - and yes, I knew what they were.
Part monster, part animal, part celestial bronze and part whatever it is that glued all the other mismatched pieces from the leftovers bin and shaped them into ancient Greek vampire monstrosities out for blood.
Literally.
Despite the confidence in my own strength, having nine of them melt out of the flickering smoke in a loose semi-circle around us sent a gross, slimy feeling down my spine.
Not fear.
Disgust.
"Well, well."
What looked like the leader of the pack stepped up right as the mist seemed to close in around us all, cutting off the rest of the street and muffling the sounds of the outside world like makeshift supernatural soundproofing - the better to kill all your victims in peace and quiet!
"Look what we have here, girls."
She wore a black dress that flashed in odd patterns as she walked forwards, her mismatched feet not quite clicking for three and a half steps before she stopped to…
Actually, I don't know why she stopped.
To show off?
Either way, there she was, just a sidewalk away.
Human-like face in its mid-twenties or so, all sharp features and high cheekbones, but the skin was too pale and then some, her eyes were a fiery blood red, her hair was a column of wafting flames steadily burning down to her lower back in shades of orange, and her smile flashed wicked-looking fangs in a quick-silver expression that was so casually menacing there's no way it wasn't rehearsed in a mirror somewhere.
"It's been a while since a half-ripe demigod stumbled through our territory, hasn't it?"
None of her friends answered in words, but a few of them let rip with this low, staticky hissing chorus and Holy Hades, I hated it.
We're talking instant, visceral revulsion - like a scaled up version of the feeling that whammied me when I visited the Underworld with Sai and Chiron and felt the fake sun the Satans had ignited over their territories.
It was a little trippy, actually, and I think the head honcho took the way I leaned back a bit and clenched my fists for something else, because she smiled all condescendingly.
Like a cat that just grabbed a mouse by its tail.
"Don't flinch yet, little halfling. We're just talking… for now."
"Lady, who's flinching?"
She chuckled, fiery hair pulsing, and the sound grated on my ears like chalk against a hundred-year old board.
"That's the spirit. You brats always taste better when you have some fire to you." Then she glanced at Sairaorg and abruptly - or maybe predictably - frowned. "And you… I thought I smelled something strange. What… are you, exactly?"
"No one important." Sai didn't even bother pulling his hands out his pockets, and if he noticed the vibe I was putting off, he didn't react to it. "Just a tourist, really."
The Empousa seemed amused.
"A tourist."
"Who cares?" I heard one whisper off to the side. "Food is food."
"Dibs!" Another one agreed, and yeah, I was done.
"He's with me." The head Empousa turned back to me right as I sent a pulse of magic to my storage wristband - the other one, the new one that Chiron had given me specifically to pick up cool, questionable or cool and questionable loot if we came across any. "We're on something of a road trip, and you are the second Empousa I've gotten up close and personal with today."
"What-?"
The word died in her throat as something materialised in my grip with a flash of light.
"…!"
I don't know if I've covered this before, but here's a brief little reminder anyway - when monsters in my birth world get ganked and booted down to Tartarus until they claw their way back to life, they don't necessarily vanish completely.
Oh, they poof into golden dust as a general rule, but they leave behind a spoil of war - a remnant, a neat little keepsake to remind you of that time you nearly died horribly, at least in theory.
Cool, right?
Guess what I got from the Empousa I introduced to the business end of Serpent's Downfall?
"Is that-?"
A leg.
I'm not kidding - I was holding a very literal leg made of solid celestial bronze all the way through, human-shaped all the way down to the donkey-footed hood, and somehow I managed to keep a straight face as all the others around mine slackened.
"Don't know how to tell you this, but if she was a friend of yours, then I'm afraid she… legged it back to Tartarus." I'm going to hell for that pun, I know. "But hey, look on the bright side!"
I smiled very nicely and reared back while Greek Dracula and her buddies recovered from their shock.
"You can give this back to her for me."
Her eyes widened, and fire crackled in her gaping mouth.
"You-"
Then she died.
Crack.
I punted the leg forward so fast the air howled and displaced with crack like a gunshot, and the sheer force behind the throw had it punching through her chest hoof-first even as it blasted her off her feet.
There wasn't even a scream - just an impact, a sound of bone caving in and echoing against the mists, and then the leg was sailing past the fog and it was raining golden dust everywhere.
For a beat, everything froze - even sound.
The eight remaining Empousai stared at us in something too incomprehendingly horrified to be anger or straight fear - like their brains had just overheated and crashed miserably.
"Did he just-?"
The incredulous chatter started swinging up again.
"With a leg!?"
Or was that hysteria?
"Hey, don't blame me. You use what you have at hand. Or, you know." I shrugged. "At foot."
Sai just laughed, because he's great like that.
"Nice throw."
"Thanks." I brushed a few grains of monster leftovers off my shoulder, then I rolled it theatrically just for the extra cool factor. "So… I'll take left?"
He grinned right back at me.
"And I'll take right."
"Deal!"
And then we moved.
The curb underneath us quivered as we burst forward in either direction, his fist cocking back and Serpent's Downfall materializing in my hold as we went to town on the would be hunters.
I didn't even see Sairaorg's four die - he just punched ahead once, and I could hear them burst like grapes and feel the impact of the Touki bounce back in a wave that couldn't even ruffle my hair.
My four?
The first one died instantly - Serpent's Downfall flashed forward and cut her to uneven halves from the shoulder and down across her chest, and without an ounce of resistance in between.
Just poof.
Cue the spraying gold like I'd just kicked over a sand castle.
The other three tried to scatter every which way, but they may as well have been moving in slow motion.
One went left.
One leaped up.
The other tried to go for my throat, hands wreathed in crackling flames, and that went real well for her.
Not!
Serpent's Downfall ignited, and I swung it out in a single arc.
The empousa that tried to come at me disappeared under the flames in the same move, and even her ashes ignited before they could hit the ground.
Then I tossed my spear off towards number two, and whether it was the residual flames or the blade goring through her skull that finished her off was anyone's guess.
I didn't wait for the third to drop down on me from above - I was more proactive than that, you know?
My hand flashed out and up, wrapping around a metallic ankle before I gripped and swung down hard.
There might've been the beginnings of a scream - maybe - but it was annihilated underneath the ridiculous sound of the asphalt splintering alongside her spine as I slammed one against the other hard enough to explode both to smithereens in a heartbeat, and then I was just a holding a leg once again and standing over a small crater, slowly filling with that much more dust.
Mission accomplished.
Time to completion?
About two and a half seconds - and I wasn't even winded.
I almost laughed-
"Whooo!"
Scratch that.
I did laugh, just a little.
"Let's do that again!"
I blame the demigod brain kicking into overdrive and taking over - that, and the sheer ease of victory, too.
Being powerful felt good.
"I know, right?" Sairaorg was snickering right alongside me, because if course he was, and the unnatural mist was starting to pull back all of a sudden. "Wanna grab the legs?"
I looked across the street and past the slowly dispersing clouds, and every last one of them had left the exact same spoil of war behind.
"Duh."
Do you have any idea what celestial bronze is worth back over in Sai's world?
More than gold, I'll tell you that much, even jf the residual magic from the undearly departed monster bits was probably going to mess with the alchemical value.
Of course I wanted in on that - I'm already rich and money can't buy you happiness and all, but if you're not a jerk about how you get it or what you do with it, odds are having more of it isn't likely to hurt, either.
And speaking of jerks-
"Are you just going to sit around there all day, or are you going to come over and introduce yourself already?"
Silence.
The few mortals around were all still there, just at the edge of my awareness and very distinctly not freaking out.
Just…loitering in confusion, like spectators waiting for the game to start and somehow failing to realize it was already a blowout.
Then a loud, echoing snort rumbled over from down the street, and Regulus came trotting over from nowhere in particular at all, and with the kind of slinking grace a giant lion that glowed in shades of gold had no right to have.
"I do as I wish."
We'd left him behind a few streets away when we'd gone to meet Hedge, and he'd been lazily slipping in out if range ever since and doing dad knows what.
Frankly, the way he weaved past the humans who were staring at us from the sidelines now that the mists lifted - and seeing something through the other kind of Mist - was more surreal than that circus show of a monster attack had been.
Not that I'd ever admit it.
"You could just say yes, you know."
The Nemean lion didn't answer as he finally ended up on our corner of the street, pawing his way past a little girl and her mother, who was looking down her nose at us and tugging her kid in the other direction.
Actually, on second thought, a lot of the mortals seemed to just be… leaving now.
Had they really just not seen anything important?
How did that even work?
I was still holding my spear!
Was my normalcy spell doing more-?
That half-question was derailed before I could ask it, because the little girl chose right about then to point at Regulus and yell at the top of her voice.
"Mama, look!" She bounced up and down excitedly, right as they turned around a corner. "Big kitty!"
The three of us just stopped.
"That's nice, dear."
And then they were gone, and it was pretty much just us for the he span of a tense, quite minute.
Sai… coughed.
My lips twitched.
Regulus didn't move at all.
"Go on. Either one of you." He said lowly, almost coversationally. "I dare you."
…Yeah, I know.
I'm not suicidal.
I'll rib him later, from a distance
In the meantime, though…
"Don't be rude, Kill-stealer." I ignored the answering growl. "We have company."
I finally turned back to Gleeson, who'd been playing a mannequin for the last minute and… doing a scary good job of it, actually.
Emphasis on scary.
Glazed-eyed look, back straight as an arrow and expression wiped so thoroughly clean of any tell it was like his face had been bleached off all emotion.
I don't think he was even breathing at first.
Sairaorg and I both frowned awkwardly.
We… may have gone overboard.
Nothing for it now.
"Sooo…" I pointed behind me sheepishly. "The talking lion is Regulus. He's also with us."
Regulus stared lazily.
"A satyr."
"Did his horns not give it away?"
"There isn't much there to give away, is there?"
"Don't be rude, Reggie."
His eyes narrowed into slits.
"Call me that again, and I will feed you whichever of your intestines I don't shred before your very eyes."
And you just know that's a threat he's carried on before.
Cats, man.
The worst.
"I-" We all turned back to Gleeson, waiting expectantly as he rolled his jaw a little and picked his words with the dull energy of someone who was officialy done. "-was kidding before. Now I'm not."
Painfully stiff frame aside, he wasn't even consciously acknowledging Regulus's existance, I think, which is something I've wished I could pull off more times than I could count over the last two months.
"What is it-" He kept going as his hand dropped to his pocket, and he went rummaging for something I couldn't see yet. "-with trouble and you lunatic Winchesters?"
And that was some serious feeling in his voice.
I opened my mouth to answer - something, something, insert joke about how awesome we are here - but something held me back.
Something about the way his voice wavered on 'Winchesters'…
It made me hesitate.
A gut feeling I was fairly sure I didn't like as I watched him pull out a small glinting coin out of his pocket
A golden drachma.
Don't ask me how I recognised it.
"…You keep saying stuff like that, and I'm going to start asking for context."
"No."
"No?"
"No." He said roughly, and then he flicked the Drachma in a way that had the little thing soaring a straight thirty feet up without so much as a waver in it's flight. "No more questions. No more context. We're talking a ride out to the harbour and no one is saying a word until I feel like I'm not about to lose my Pan-damned mind or so help me-!"
What-?
The coin reached the zenith of it's flight, and his head snapped up to it like a hellhound catching the scent of blood.
"Stêthi, Ô hárma diabolês!"
Greek, my brain screamed unhelpfully.
Stop, oh Chariot of Damnation!
The world glitched.
[̶W̸e̷ ̶Ar̵e̸ ̵Su̴m̴m̸o̶n̶e̴d̷]̴
Something big, fast and not quite real in a way that even ordinary magic couldn't match didn't so much arrive as explode into existence right behind us.
[̴W̸e̸ ̶H̴a̴v̸e̸ ̸C̵o̷m̴e̸]̷
After that?
[̶O̷h̴?̴]̷
Things got-
W̵e̴ S̵e̸e̵ ̸Y̴o̷u̵ ̴M̸o̶r̶t̵a̵l̸s̷
-almost cartoonishly wacky.
W̵e̴ ̵S̵e̵e̵ ̶Y̸o̷u̷
̶G̵r̵e̴a̶t̸ ̵G̶r̸a̴n̷d̴s̵o̴n̴ ̸
O̸f̵ ̸T̸h̶e̸ ̴C̵r̵o̶s̴s̷r̶o̶a̸d̷s̵
…
And so the PJO shenanigans begin in earnest!
Gleeson, Calmly Dealing with his new problems:
View: https://imgur.com/9O4EyHQ
Dan's more eldritch in-built demigod instincts surfacing now that he's powerful enough to go wild with them: