Chapter 9: The Seer's Burden
The morning after the claiming games, camp split its attention like a river around a rock. Percy Jackson—son of Poseidon, forbidden child, killer of the Minotaur—became an instant celebrity. Campers wanted to shake his hand, hear his story, touch the kid who'd broken the Big Three's pact just by existing.
Alaric got the other kind of attention. The fearful kind.
He noticed it at breakfast. The way conversations died when he walked past. The subtle shifts as people created space around him at the Hermes table. Carlos and Maya tried to bridge the gap—sat with him, talked like nothing had changed—but even they couldn't quite meet his eyes when the crimson one caught the light wrong.
"Unclaimed but powerful," someone whispered three tables over. The words carried despite the speaker's attempt at discretion. "Did you see his weapons? There were dozens. Maybe hundreds."
"Chiron said something ancient marked him."
"Ancient like what? Like Titans? That's not good."
Alaric stabbed his eggs with more force than necessary. This was the cost of revealing too much. Of fighting the hellhound pack to save Percy and Clarisse's team. Of letting the Gate of Babylon manifest fully.
The camp had seen what he could do. Now they were afraid.
A hand touched his shoulder. Alaric nearly jumped, reaching for weapons on instinct, before recognizing Chiron's weathered palm.
"Alaric," the centaur said quietly. "When you're finished with breakfast, please meet me at the Big House. Mr. D wishes to speak with you."
Not a request. A summons.
"Understood," Alaric managed.
Chiron's ancient eyes were unreadable. "Don't keep us waiting."
The Big House smelled like old wood and something medicinal that Alaric couldn't quite identify. Chiron waited on the porch in his wheelchair form—the centaur magic making him appear fully human. Beside him sat Dionysus, god of wine, looking deeply uninterested in everything except his Diet Coke.
Mr. D's bloodshot eyes fixed on Alaric the moment he climbed the steps. The god's attention was oppressive—weight settling across Alaric's shoulders like physical pressure.
"You smell wrong," Dionysus announced. No preamble, no introduction. Just blunt divine assessment delivered with the enthusiasm of someone commenting on bad cheese. "Not demigod, not monster, not quite mortal. Like you're all three and none simultaneously. Explain, boy."
Alaric's mouth went dry. Gods could see things mortals couldn't. Smell things. Sense the fundamental wrongness of a transmigrator wearing a stolen body with absorbed monster essences.
"I don't know what I am," he said. Honesty was easier than lies. "My mother died when I was young. Never told me who my godly parent was. And I've been... absorbing monster traits. Through blood contact. It changes me."
"Bloodline Devourer," Chiron murmured. The term carried weight. "I suspected, but confirmation is... troubling."
"What's a Bloodline Devourer?" Alaric asked, even though he knew. Circe had explained it to him in the books—ancient monsters created to consume gods, exterminated by Zeus during the Giant War.
"An extinct abomination," Dionysus said flatly. "Zeus killed them all. Every single one. So either you're lying about what you are, or someone's been very busy breaking cosmic laws."
The god stood. Walked around Alaric like inspecting livestock. His divine presence made the air thick, hard to breathe.
"The Oracle will tell us," Dionysus declared. "If she rejects him, that's confirmation he's an abomination that needs eliminating. If she accepts him..." He shrugged. "Then he's weird but not immediately kill-worthy."
"Mr. D," Chiron protested gently. "Perhaps we should discuss—"
"No discussion. Oracle. Now."
The attic stairs were narrow and creaked with every step. Alaric's heart hammered against his ribs as he climbed, Chiron behind him, Dionysus bringing up the rear with divine impatience radiating like heat.
He knew what waited at the top. Had read the descriptions a dozen times. The Oracle of Delphi—Rachel Elizabeth Dare's predecessor, the mummified corpse that housed the spirit of prophecy. But knowing and experiencing were different things.
The attic smelled like dust and something older. Dried flowers. Preserved death. Sunlight filtered through gaps in the roof, painting everything amber.
And there she sat.
The Oracle. Mummy-dried, leathered skin stretched over ancient bones, dressed in a tie-dye shirt from the 1960s that had faded to nothing. She sat in her corner, head lolled forward, completely still.
Alaric approached slowly. His borrowed instincts screamed conflicting warnings—the monster parts of him recognized divine power, the demigod parts felt reverence, and the human part just wanted to run.
The Oracle's head snapped up.
The sound was leather cracking. Bones grinding. Her mouth fell open and green mist poured out—thick, choking, ancient. It filled the attic in seconds, turning everything underwater-green.
But instead of speaking aloud, a voice erupted directly into Alaric's mind.
"PARADOX."
The word wasn't spoken. It was felt. Hammered into his consciousness by something vast and aware and completely inhuman.
"VARIABLE."
Alaric staggered. His hands found the wall, steadying himself as the presence pressed down on him with crushing force.
"THE PATTERN BREAKS AROUND YOU."
Then the Oracle spoke aloud. Her voice was wrong—layered, countless tones speaking simultaneously, men and women and children and things that had never been human at all.
"Blood of ancients walks paths never meant," she intoned. "The seer who changes what he has foreseen. Beware the cost when false becomes real."
The green mist retracted. The Oracle's head lolled forward again, lifeless and still. The divine presence vanished like someone had flipped a switch.
Alaric was on his knees. He didn't remember falling.
"Fascinating," Chiron murmured. His voice came from very far away. "She didn't reject him. In fact, she gave him a prophecy of his own."
"Wonderful," Dionysus said dryly. "Another special snowflake for me to babysit. Just what I needed."
Chiron helped Alaric stand. The centaur's expression was unreadable as he guided him toward the stairs, away from the Oracle's presence, back into the normal world where things made sense.
But Alaric's hands wouldn't stop shaking. Because the Oracle had seen him. Seen what he was—a variable, a paradox, someone who didn't belong. And she'd warned him.
"Beware the cost when false becomes real."
What did that mean? The cost of his lies? The cost of changing canon? The cost of pretending to be something he wasn't?
He didn't know. And that terrified him more than any monster.
Alaric threw himself into training to avoid thinking.
Percy needed help adjusting to camp life, needed someone to teach him the basics that everyone else took for granted. So Alaric became that person. They spent afternoons at the arena, working through sword forms and balance exercises, and Alaric carefully shared techniques he claimed to have "learned from dreams."
"Keep your weight centered," he instructed, demonstrating the stance. "If you're too far forward, someone will trip you. Too far back, you can't react fast enough."
Percy copied the position. His natural athleticism made learning easy—muscle memory developed faster than it should, son-of-Poseidon reflexes translating instruction into execution.
"Like this?"
"Exactly. Now try the overhead block. Remember, you're not stopping the blade. You're redirecting it."
They practiced for an hour. Percy's enthusiasm was infectious—every successful technique brought a grin, every mistake just made him try harder. This was the Percy Jackson from the books: determined, loyal, brave to the point of stupidity.
And Alaric was teaching him to be more dangerous.
"Have you dreamed about my quest?" Percy asked during a water break. The question was casual, but tension bled through underneath. "About what's going to happen with the Master Bolt?"
Alaric had been dreading this. "I've seen pieces."
"What kind of pieces?"
"Danger. Betrayal. Choices that matter." Alaric chose his words carefully. "But Percy, dreams aren't exact. They're possibilities, not certainties. The future isn't written—it's made by the choices we make in each moment."
"That sounds like something Chiron would say."
"Maybe Chiron's right."
Percy studied him for a long moment. "You're scared. Of your own dreams."
The observation was too accurate. Alaric looked away, pretending to adjust his sword grip. "I'm scared of what happens if I'm wrong. If I see danger and you prepare for it, but my preparation causes something worse. Prophecy is... complicated."
"But you're still going to help me, right? On the quest?"
"If they let me."
"They will." Percy's certainty was absolute. "You saved my life twice. That counts for something."
"I've read your story a dozen times. I know every trap, every betrayal, every death that's coming. And I'm terrified that changing things will make it worse instead of better."
But he just nodded and said, "Come on. Let's work on your footwork. You're still too front-heavy."
That evening, Annabeth invited them to Athena's cabin for strategy discussion. The cabin was exactly as described—grey stone, owl imagery everywhere, books and maps covering every surface. Annabeth's bunk was neat and organized, a whiteboard with tactical diagrams leaning against the wall.
But it was the Yankees cap sitting on her nightstand that made Alaric's blood run cold.
"Is that...?" He gestured.
Annabeth picked it up, the fabric shimmering as she turned it over. "My mom's invisibility cap. Found it two days ago in an old trunk in storage. Been meaning to test it properly, but with everything happening..."
Two days ago. The cap wasn't supposed to appear until the quest began. Athena was supposed to gift it to Annabeth as support, a divine endorsement of her daughter's first quest.
But she already had it. The timeline had shifted.
"Oh no. Oh no no no. This is wrong. This isn't how it happens. My presence is changing things, bigger things than I thought, and I don't know what else is different now."
"You okay?" Annabeth asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Prophetic headache," Alaric lied. The excuse was wearing thin, but it worked. "Sorry. I need some air."
He left before either of them could protest. Walked through camp on autopilot, his mind racing through implications. The cap appearing early meant Athena was paying attention differently. Which meant other gods might be acting differently. Which meant the quest could go completely off the rails from what he knew.
His feet carried him to the beach. The lake lapped against the shore in gentle rhythm, and Alaric stared at the water, seeing nothing.
"What if I make things worse?" he whispered to the waves. "What if I save Percy but doom someone else?"
"Doubt is the first step to wisdom," a voice said behind him.
Alaric spun. Luke Castellan stood ten feet away, appearing from shadows like he'd been waiting. The son of Hermes wore his counselor shirt and a sympathetic expression that looked practiced.
"Didn't mean to startle you," Luke said. He moved closer, sat on a nearby rock. "You looked like you needed someone to talk to."
"I'm fine."
"You're spiraling. I recognize the signs." Luke's voice was gentle. Understanding. "The gods give us power but no guidance, Alaric. They leave us stumbling blind, trying to figure out what our abilities mean, and then they punish us for mistakes we didn't know we were making. It's cruel."
This was recruitment. Alaric recognized it from the books—Luke's careful manipulation, his appeal to shared grievances, the gradual erosion of faith in the divine order.
"You've got sight beyond normal demigods," Luke continued. "Prophetic dreams, weapon summoning, combat skills that shouldn't exist in someone so young. But you're still trapped in their system. Following their rules. Hoping they'll eventually tell you who you are, what you're meant to do."
"And you're offering an alternative?"
Luke's smile was sharp. "I'm offering perspective. The gods aren't infallible. They make mistakes, play favorites, abandon their children when convenient. But there are others who see demigods differently. Who want to help us reach our full potential instead of limiting us."
"Kronos. He's talking about Kronos. And he's so smooth about it, so reasonable, that if I didn't know better I might actually consider it."
"I'm exactly where I need to be, Luke," Alaric said carefully. "But thanks for the concern."
Luke's smile didn't waver. But his eyes sharpened—calculation replacing sympathy—and Alaric saw the predator beneath the mentor's mask.
"Of course," Luke said. He stood, brushed sand from his jeans. "But when you're ready to talk about what you really are, about your true potential, I'm here. The offer stands."
He walked away. Left Alaric alone on the beach with the waves and the weight of too many secrets.
That night, Alaric lay in his bunk and stared at the ceiling, mind refusing to quiet.
The Oracle had called him a paradox. A variable. Someone who broke patterns just by existing.
The timeline was fracturing. Small changes—Annabeth's cap, the hellhound numbers, his own presence—were creating ripples he couldn't predict.
Luke was recruiting him for Kronos.
And Percy's quest was coming, with or without Alaric's intervention.
"I wanted to save people. Change the tragedies I read about. But what if I'm just creating new ones? What if every life I save costs someone else's? What if the Oracle's warning means I'm the real threat, not the solution?"
The questions spiraled. No answers came. Just the darkness and the sound of twenty-three demigods breathing in their sleep.
Alaric closed his mismatched eyes and tried to find rest. Tomorrow would bring new challenges. New choices. New consequences for actions he couldn't take back.
All he could do was keep moving forward and hope he was making the right calls.
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