Chapter 23

Percy's Point of View

As it turned out, talking to the Oracle involved walking up a flight of rickety wooden stairs up into the attic of the large white building. Inside the cold attic the storm sounded so much louder, the thunder sweeping through my mind and obliterating any clear thoughts other than that he was angry, and so I should be scared. Normal thunderstorms scared me. They seemed to have a direct link to my emotions, and that thought terrified me. What if I hurt someone by accident when I got angry or upset?

But this thunderstorm wasn't a normal one. This one was due to the anger of Zeus, and despite the fact there was no lightning to light up the sky in a glorious display of power, it petrified me. If Zeus had this kind of power to fling around in a minor temper tantrum, what could he do to our friends and family? The thought wasn't even worth thinking about.

I shielded my thoughts from Harry, refusing to let him into my inner turmoil. I rather he thought I was merely scared of thunderstorms than for him to know the real reasons why. Harry had enough on his plate already – I wasn't going to add to it.

Inside the dusty attic the air was warm with a strange scent of mildew, rotten wood and reptiles. Or, to be more specific – snakes. There was the strangest collection of broken weapons, items of clothing and armour. Old, leather cases were strewn around the room, labelled with various names such as ITHICA or AEAEA and even THE LAND OF THE AMAZONS. Places from Odysseus' journey. There were even a few monster heads and other such 'spoils of war'. Before we could take a closer look we noticed the mummy.

She wasn't your average mummy, as in, she wasn't wrapped in strips of cloth. Instead, she was a shrivelled husk of a female human, wearing a tie-died sundress and lots of bead necklaces. Her long black hair was tied back in a headband, making the thin leathery skin stretched over her skull even more prominent. Her eyes were a glassy white, like marbles. Whoever this poor lady was, she'd been dead a very long time.

The very sight of the woman sent shivers up our back. But, as if the sight of her wasn't enough, she sat up on her stool and opened her mouth. Green mist poured out of the mummy's mouth and coiled on the floor like a massive snake. It hissed too, sounding like thousands of snakes, and yet one voice. We caught snatches of lines from the hissing.

A half-blood of the eldest gods…

Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…

To storm or fire the world must fall…

The Mark of Athena burns through Rome…

And fail without friends, to fly home alone.

Those with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approach…

We flinched back away from the hissing mist, trying to get back to the trapdoor, but it seemed miles away. An ancient conscience seemed to knock at our mind shields before sweeping them away as if they were a thin cloth curtain. The conscience then seemed to coil round our mind, hissing in content as it peered at us.

"I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seekers, and ask."

I was all for legging it out of the room there and then, but Harry steeled us, and took a deep breath.

'She's not alive, Percy.' Harry reassured me. 'She's just a host for something else – the Oracle of Delphi. She doesn't feel evil, does she?'

'No.' I replied in a small voice, unsure of exactly who Harry was trying to reassure – me or himself. But he was right, the presence in our mind didn't feel evil. Ancient beyond belief and more powerful than anything I'd ever felt before, agreed, and most definitely not human, yes. But it didn't seem particularly interested by the idea of killing us either.

Steeling our nerves, we asked: "What's our destiny?"

The mist began to solidify into shapes before us. Soon recognisable figures stood in front of us; Draco and Severus with Blaise and Theodore. If it wasn't for the green mist twirling slowly around them we could have believe that they really were here, in this small dusty attic in America.

Draco was the first to speak. Well, the rasping voice of the Oracle spoke through his image; "You shall go west, and face the god who has turned."

Blaise, who had his arm wrapped round Theo grinned at us. "You shall find what was stolen, and see if safely returned."

Then it was Severus' turn. His face was sad as he looked at us, as if contemplating the misfortunes that lay ahead. "You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend."

Finally Theodore frowned as he delivered the worst line of all: "And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end."

Their message delivered, the figures dissolved back into the mist they had been created out of. As we stood there, staring dumbly at the swirling green mist, it retreated, coiling into a huge green serpent and slithered back into the mouth of the mummy. Harry snapped out of it first.

"Wait! What do you mean? What friend? And what will we fail to save?"

The tail of the snake had almost disappeared when we heard one tiny hiss. $He who calls you friend hides closest to your hearts…$

Stunned by that one line, we collapsed on the floor. 'Closest to our hearts… But who is that?'

Harry cursed. 'I hate Oracles and Seers. They always speak in the most ridiculous riddles, and twist the truth to make it as confusing as possible.'

I sighed. 'Exactly. But Prophecies are never interpreted in the way that you expect. That, at least, we should remember.'

Harry grumbled, but didn't disagree as he picked us off the floor and headed downstairs. Chiron was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs with Annabeth. The old centaur gave us a grave look.

"What did She say?"

"Oh, a fair bit." I admitted. "But not much good."

Annabeth huffed. "But did you get your quest?"

We nodded. "We think so. She said we would find what was stolen and see it returned, at least."

When we didn't divulge the rest of the prophecy Chiron gave us a knowing look and a kind smile. "Don't dwell on Her words too much. Everything will work out in the end."

We nodded. "When can we leave?"

Chiron tilted his head. "You'll need a couple of companions. Three was always the sacred number when it came to quests. And I believe you have one volunteer – am I right Annabeth?"

The blond girl nodded curtly, her grey eyes assessing us. Then the most peculiar thing happened. They grew distant and unfocused, as if focusing on something through us. We frowned. From what little we knew of Annabeth, that didn't seem much like her personality at all. She smiled at us.

"Harry James Potter."

We flinched back. "What did you just call us?"

"Harry James Potter." She replied. "The nargles talk to me about many things and you're the talk of the century. Brother to the boy-who-lived."

We narrowed our eyes at the girl. "You aren't Annabeth, are you? Annabeth is the clear headed daughter of Athena. She doesn't strike me as one to have an interested in folk tales such as Nargles."

The daughter of Athena snapped out of it. "What? Sorry."

Chiron frowned at her. "Are you alright, Annabeth? You seemed to… disappear for a moment."

She frowned but shook her head. "I'm fine. I just saw a different name when I looked at Percy. Coupled by a title."

We took a deep breath. "We were born under the name Harry James Potter. They just didn't believe us when we told them about me – Percy that is. Lily and James just thought that we were messing around, and that we were ill, and that's why we acted differently at times. "

For the smallest moment something akin to recognition shone in Annabeth's eyes. I could tell that we were going to end up thoroughly interrogated on the subject by the end of the day "Curious."

I turned to Chiron then. "Do we need anyone else if we go with Annabeth? I mean, we are kind of two people."

The centaur tilted his head. "I suppose it would qualify, but you might need another for man power."

We grinned. "Chiron, we have magic on our side. We'll be fine."

Rolling his eyes, Chiron acknowledged our point. "Go pack and you can leave after lunch. You don't have much time."

Annabeth looked like she wanted to argue for a minute, but in the end she just left with a small sigh. We followed after her, ignoring the rain that seemed to slide of an invisible shield a few centimetres away from our body and the sticky mud that was soaking into the bottom of our jeans. The rain was starting to ease off, and the impenetrable black clouds had lightened up enough to let a few weak beams of sunlight through.

Packing didn't consist of much, given that we hadn't yet bothered to unpack. We stuffed some clothes in a spare rucksack we had packed along with some toiletries. We then shrunk our trunk wandlessly and cast the featherweight charm on it before stringing it on a chain around our neck.

Lunch was a much lonelier affair then I had originally anticipated. I realised that Chiron might not even have been looking for us at breakfast to notice we weren't there. We were sitting alone at our own little stone picnic bench, with no siblings to talk with. The curse of being the only living child of one of the big three. We sighed as we picked at our food. We had sacrificed a good part of our lunch already to Poseidon, hoping for some help with our quest.

Half way through lunch an owl decided to drop by for a visit, carrying a letter from Draco. We grinned as we read it, ignoring the strange looks we received from all of the other campers. From a spare pocket we pulled a spare roll of parchment, a quill and some ink. It always paid to have some with you. While Harry wrote the letter I added random contributions, breaking his more formal style of letter. Draco had always told us that reading our letters was hilarious. We could talk about the same subject and have a mini debate with each other in the letter at the same time. After reading this one before Harry sent it off I agreed with him.

Before sending the poor owl off back to Draco we gave it some water and a few spare owl treats we had on us. It hadn't taken longer than the first week at Hogwarts to realise that it was always a good idea to carry owl treats. A sudden presence behind us made us look up. It was Annabeth.

"What was that?" She demanded, looking slightly offended.

'Owls are Athena's sacred animal.' Harry commended offhand. I scowled at him.

'Not helping.'

"That was us sending a letter to our friend."

"Overseas." Annabeth snapped, her voice low.

We nodded absent-mindedly, not really paying that much attention to what we were saying. "Before you start lecturing us about owls, we know. But our culture don't use normal muggle posting systems. We use owls to deliver messages. Our magic messes with technology, so we can't use that – even if purebloods would lower themselves to that standard."

Annabeth bristled at that. "Lower themselves to that standard? Who do these mortals think they are?"

This time it was us glaring at her. "They are purebloods. Generations of clean magical blood that hasn't yet been 'tainted' by muggle blood. I'm not saying we approve of their beliefs that anything muggle is 'dirty' but enough of our friends share those beliefs, so we understand how they think. Given my friend Draco is a pureblood and his manor is on unplottable land, I can't exactly use muggle methods!"

This time Wisdom's daughter drew back as if struck. "Muggles. You keep saying muggles. And magical blood and unplottable… What do you mean?"

We had probably already said more than we should have. The Statue of Wizarding Secrecy technically wasn't being broken since Demigods existed in a world that was just as secret as our own. Besides, legend suggest we had evolved out of their culture so it's not as if they would suddenly go around blurting out our secrets anymore that we would theirs. So, with a sigh, we tried to explain. "I don't suppose you've heard of the magical communities in the world, have you? Witches and Wizards? We exist in the folk-tales of most cultures."

She shook her head, her anger trailing away as it was replaced by her insatiable curiosity.

"Well, we exist. The most common story of our origins is that we are descendants of Hecate, Titan of Magic, or were blessed by her with the gift of magic. Muggles are non-magic folk. Over half of the Wizarding population are 'muggleborn' – witches or wizards born into muggle families. Since 'purebloods' don't like mixing with muggleborns… well, you get extremists who try to wipe out the entire muggle population."

Annabeth gasped, as did some of the other campers who had started listening in. They didn't question our story. I guess after finding out that the Greek Gods exist, learning witches and wizards do too couldn't have been too much of a stretch.

The next half hour was spent answering questions until Chiron finally came to interrupt so Annabeth and we could leave for our quest.

"But Chiron!" Luke protested. "A quest is supposed to be a group of three!"

"Didn't you tell them Percy?" Chiron asked. We looked at the floor and shook our head. Chiron sighed. "I believe a few of you have come across the mention of twin souls as you study some of the more modern heroes I trained. It would appear, they're not as forgotten as I had thought. Percy here was born under the name Harry James Potter, and later they had to name Percy because their parents believed them to be ill as they didn't know about twin souls."

Chiron went on to explain exactly what a twin soul was and his theory about magic-folk, demigods and twin souls.

After all the explanations were finally over, we didn't feel quite as isolated. There were no more secrets between us and the campers now and it felt strangely liberating. We didn't have to worry about accidentally blurting out the wrong thing, or doing something that they found really strange. It was almost as if we were starting to fit in a little.

Annabeth and I were just getting into the camp bus to get a ride to New York where we would properly start our quest when Chiron suddenly remembered something. He handed us a rather normal looking muggle ball-point pen. We gave him a strange look, but he explained before we could comment on the pen.

"Your father gave me that years ago. I kept it, not knowing that you were who I was waiting for. But the prophecy seems clearer now. You are the one."

I tilted our head, but curiously uncapped the pen. It grew longer and heavier in our hand. Within half a second we were holding the most beautiful shimmering bronze sword with a double-edged blade, a leather-wrapped grip and a flat hilt riveted with gold studs. It was perfectly balanced in our hand, almost as if it was made for us.

"That sword as a rather long and tragic history behind it that we needn't go into now." Chiron told us. "It's called Anaklusmos."

"Riptide." Harry translated easily. I could almost picture the Greek letters as Chiron said the word. It seemed strangely fitting for the blade. But a thought did occur to us.

"Why are you giving us a sword? We already have one."

Chiron smiled. "That isn't just any sword, Percy. It's made out of celestial bronze, forged by the Cyclopes and tempered in the heart of Mount Etna before being cooled in the River Lethe. It's deadly to monsters, and any creature from the Underworld – provide they don't kill you first. However, it won't have any effect on a mortal. The blade would simply pass through them like an illusion. A demigod however… he can be killed by both celestial and normal weapons. You're twice as vulnerable. Keep that in mind."

"Good to know." I swallowed nervously, recapping the pen. We had been studying in while the old centaur had been talking and had come to the conclusion that it had a retrieval woven into the sword. If we lost it, it would return to us within a few minutes. "But won't the mortals see it?"

Chiron gave us another of those strange smiles of his. "Mist is a very powerful thing, Percy. Remember that."

Not bothering to question that, I put the pen in our pocket. Just before I could get into the van, however, Luke came running up to us, a box clutched tightly under his arm.

"Hey! I'm glad I managed to catch you." He grinned, offering Annabeth a warm one armed hug. Then he held out the box to us. I tilted our head curiously at him, but we accepted the box. Luke scratched his head as he tried to explain. "I wanted to say good luck and um… I thought maybe you might find some use for these."

Inside the box was a pair of what looked like perfectly normal trainers. We gave Luke a questioning look. He smirked.

"Maia!"

White bird's wings erupted from the heels, startling us so much that we almost dropped them. Luke smiled fondly at them.

"Those served me well on my quest. A gift from Dad. I don't have much use for them nowadays." Luke's expression turned sad, and he ran a finger over the scar on his cheek.

"Thank you." We offered him a genuine smile. "We'll put them to good use and return them good as new to you."

Finally, we were off. Argus, the hundred eyed camp guard, was our driver. He winked at us as we got it. He started the engine and began to pull away. Behind us, next to Thalia's Pine tree, Chiron stood in his full centaur form, waving his bow in salute. We recognised it from when we had decided to study centaurs as a side project last year. It was the farewell that a father would give to his son when he was sent off to war. We felt strangely touched by it, and waved back.

Fixing our eyes on the road ahead after the camp disappeared behind us, I turned to Harry.

'So it begins.'

'Aye.' He grinned. 'So the adventure begins. Lily's going to have a fit when she finds out about this!'

I chuckled. 'Not to mention Severus if we fail to complete our homework.'

We both burst out laughing at that. We ignored Annabeth's eye rolling. Right now, life was good. Our quest had begun, and we felt free.