1. MAYFAIR

Mayfair awoke at noon. And she was not happy to find herself face-to-face with a roaring grizzly bear.

"Frank!" she yelled over the guttural bellow, rubbing her eyes. "Gods, your bear breath is awful. Quit waking me up like this."

In a blink, the bear was gone, replaced by a demigod with about the same size in stature. Frank shrugged. "Leo said you never unsubscribed from his Leonidas Wake-Up Calls. Since he's on morning duty, he told me to take over the waking-you-up aspect of it all in any way I saw fit. This was how I saw fit."

May ran a hand down her face. Ever since Percy and Theo had been gone, Leo had been working almost non-stop, acting even angrier and more driven than usual. Taking the morning shift wasn't out of the ordinary for him, but May knew they would end up adding up, and he had already taken at least two back-to-back morning and night shifts. May couldn't even be sure when the last time he slept was.

"Are we over the Apennines yet?" she asked Frank, trying her best not to sound too hopeful. She flopped her bed covers over and climbed out of bed.

"Not yet," he said, turning around as she changed pants—though she'd fought off adversaries in them before, hot pink cheetah-print P.J. pants were not her ideal fashion choice for quests. Frank twirled his bow on the ground like a spinning top, watching it whirl. "Hazel thinks it's her and Nico's fault, that the numina monatum can sense them because of their father. I think they're wrong. Leo keeps trying anyway."

Mayfair scowled to herself as she changed. These numina montatum were really growing on her nerves.

The mountain gods, sons of Gaea, were obviously not going to let the Argo II pass over their land peacefully; not since the six demigods were on their way to defeat their mother, anyway. But the path really should have been simple: to reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east – over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn't worked out that way. Each time they tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked. Mayfair had faced three of their battles, and each ended in a ruined mast and a fuming Leo. Literally. He had been the cause of a wildfire spanning the lower levels of the Apennine mountains.

For the past two days, Leo had skirted the ship north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no success. Today was the third day, and May decided the numina monatum were really pushing their luck.

"I suggested we take another path," Frank informed Mayfair in a know-it-all kind of voice, like he wanted validation from the child of the goddess of planning. "I thought it was a good idea. Right?"

May zipped her jacket and picked up her dagger, her hair tied into a messy ponytail for the time being. She couldn't remember the last time she'd washed it. She scrunched her brow together. "What, like go by sea instead of land? That's a long way. And we don't have... you know, our sea expert."

She didn't have to say his name, but it hung in the air of her cabin like a storm cloud.

"There has to be a break in the mountains or something," May said forcefully, almost physically brushing the thought of Percy and Theo out of the room. She headed past Frank and into the corridor. "We could just continue north, see if there's an opening for us where the mountain gods aren't expecting."

She finished her thought on the main deck of the ship, and Nico di Angelo turned his head toward her - which made Mayfair a little bit unsettled, honestly. He was a scrawny kid, sure, around the same age as Mayfair (and small for it)—but he had also been alive since World War II and was the son of Hades, king of the dead, so May had yet to have tried and form any connection with him. She didn't think he was too offended by their lack of a friendship, either.

"That's not a bad idea," Nico said now, and May exhaled a tiny sigh of relief. "But it may take too long. Whatever we do, we have to hurry. Every day that Percy and Theo are in Tartarus..."

He didn't need to finish. They had to hope Percy and Theo could survive long enough to find the Tartarus side of the Doors of Death. Then, assuming the Argo II could reach the House of Hades, they might be able to open the Doors on the mortal side, save their friends and seal the entrance, stopping Gaia's forces from being reincarnated in the mortal world over and over.

The old Leo would have called such a foreboding and ominous-sounding plan something like Operation Happy Fun Time, but now he just clenched his jaw and kept his eyes on the Archimedes sphere he'd implemented into the ship. May was growing more and more worried about him as the days went on.

"Hazel met with Hecate this morning," he informed Frank and May in a flat voice. "She's steering us now, but she told me everything I needed to know. Basically, Hecate told her that we needed to take some sort of secret pass through the mountains. I dunno. I didn't ask questions. But the plan seems to be working for now—smooth sailing ever since she's taken over."

"Good," said Nico, nodding. "Because I need to talk to everyone over lunch."

Once upon a time, May had enjoyed Leo's design of the windows in the mess hall. She'd liked how they showed real-time footage of Camp Half-Blood, almost making it feel like they were still there. But now it just made May feel sick to her stomach.

The scenes from back home—the campfire sing-alongs, dinners at the pavilion, volleyball games outside the Big House—just made May sad. The further they made it from Long Island, the worse it got. The time zones kept changing, making May feel the distance every time she looked at the walls. Now it was nighttime back at camp, the windows showing a scene of the beach, hordes of footprints in the sand like a bunch of people had just left all at once.

That made May feel even worse—the thought of Camp Jupiter's impending arrival, the war hanging over the heads of all the demigods on the Argo II. The rift between camps was supposed to have been healed when the replicated Apollo Belvedere had been destroyed, but the truth was... there wasn't any way to tell if the statue was ruined. It had fallen into Tartarus, sure, but so had Percy and Theo—and if the other demigods assumed by default that the Apollo Belvedere was gone, then they assumed Percy and Theo were gone, too. It took a tense discussion for this ideal to culminate—but May brought to point Aristotle's principles of implication. Nobody liked when she went Athena-mode during arguments.

Ever since the initial discussion immediately following Percy and Theo's falling, there hung a heavy storm cloud over the Argo II. Everybody had taken at least a little bit of the blame, and nobody disagreed that it was all a little bit their fault. Even now, three days later, nobody around the mess hall table was meeting anybody else's eyes.

Jason sat at the head of the table ever since Theo had been gone. His blue eyes were sad and haunted, and his blonde hair was untamed, which wasn't usual for a guy like him. He cleared his throat and straightened his back. "So, now that we're all here..."

May glanced around the table, wondering, for the first time, if she hadn't taken notice of any other of her friends' despair yet, like she hadn't seen Jason's until now.

Hazel had bleary eyes, but that could have just been from her morning shift at the helm. Frank seemed okay in his black CIAO! shirt that he'd picked up in Rome, but he looked uncomfortable with the energy around the table. Nico sat in his black bomber jacket and jeans, spinning that freaky silver skull ring on his finger, looking normal—for Nico. Leo was slumped in his chair and staring at nothing in particular, his eyes locked in and mind wandering. His fingers tapped the table in a repetitive rhythm—Morse code. "I love you," he was saying. May wondered if it was subconscious.

The only absentee not around the table was Hedge, taking his turn at the helm. He never had much to add to conversations such as these, anyway, unless it was "Kill them," "Bash their heads in with a bat," or "Attack!"

Nico sat forward in his chair, watching Jason as if for permission to speak. "I spoke to a ghost last night," he began, as if this were a totally normal occurrence. "He was a former priest of Hecate. He confirms what the goddess told Hazel at the crossroads. In the first war with the giants, Hecate fought for the gods. She slew one of the giants, the anti-Hecate. Clytius."

Jason pushed away his sandwich. "So I suppose this guy will be waiting for us at the Doors of Death."

May leaned forward, her gut twisting with concern. "And what about the woman we've all been seeing in our dreams?"

A silence fell over the table. Every night—or morning, considering on what shift one took—each of the six demigods had been experiencing dreams surrounding, more or less, the same woman: a goddess, presumably, with hair set high in Greek curls, face glowing the same way May remembered the Apollo Belvedere to. She sneered at each of the demigods and swore vengeance. Nobody had been able to put a finger on who they thought she could be yet.

"She's my problem." Hazel passed a diamond between her fingers in a sleight of hand. "Hecate mentioned a formidable enemy in the House of Hades—a witch who couldn't be defeated except by me, using magic."

"Do you know magic?" Leo asked.

"Not yet."

May tried to think of something reassuring to say, but she could only recall the angry woman's eyes, the way her steely grip made May's skin crawl. "Any idea who she is?"

Hazel shook her head, sharing a tense glance with Nico. "Only that she won't be easy to defeat."

"But there is some good news," said Nico, eyes skimming around the table and landing on each demigod carefully. His gaze made May's skin crawl. "The ghost I talked to explained how Hecate defeated Clytius in the first war. She used her torches to set his hair on fire. He burned to death."

"In other words," said May slowly, "fire is his weakness."

Everyone turned to Leo.

"Oh," he said. "Okay."

Jason nodded encouragingly. "It's a good lead. At least we know how to kill the giant. And this sorceress... well, if Hecate believes Hazel can defeat her, then so do I."

Hazel dropped her eyes. "So that just leaves reaching the House of Hades, battling our way through Gaea's forces—"

"Plus a bunch of ghosts," Nico added grimly.

"—and finding the Doors of Death," Hazel finished, paling.

"Assuming we can get to them at the same time as Percy and Theo," May said. "To rescue them."

Frank swallowed a bite of his turkey sandwich. "We can do it. We have to."

May admired his optimism.

"So, let's talk travel," said Leo, sitting up in his chair. When he spoke, he sounded like his old self—it was just the times he would drift off and get lost in his thoughts that he seemed so down. "I'm estimating four or five days of travel until Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff. But the mast has to be fixed again before we can get any further down Hecate's path, and I'm out of wood, so this afternoon I'm going to touch down in Italy to try and get some more. Long story short—we should be taking off by tonight, and anyone who wants to tour around Italy has the afternoon."

Midsummer Italy was the worst Italy. May decided very quickly.

All the tourists were around, sporting fanny packs and khaki shorts, speaking all sorts of different languages that clashed in May's mind like an explosion of encyclopedias. She winced as a tour group of all sorts of nationalities strolled by, the voices and words scrambling in her head and giving her what felt like the beginning of a migraine. 

Originally, nobody took up Leo's offer on wandering the city while he searched for parts, so out of pity, May offered to go. Hazel jumped in at the last second, claiming she had to get off the ship before she lost her lunch (again). Nobody else joined them, so once again May found herself on what probably looked like a date in one of the most romantic cities in the world. Gods, why did she keep ending up on these things with everybody but the one person she wanted to be on one with?

Hazel gazed up at everything like she was new to the world, while May kept her head down, only watching what was necessary. They'd made it through two blocks before Hazel stopped.

"Look at that," she said, pointing up toward what looked like a tall watchtower from Ancient Rome. It wasn't busy, like all the popular ruins from the old times were, which was a good sign it was one of those things only visible to demigods—like the wandering ghosts.

May turned to Hazel. "Don't tell me you want to go up there."

Hazel smiled, then nodded her head like a woodpecker. May rolled her eyes.

The tower seemed like an excuse for the architect who'd built it to build a forever-staircase. May and Hazel climbed on for what felt like eons. Every once in a while, they'd pass a barred window, and May was reminded that this place really had been used as a watchtower, which was a cool enough fact that she forgot her exhaustion each time.

When they reached the top, Hazel whistled. "Wow. Check this place out. Demigod ruins or just unpopular with the masses?"

May blew dust off the lid of one of the trunks settled across the room. "Definitely demigod ruins."

Hazel wandered around the small watchtower, gazing up at the rafters and out the windows to see the view from above. May pawed through the chest, admittedly curious. Could this have been sitting here since the ancient times, and nobody had known? It sure was dusty enough...

Finally, she reached the bottom of the chest. Her fingers grazed an old bronze navigation device, like an astrolabe from a ship. It was in poor condition and seemed to be missing some pieces, but May still found it fascinating.

"Woah," said Hazel, kneeling beside May. "What is that?"

May's brow furrowed. The gadget was bothering her, like she should have known the answer to Hazel's question. The answer was on the tip of her tongue.

Then Hazel laughed, struck with a thought. She took the device in her hands and held it like a football. "Hey, what if it's what they—"

"What if!" May exclaimed, sitting up on her knees. "'My biggest what-if'! I knew I recognized this."

Hazel handed it back to her, scrunching her brows together. "Care to fill in those of us without an Athenian mind?"

Grinning, May inspected the device from all angles. She shook her head in disbelief. "I've heard about this before. It's—it belonged to Odysseus. Like, The Odyssey Odysseus. There's a fragment in the original outline of The Odyssey in Cabin Six, and in it, Odysseus references his biggest what-if to be this device. 'I should have', he says, 'taken a crystal instead'. None of the Athena kids knew what he meant. This... this must be it."

"You... think?" Hazel didn't sound convinced. "I mean... couldn't it just be an old piece of metal—"

"Don't say that," said May quickly, clutching the astrolabe. "No. I've read those blueprints a hundred times. This is what he was talking about. It has to be. There's a hole for the crystal, too, look."

Hazel spread her hands. "Okay, okay. If you say so." She reached down into the trunk and pulled out an old leather-bound book, then smiled thoughtfully and put on a dramatic voice. "And let me guess—this is the personal diary of Helen of Troy, where she recorded all her thoughts and opinions, and has never, until now, been touched by the modern world."

May gave her a flat glare. "No, Hazel. This is a blank book."

Hazel rolled her eyes, sitting back on her heels. "I'm keeping it."

"Great," said May mindlessly, face back to being buried in the trunk. "Maybe you can record all of your thoughts and opinions on it and seal it away for centuries to never be touched by the modern world."

Hazel hit her on the head with the book.

Via Chatter...

Rip Mayfair Alvarez you would've loved Wikipedia

So much angst aboard the Argo II. Percy and Theo left but their presence is literally still there. Like it's a tangible thing. They caused so much grief and suffering YOULL NEVER GET AWAY FROM THE SOUND OF A WOMAN (pertheo) WHO LOVES YOU

Hazelfair bestfriendship? I think yes. Also MayFrank bestfriendship? ?? Perhaps? Is it friendshipism or is it May watching Percy and Theo fall into Tartarus and realizing that her own life is frantically coming to an end

The commencement of this season of Bloodshed is dedicated to my wife flayedcrank who will be celebrating her birthday in 4 days. My darlingest love.