CHAPTER NINETEEN

₊˚࿐࿔ 𖥧‧₊⚘ ❀༉. 𓏲｡

The rest of the day Sylvie was preoccupied with preparing Cedar for the impending game against the Hunters—since apparently she was in charge now. The whole ordeal took longer than you might think, because either Sylvie, Miranda, or Cedar kept getting fed up, bored, or distracted. In that order.

Miranda was stringently set on restoring all the dead flowers that the winter air had killed. Sylvie just wished she did it elsewhere, because it made Cedar eager to learn how to do that instead. Sylvie couldn't stop him either, because she couldn't blame him. Who would want capture the flag lessons from Sylvie? She had historically captured her own flag, fallen off of Zeus's fist while guarding, and gotten lost in the woods mid-game. On top of that, Cedar was insistent he didn't ever want a weapon for fighting.

Basically, they were screwed tonight.

She hadn't seen Percy since this morning, as he'd disappeared ever after. Sylvie knew she'd left first, but she'd gone back to meadow to continue talking with her friends, and Percy and Grover were gone. She sort of wished Percy was here with her now—he was so much better at everything that maybe he would've been able to train Cedar.

"Cedar, please," Sylvie begged half-heartedly. "At least learn how to put the armor on."

"Why do we need to be so violent all the time? I don't want to fight."

Sylvie snorted before she could stop herself. He said that now, but let's see what happened to that mindset when this cruel lifestyle aged him. It wasn't that Sylvie found it funny—it was actually incredibly sad and unfortunately too real—but she just found herself entertained by most things Cedar said/did.

"Okay, pacifist," Sylvie threw her arms up tiredly. "I give up."

It's not like she was actually the Demeter cabin's leader—it was only temporary until Eurydice came back. Sylvie was always a follower, so she was really struggling with having to parent her younger siblings. The thought of being in charge of other people made Sylvie anxious; she could barely keep an account of her own life.

But she did, in fact, lie. Sylvie didn't give up, and instead actually kept trying to keep Miranda and Cedar in line.

By the time the sun went down, Sylvie could proudly say she made some success. She got Miranda to stop distracting Cedar, and she taught Cedar how to properly put on armor. This part was a little bit harder, but she managed to put a shield and sword in his hands, too. He still declared he wouldn't be using the weapon, but him holding it was progress enough for Sylvie.

Even if she wanted to give him sword-fighting lessons (she didn't), she wouldn't have had the time to. The conch horn was blown to signal it was dinner time, so she, Miranda, and Cedar got a move on.

After dinner, Sylvie was now 74% sure she and her siblings wouldn't get killed—which was much better than earlier's 48%. She knew that was low bar, but with capture the flag, Sylvie never got her hopes high.

It was going to be a small game: only twentyish Hunters, including Bianca di Angelo, and about the same number of campers.

Zoë Nightshade looked pretty upset. She kept glancing resentfully at Chiron, like she couldn't believe he was making her do this. The other Hunters didn't look too happy, either. Unlike last night, they weren't laughing or joking around. They just huddled together in the dining pavilion, whispering nervously to each other as they strapped on their armor. Some of them even looked like they'd been crying. Sylvie guessed Zoë had told them about her nightmare.

On the campers' team, they had Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, Castor and Pollux (Florian's best friends) from the Dionysus cabin, a few from the Ares cabin, the Stoll brothers and Nico di Angelo from Hermes cabin, Sylvie and her two siblings, a couple Apollo kids, and a couple Aphrodite kids. The Aphrodite cabin had always been here and there about capture the flag—it depended on the day if they put their (pun intended) heart into the game—but right now, they were raring to go.

"I'll show them 'love is worthless,'" Silena Beauregard (head of the Aphrodite cabin) grumbled as she strapped on her armor. "I'll pulverize them!"

That left Percy and Thalia.

"I'll take the offense," Thalia volunteered. "You take defense."

"Oh." Percy hesitated. "Don't you think with your shield and all, you'd be better defense?"

Sylvie had to give it to Percy—Thalia already had Aegis on her arm, and even their own teammates were giving Thalia a wide berth, trying not to cower before the bronze head of Medusa.

"Well, I was thinking it would make better offense," Thalia said. "Besides, you've had more practice at defense."

After a few moments, Percy went against his own will and blurted, "Yeah, no problem."

"Cool." Thalia turned to help some of the campers suit up their armor. Luckily Cedar wasn't one of them—she might've had to strangle the kid if it was. That would've been roughly eight hours gone to waste.

"Do you want to switch to offense?" Sylvie asked Percy, noticing how begrudging he was to the role of defense. "I can take on defense if you want—I mean, I don't know how good I'll be, but you don't seem to want it, so..."

It was times like these Sylvie wished she could glue her mouth shut. She was really astounded with herself—Sylvie genuinely couldn't shut up around Percy Jackson, could she?

Something weird happened this time she rambled, though. Percy jolted around completely at the sound of her voice, but he never did the calming down part when he registered her. Actually, his expression was unreadable. He seemed tense, and Sylvie knew he'd just disagreed with Thalia, but this seemed different. It made her nervous and anxious, and not in the way Percy usually made her feel. In fact, Sylvie felt a little awful.

"Uh—no," Percy responded stiffly, after a much too long silence. "I'll just do defense."

Sylvie fidgeted nervously with her glove, and her stomach was suddenly sick. "Uh... Fishstick? Are you oka—"

Suddenly Cedar St. James and Nico di Angelo ran up to Sylvie and Percy. They had identical, big grins on their faces.

"I finally found Nico!" Cedar declared.

"This is so awesome!" Nico gawked.

Nico's blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and Cedar's breastplate was about six sizes too big. Sylvie thought they looked adorable, but they would probably be offended if she said that aloud.

Then Nico lifted his sword with effort. "Do we get to kill the other team?"

"Well," Sylvie stammered, "no."

Cedar wrinkled his nose. "Thank the gods," he said, trying to heave his shield from behind him, but Sylvie thought it largely resembled a bug stuck on its back trying to flip around. She restrained her amused laughter.

"But the Hunters are immortal, right?" Nico asked.

Percy tensed further at the mentions of the Hunters, but he said, "That's only if they don't fall in battle. Besides—"

"It would be awesome if we just, like, resurrected as soon as we were killed, so we could keep fighting, and—"

"Nico, this is serious," Percy interrupted sternly. "Real swords. These can hurt."

Sylvie was sure now that Percy just had a huge stick up his ass. He was probably having a bad day due to his previous dream. The idea that he wasn't directly upset with her made her feel a little lighter, but Sylvie's anxiety was still telling her otherwise.

All of Sylvie, Percy, and Nico were caught up in a stiff silence. The awkwardness of it all clawed at Sylvie's throat, making her thoroughly uncomfortable—

"I got it!" Cedar cheered.

The three looked his way. Cedar had finally gotten his shield off his back, and hoisted the heavy metal up with a comical grunt. That didn't do anything to wipe off the proud beam on his face. However, he did take note of the previous tense.

"I—I got it," Cedar nodded his chin at the shield. "Uh... Yeah. Sorry."

Sylvie patted the top of Cedar's helmet, and Cedar arched towards the touch like a sunflower reaching towards the sun. "Hey, it's cool." Then, to both Cedar and Nico, "Y'all are gonna do great. We'll have a blast."

"As long as we stay out of Zoë's way," Percy added. He must've realized he needed to chill down, because he put on a lighter tone for the young boys. Though Sylvie could still tell he harbored a growing loathing of the lieutenant.

Chiron's hoof thundered on the pavilion floor.

"Heroes!" he called. "You know the rules! The creek is the boundary line. Blue team—Camp Half-Blood—shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis—red team—shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!"

"Sweet," Nico whispered next to Cedar. "What kind of magic items? Do I get one?"

Sylvie was about to break it to him that he didn't, when Thalia said, "Blue team! Follow me!"

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They set their flag at the top of Zeus's Fist. It's this cluster of boulders in the middle of the west woods that, if you look at it just the right way, looks like a huge fist sticking out of the ground. If you look at it from any other side, it looks like a pile of enormous deer droppings, but Chiron wouldn't let them call the place the Poop Pile, especially after it had been named for Zeus, who doesn't have much of a sense of humor.

Anyway, it was a good place to set the flag. Not a good place for Sylvie, who—as we've mentioned—had fallen straight off it once. The top boulder was twenty feet hall and really hard to climb (yeah, imagine how that felt slipping off the edge), so the flag was clearly visible, like the rules said it had to be, and it didn't matter that the guards weren't allowed to stand within ten yards of it.

Nico was set on guard duty with Beckendorf and the Still brothers, but once Cedar heard guard duty was an option, he'd forced himself to tag along too. The dude was running with the role of pacifist until he couldn't any longer.

"We'll send out a decoy team to the left," Thalia told the team. "Silena, you lead that."

"Got it!"

"Take Sylvie, Laurel, and Jackson. Make a wide arc around the Hunters, attract as many as you can. I'll take the main raiding party around to the right and catch them by surprise."

Everybody nodded. It sounded good, and Thalia said it with such confidence you couldn't help but believe it would work.

Thalia looked to her side. "Anything to add, Percy?"

"Um, yeah. Keep sharp on defense. We've got five guards, three scouts. That's not much for a big forest. I'll be roving. Yell if you need help."

"And don't leave your post!" Thalia said.

"Unless you see a golden opportunity," Percy added.

Thalia scowled. "Just don't leave your post."

"Right, unless—"

"Percy!" She touched his arm and shocked him.

Percy winced in pain at the power she put into it. Everybody gave static shocks in the winter, but when Thalia did, it hurt. It's probably because her dad was the god of lightning. She'd been known to fry off people's eyebrows.

"Sorry," Thalia said, though she didn't sound particularly sorry. "Now, is everybody clear?"

Everybody nodded. They broke into their smaller groups. The horn sounded, and the game began.

Sylvie, Silena, Laurel, and Jackson disappeared into the woods on the left. Sylvie wasn't going to lie—she was uncomfortable, as she'd never spoken to any of these people in her lives. She was horrible around new people. The only person Sylvie slightly had a connection to, was Silena, because Mickey talked about her big sister all the time. Mickey looked up to her just as Sylvie did for Eurydice.

"Okay, we need to get their attention," Silena suddenly turned to face her scouts. "Anyone have any ideas?"

Sylvie didn't know why, or what compelled her, but for some reason, she spoke up. "Uh—I may be able to pull something off."

The three in Sylvie's group looked at her.

"Can you do it without messing up?" Jackson asked.

"I can try it on you first if you'd like," Sylvie said, accent particularly more southern.

Silena's eyes widened at the obvious threat, and she stepped in.

"Okay! Sylvie will grab their attention," she said. "And we follow Thalia's orders—Make an arc around the Hunters, and when they start after us, run that way," she pointed over to a clearing far away from both teams' sides.

So they did just that.

The group of four ventured to where the Hunters were posted up. There were a good bit of them, all heavily armed—it made Sylvie really nervous and suddenly unsure about her abilities. But then she remembered Jackson's lack of faith in her, and realized Sylvie had to swallow her timidity just out of spite.

Sylvie, Silena, Laurel, and Jackson all made an arc. Sylvie's teammates' heads turned to her, waiting for what Sylvie had planned. She suddenly kneeled on the ground, placing both of her hands past the snow to touch the dirt. Sylvie took a deep breath in, closed her eyes, let a deep breath out, then opened them.

The ground started to shake.

Not a lot—barely even—but the dirt beneath their feet quivered enough to catch the attention of the Hunters. From where Sylvie crouched to the hoard of Hunters, the grass grew through the snow, averting their eyesight to Sylvie. It wasn't much, but it was something. The next thing Sylvie knew, five Hunters instantly broke off to chase after Sylvie, Silena, Laurel, and Jackson.

They started running.

Sylvie felt a little giddy as she sprinted, even though she was literally being chased and shot at with arrows. Her hands were dirty and wet, and she was wearing a slightly dazed, deliriously happy expression.

Silena started to laugh. "Try to look like you knew it would work."

They ran through the designated clearing, still followed by the five Hunters, leading them deep into the woods and away from Thalia. For a long, long, long time, it was just dashing and dodging arrows—they were going to follow Thalia's orders so her plan worked. The group of four didn't stop.

Well, technically they did stop. But it was only when they heard:

"PERCY!" Thalia's voice, no doubt. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

The five Hunters perked up at this. It was in that exact moment they realized Silena and her scouts were a decoy group. They turned fluidly and ran toward where Thalia's voice came from.

"Shit!" Laurel cursed, panting in and out from all the running.

Needless to say, Sylvie and them started running towards Thalia, too.

By the time Sylvie, Silena, Laurel, and Jackson got there, it was hopeless. They ended up coming out of the forest, making it over to the creek that divided the teams' sides.

It happened too fast.

Out of nowhere, Zoë zipped past like a cheetah, dodging campers with no trouble. And she had their flag in her hands.

"No!" Percy yelled, and poured on the speed.

He was two feet from the water when Zoë bolted across to her own side, slamming into Percy for good measure. The Hunters cheered as both sides converged on the creek. Chiron appeared out of the woods, looking grim. He had the Stoll brothers on his back, and it looked as if both of them had taken some nasty whacks to the head. Connor Stoll had two arrows sticking out of his helmet like antennae.

"Hunters win!" Chiron announced without pleasure. Then he muttered, "For the fifty-sixth time in a row."

"PERSEUS JACKSON!" Thalia yelled, storming toward him. 

She was so mad that blue sparks flickered on her armor. Everybody cringed and backed up because of Aegis, including Sylvie. She had no clue how Percy didn't cower.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE GODS WERE YOU THINKING?" she bellowed.

Percy balled his fists. "I got the flag, Thalia!" And that was true, so he shook it in her face. "I saw a chance and I took it!"

"I WAS AT THEIR BASE!" Thalia yelled. "But the flag was gone! If you hadn't butted in, we would've won!"

"You had too many on you!"

"Oh, so it's my fault?!"

"I didn't say that."

"Fuck you!" Thalia pushed Percy, and she shocked him so bad that he was blown backward ten feet into the water. Sylvie gasped, one of her hands covering her mouth in shock. She wasn't the only one, either. She even heard a couple of Hunters stifle laughs.

"Sorry!" Thalia said, turning pale. "I didn't mean to—"

He fumed vehemently. A wave erupted from the creek, blasting into Thalia's face and dousing her from head to toe.

Percy stood up. "Yeah," he growled. "I didn't mean to, either."

Thalia was breathing heavily.

"Enough!" Chiron ordered.

But Thalia held out her spear. "You want some, Fishstick?"

Somehow, Percy looked like that only made him a million times angrier. His face was absolutely nothing similar to how he reacted when Sylvie called him that.

"Bring it on, Pinecone Face!"

He raised Riptide, and Sylvie got nervous. She protested, "Guys, maybe you should just sto—"

Thalia yelled, and a blast of lightning came down from the sky, hit her spear like a lightning rod, and slammed into Percy's chest. Percy sat down hard, and now his clothes were burning.

"Drag him!" Phoenix called from the crowd.

"Thalia!" Chiron said. "That is enough!"

Percy got to his feet and willed the entire creek to rise. It swirled up, hundreds of gallons of water in a massive icy funnel cloud. Sylvie's eyes were wide in awe.

"Percy!" Chiron pleaded.

Maybe Chiron actually got through to Percy, because suddenly, he lost his anger and concentration all at once. The water splashed into the creekbed. Everyone was so surprised that they turned to see what he was looking at.

Someone... Something was approaching. It was shrouded in a murky green mist, but as it got closer, the campers and Hunters gasped.

"This is impossible," Chiron said. Sylvie had never heard him sound so nervous. "It... She has never left the attic. Never."

And yet, the withered mummy that held the Oracle shuffled forward until she stood in the center of the group. Mist circled around their feet, turning the snow a sickly shade of green.

None of them dared move. Then her voice hissed inside Sylvie's head. Apparently everyone could hear it, because several clutched their hands over their ears.

I am the spirit of Delphi, the voice said. Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python.

The Oracle turned unmistakably toward Zoë Nightshade with cold, dead eyes.

Approach, Seeker, and ask.

Zoë swallowed. "What must I do to help my goddess?"

The Oracle's mouth opened, and green mist poured out. Sylvie saw the vague image of a mountain, and a girl standing at the barren peak. It was Artemis, but she was wrapped in chains, fettered to the rocks. She was kneeling, her hands raised as if to fend off an attacker, and it looked like she was in pain. The Oracle spoke:

Six shall go west to the goddess in chains,
One shall be lost in the land without rain,
The bane of Olympus shows the trail,
Campers and Hunters combined prevail,
The child of grain will feel heartbreak's blow,
Idolatry shattered in what it takes to know,
The Titan's curse must one withstand,
And one shall perish by a parent's hand.

Then, as they were watching, the mist swirled and retreated like a great green serpent into the mummy's mouth. The Oracle sat down on a rock and became as still as she'd been in her attic, as if she might sit by this creek for a hundred years.

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BAILEY YAPS...

Ummmm

Lalalala I can't hear you guys lalalalala !!! :P

Anywho title felt fitting because Sylvie is lowk in her era and Also something crawled up Percy's ass and died in ttc Like i know he went into his cabin and cried while listening to the brat album after Grover gave him Sylvie's pamphlet

AND his ass got ate up in every page of this chapter like Stand tf uppp ur gf is watching

The CedarNico friendshipism potential is there... if you just have the eyes to see it... Imagine with me

"I can try it on you first if you'd like" Sylvie don't gag him like that omg...

Python mention At this point I'm an aquamcnti fanpage

Ok now I'm abt to go dodge bullets in my bunker after posting this prophecy love you all xx