( STEPHANIE PHẠM )

⤹⋆⸙͎۪۫｡˚۰˚☽˚⁀➷｡˚⸙͎۪۫⋆ ༄

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:"𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐀, 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐔𝐄?" heracles asked the girl well rolling his eyes, her body being draped across the kline in the courtyard of his oikos. she and lityerses had gotten into an arguement and not being in the mood to be around her lover she instead decided to visit her bestfriend.

"it won't end well for either of you, and i refuse to have to pick sides" she protested as she avoided his jealous green eyes. heracles had never been fond of the relationship between the two and with the most recent harvesting contests coming up he had great excuse to fight the boy.

heracles approached the girl carefully well dropping to one knee besides her "you wont have to pick sides if either if he wins" he reminded her well picking up her hand and holding it in his own.

"don't remind me" she coughed out pathetically. her lover was a murderer, a good one at that. lityerses had killed more people than zeus had kids, it was an unsettling feeling but aretha was in love and love made everyone blind.

as heracles stared in the green eyes of his bestfriend, he was reminded of every reason he wanted to fight lityerses. her eyes, those eyes fucked him forever. she had been spoken for though, and heracles would've never risked the reputation of himself or aretha for a pathetic maybe

"it will be a fight which does not have to end in a blood bath. let me prove it to you" aretha should've known that wherever lityerses were, death followed. he was as she knew him "the reaper of men", but as heracles held her hand in the open courtyard of his home she believed her bestfriend.

never in a million years would she have thought she'd end up losing her lover and bestfriend all within the same week.

"𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧?" 𝐣𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝. "what happened?"

lit shrugged. "few days ago? i didn't get to kill them, unfortunately. they were looking for some evil wolves, or something. said they were following a trail, heading west. missing demigod-I don't recall."

stephanie's brain instantly went to percy jackson. annabeth had mentioned the hunters were looking for him. 

midas scratched his donkey ears. "very unpleasant young ladies, those hunters," he recalled. "they absolutely refused to be turned into gold. much of the security system outside I installed to keep that sort of thing from happening again, you know. i don't have time for those who aren't serious investors."

stephanie's chest tightening realising the situation they'd just gotten themselves into. feeling jason squeeze her knee she shared a weary glance with him and their friends.

"well ," piper said, managing a false smile. "it's been a great visit. welcome back to life. thanks for the gold bag."

"oh , but you can't leave!" midas said. "i know you're not serious investors, but that's all right! i have to rebuild my collection."

lit was smiling cruelly in jasons direction. the king rose, and leo and piper moved away from him.

"don't worry," the king assured them. "you don't have to be turned to gold. i give all my guests a choice-join my collection, or die at the hands of lityerses. really, it's good either way."

piper tried to use her charm speak. "your Majesty, you can't-"

quicker than any old man should've been able to move, midas lashed out and grabbed her wrist.

"wait!" stephanie yelled as she shot up from her seat. but a frost of gold spread over piper , and in a heartbeat she was a glittering statue. leo tried to summon fire, but he'd forgotten his power wasn't working. midas touched his hand, and leo transformed into solid metal.

"what have you done?" she yelled out as she began to back away from the man and lityerses, however deep down she knew she wouldn't be in trouble. call it a gut feeling.

jason was so horrified he couldn't move. his friends-just gone and stephanie about to join them. and he hadn't been able to stop it.

midas smiled apologetically. "gold trumps fire, I'm afraid." he waved around him at all the gold curtains and furniture. "in this room, my power dampens all others: fire even charm speak. which leaves me only one more trophy to collect."

midas only smiled psychotically at stephanie well extending a hand towards her "aretha my dear, you'll return to lit" he offered, leaving no room for arguing.

"no!" jason yelled out in protest as she joined stephanie's side "hedge!" jason yelled. need help in here!"

for once, the satyr didn't charge in. jason wondered if the lasers had gotten him, or if he was sitting at the bottom of a trap pit. midas chuckled. "no goat to the rescue? sad. but don't worry, my boy. It's really not painful. lit can tell you."

jason fixed on an idea quickly "i choose combat. you said I could choose to fight lit instead."

midas looked mildly disappointed, but he shrugged. "i said you could die fighting lit . but of course, if you wish."

stephanie turned to look at jason horrified before grabbing his wrist and pulling him so he was facing her "are you insane?" the look on her face didn't bring any confidence towards jason surrounding his plan.

"wow great encouragement, steph" the boy said as he quickly turned to look at lit raising his sword. the girl shook her head quickly well pulling his face towards her with her nimble hands.

"lit is skilled beyond imagine, i would know" she tried explaining, memories of all his past battles flashing past her "don't die" she told him sternly, as if it were an order.

"no good luck kiss?" he asked with a small smirk trying to cover the fear and anxiety which was rising in him, mainly from being so bold.

instead of offering the boy what he asked she instead slapped him around the head "i mean it" she repeated with more urgency in her voice this time round, jason let his eyes meet hers and could see the true worry and concern she displayed.

he offered her a nod before walking away from her, not wanting any casualties.

"i'm going to enjoy this," lit said. "i am the reaper of men!" his words making stephanie scoff.

"come on, cornhusker." jason summoned his own weapon. this time it came up as a javelin, and jason was glad for the extra length.

"oh, gold weapon!" midas said. "very nice."

lit charged at jason, he was just as fast as stephanie remembered. he slashed and sliced, and jason could barely dodge the strikes, but his mind went into a different mode-analysing patterns, learning lit's style, which was all offense, no defense. jason countered, sidestepped, and blocked. lit seemed surprised to find him still alive.

"what is that style?" lit growled. "you don't fight like a greek ." because he's not, stephanie wanted to say

"legion training," jason said, though he wasn't sure how he knew that. "it's roman."

"roman?" lit struck again, and jason deflected his blade. "what is roman?"

"news flash," jason said. "while you were dead, rome defeated greece. created the greatest empire of all time."

"impossible," lit said. "never even heard of them." stephanie knew all about the romans, she had been around when they defeated greece. stephanie had seen it all happen, the fall of the greek gods, the destruction of pompeii. she'd been around for it all.

jason spun on one heel, smacked lit in the chest with the butt of his javelin, and sent him toppling into midas' throne.

"oh , dear," midas said. "lit?" his real fatherly concern making an appearance.

"i'm fine," lit growled.

"you should help him up," stephanie suggested quickly, the consequences only being a minor thought.

lit cried out in betrayal, "dad, no!" too late. midas put his hand on his son's shoulder, and suddenly a very angry-looking gold statue was sitting on midas' throne.

"curses!" midas wailed. "that was a naughty trick, aretha . i'll get you for that." he patted lit's golden shoulder. "don't worry, son. i'll get you down to the river right after I collect this prize."

midas raced forward. jason dodged, but the old man was fast, too. jason kicked the coffee table into the old man's legs and knocked him over, but midas wouldn't stay down for long.

then jason glanced at piper and leo's golden statues. anger washed over him. he was the son of zeus. he could not fail his friends. he felt a tugging sensation in his gut, and the air pressure dropped so rapidly that his ears popped. midas must've felt it too, because he stumbled to his feet and grabbed his donkey ears.

"ow! what are you doing?" he demanded. "my power is supreme here!" thunder rumbled. outside, the sky turned black.

"you know another good use for gold?" jason said.

midas raised his eyebrows, suddenly excited. "yes?"

"it's an excellent conductor of electricity. steph get down!"

jason raised his javelin, and the ceiling exploded. a lightning bolt ripped through the roof like it was an eggshell, connected with the tip of jason spear, and sent out arcs of energy that blasted the sofas to shreds. chunks of ceiling plaster crashed down. the chandelier groaned and snapped off its chain, and midas screamed as it pinned him to the floor. the glass immediately turned into gold.

when the rumbling stopped, freezing rain poured into the building. midas cursed in Ancient greek, thoroughly pinned under his chandelier. the rain soaked everything, turning the gold chandelier back to glass. piper and leo were slowly changing too, along with the other statues in the room.

then the front door burst open, and coach hedge charged in, club ready. his mouth was covered with dirt, snow, and grass.

jason rushed to stephanie's side, helping the girl stand "are you alright?" he asked well checking her over for any lighting strikes or cuts from the shattered glass

"what'd I miss?" coach hedge asked.

"where were you?" jason demanded. his head was spinning from summoning the lightning bolt, and it was all he could do to keep from passing out. "we were screaming for help."

hedge belched. "getting a snack. sorry. who needs killing?"

"no one, now!" jason said. "just grab leo . we'll get piper."

"don't leave me like this!" midas wailed.

all around him the statues of his victims were turning to flesh-his daughter, his barber, and a whole lot of angry-looking guys with swords. stephanie grabbed piper's golden bag and jasons supplies well jason threw a rug over the golden statue of lit on the throne. 

"let's get out of here," jason told Hedge well picking up piper. "i think these guys will want some quality time with midas."

𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐱. pipers teeth had been chattering lowly for a few minutes and the girl wasn't even awake!

"oh, god." the native american girls teeth chattered. "he turned me to gold!"

"you're okay now." jason leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around her, but she still felt as cold as a boread. the interaction between the two causing stephanie to turn away.

the five of them sat next to a campfire blazed, turning the air sharp with smoke. firelight flickered against rock walls. they were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. outside, the wind howled. snow blew sideways. it might've been day or night. the storm made it too dark to tell.

"l-l-leo?" piper managed to ask, the hispanic boy next to stephanie looking towards her.

"present and un-gold-ified." leo was also wrapped in blankets. he didn't look great, but better than piper felt. "i got the precious metal treatment too," he said. "but I came out of it faster. dunno why. w had to dunk you in the river to get you back completely. tried to dry you off, but it's really, really cold."

"it's because you have fire running through your veins" stephanie pointed out as she turned to look at the hispanic boy who basically emitted heat to her.

"you've got hypothermia," jason said to piper "we risked as much nectar as we could. coach hedge did a little nature magic-"

"sports medicine." the coach's ugly face loomed over her. "kind of a hobby of mine. your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. you probably won't die. probably."

"thanks," piper said weakly. "how did you beat midas?"

jason told her the story, putting most of it down to luck well stephanie would interrupt with extra details. the coach snorted. "kid's being modest. you should've seen him . hi-yah! slice! boom with the lightning!"

"you didn't even see it hedge," stephanie said resentfully "you were outside eating the lawn."

but the satyr was just warming up. "then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. afterward, I told him, 'kid , I'm proud of you! if you could just work on your upper body strength-'"

"coach!," stephanie yelled in annoyance .

"yeah?" the satyr questioned pausing mid-air somehow.

"shut up." she grunted, the obvious 360 in her mood obvious to all of the demigods, leo and jason sharing a questioning look not knowing what happened.

"sure ." the coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.

jason put his hand on piper's forehead and checked her temperature. "leo , can you stoke the fire?"

"on it." leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.

"do I look that bad?" piper shivered. stephanie mocking the girl in her own head as she stared at the boy who supposedly "liked" her and piper mcclean, the girl he always ended up with.

"nah," jason said sending her a small smile.

"you're a terrible liar," she said. "where are we?"

"pikes peak," jason said. "colorado."

"but that's, what-five hundred miles from omaha?"

"something like that," jason agreed. "i harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. they didn't like it-went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. i'm not going to be trying that again."

"why are we here?" the girl asked as stephanie stayed silent.

leo sniffed. "that's what I asked him.

jason gazed into the storm as if watching for something. "that glittery wind trail we saw yesterday? it was still in the sky, though it had faded a lot. I followed it until I couldn't see it anymore. then-honestly I'm not sure. i just felt like this was the right place to stop."

"'course it is." coach hedge spit out some cudgel splinters. "aeolus's floating palace should be anchored above us, right at the peak. this is one of his favourite spots to dock."

"maybe that was it." jason knit his eyebrows. "i don't know. something else, too"

"the hunters should've been heading west," stephanie remembered as she felt her leg begin to shake from the cold, her arms wrapping around herself. "do you think they're around here?"

jason rubbed his forearm as if the tattoos were bothering him. "i don't see how anyone could survive on the mountain right now. the storm's pretty bad. it's already the evening before the solstice, but we didn't have much choice except to wait out the storm here. we had to give you some time to rest before we tried moving."

"let's just stay here for the night" stephanie sniffled as she felt her lips go dry, the dampness of the leather jacket against her skin being rough. she removed the jacket quickly before kneeling closer to the fire.

"we have to get you warm." jason sat next to her and held out his arms a little awkwardly. "uh, you mind if i?"

"i don't like you right now." the asian girl whispered as she scooted closer to the boy, her words confusing him. coach hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire.

leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet. "so, guys, long as you're cuddled up for story time i've got something i've been meaning to tell you. on the way to omaha, i had this dream. kind of hard to understand with the static and the wheel of fortune breaking in-

"wheel of fortune?" piper assumed leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.

"the thing is," he said, "my dad hephaestus talked to me."

leo told them about his dream. in the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. "i don't understand. if demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? if they need us-"

"ha," said coach hedge. "the gods hate needing humans. they like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. things will have to get a whole lot worse before zeus admits he made a mistake closing olympus."

"coach ," piper said, "that was almost an intelligent comment."

hedge huffed. "what? I'm intelligent! I'm not surprised you cupcakes haven't heard of the giant war . the gods don't like to talk about it. bad pr to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. that's just embarrassing."

"the gods have always been like that, since the beginning of time. they would rather give up olympus than admit they were wrong" stephanie explained to the group, feeling the warmth of jasons body besides hers not being enough to stop the coldness seeping around her heart.

"there's more, though," jason said. "when i dreamed about hera in her cage, she said zeus was acting unusually paranoid. and hera-she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. what if someone's influencing the gods, like medea influenced us?"

leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. "yeah, hephaestus said something similar, like zeus was acting weirder than usual. but what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn't say. like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. i don't know. he acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible-like hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret hephaestus wasn't supposed to tell me."

"chiron, was the same way back at camp," he said. "he mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss-something. coach , you know anything about that?"

"nah. i'm just a satyr. they don't tell us the juicy stuff. especially an old-" he stopped himself.

"an old guy like you?" piper asked. "but you're not that old, are you?"

"hundred and six," the coach muttered.

leo coughed. "say what?"

"don't catch your panties on fire, valdez. that's just fifty-three in human years. still, yeah, I made some enemies on the council of cloven elders. i've been a protector a long-time. but they started saying I was getting unpredictable. too violent. can you imagine?"

stephanie wondered how old she was. or how old her soul was. if she'd been around since jason and the golden fleece she assumed she'd lived a good enough life. the thought of death not scaring her as much anymore.

"wow ." piper tried not to look at her friends. "that's hard to believe."

coach scowled. "yeah , then finally we get a good war going with the titans, and do they put me on the front lines? no! they send me as far away as possible-the canadian frontier, can you believe it? then after the war, they put me out to pasture. the wilderness school. bah! like I'm too old to be helpful just because I like playing offense. all those flower-pickers on the council-talking about nature."

"i thought satyrs liked nature," piper ventured.

"shoot, i love nature," hedge said. "nature means big things killing and eating little things! And when you're a -you know-vertically challenged satyr like me, you get in good shape, you carry a big stick, and you don't take nothing from no one! that's nature." hedge snorted indignantly. "flower-pickers. anyway, I hope you got something vegetarian cooking, valdez. I don't do flesh."

"yeah , coach. don't eat your cudgel. i got some tofu patties here. piper's a vegetarian too. i'll throw them on in a second."

stephanie settled against jasons chest as the boy pulled her closer, his hands squeezing her arm as she settled her head in the crook of his neck. he smelt like burnt plastic and dirt, it was oddly comforting.

leo put tofu patties on the skillet. the wind kept raging. piper thought of an old story her dad had told her, one that maybe did answer some of her questions. gradually, she also started to feel warmer. leo handed out the food. 

piper didn't want to move, talk, or do anything to disrupt the moment. but she had to, her dad was in danger and she had to save him.

"i don't want to hide anything from you guys anymore." she sat up so she could face her friends. "we need to talk."