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chapter twenty-three. ☄︎. *. ⋆
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I WAS ELBOW-DEEP in kitchen grease when Percy told us about his dream.
Now, I need you to understand I'm not one to go out seeking oily places to stick my arms in. This chore so happened to be forced upon me and my friends by Tantalus as an unfair punishment for "annoying him with our presences." He sentenced us to kitchen patrol, which added fuel to my already flaming hatred towards him, because it meant we would have to help with the cleaning harpies. I might hate them a little more than I hate Tantalus and Mr. D, and that was saying something.
The harpies ordered us to wash dirty dishes with lava instead of water to kill ninety-nine percent of germs and get that extra squeaky cleanliness, so Annabeth, Percy, and I had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.
The lava didn't bother Tyson at all; he plunged his bare hands in and started scrubbing. The rest of us had to suffer through hours of hot, dangerous work, including emptying out the pots the harpies had used to fry... well, I'm not sure what exactly they fried, but the pot was filled to the brim with gallons of fatty grease. To make matters worse, when I'd tried to dump it out, the harpies shrieked and told me I had to scrub the inside down first to not waste materials. I didn't even begin to understand their thought process there, but in fear of getting my face scratched off, I had to dunk my hand into about four gallons of mystery fat.
Once the harpies dashed off to go punish someone for littering, Percy took his chance and told us all about the super-realistic dream of Grover he had had. Annabeth and I were skeptical of its legitimacy at first, but then Percy mentioned something about an empathy link, and my eyes just about popped out of my head.
"An empathy link?" I repeated, pausing my scrubbing halfheartedly at an old frying pan. "Those are... well, they can be super helpful, but if Grover—"
"—if Grover dies, I die," Percy confirmed, nodding. "He told me it was probably our best bet to save him before he died and took me with him."
"Well, where is he?" I asked.
"He said he's at the Sea of Monsters."
Annabeth gasped. "I've read about that!" she exclaimed. "It's super dangerous for sailors and demigods, but not many people really know where it is."
"Helpful," I threw in.
"What else did Grover say?" Annabeth asked.
"He said he's found 'it'," Percy said, shrugging. "I'm not sure what it is. I tried to ask, but all he could tell me was that whatever's keeping him there is drawing in satyrs from all over the world with it, then trapping and eating them."
