The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 23

Camping with Rosaline wasn't exactly what he expected.

But this time, it was a good thing.

It took three things: a fear of camping in a dense, dark forest; a dense, dark forest to camp in; and a Rosaline that wanted to camp in a dense, dark forest.

Of course, the Rosaline one would need had to be the original Rosaline; the energetic, happy, reckless Rosaline that had no right to have enough power to defeat multiple primordials.

"Here we are!" Rosaline said happily and stopped walking. "Do you like it?"

"If you told me earlier that this was your definition of 'camping,' I would've run into the forest with joy," Percy said sarcastically. It only took a quick glance at Psi and Adriana to confirm that they too were appalled.

 They'd been walking for what seemed like hours, and Percy didn't even faintly know what direction the village was in, but it had to be about five miles away from them. Their "camping spot" was in the middle of nowhere, and there were so many branches and leaves and shrubbery poking him and violating his personal space and covering his vision that even with a minute of furiously chopping all the underbrush he could with Riptide, there was still not enough room to turn around without touching any leaves—which, with experience, he noticed was very annoying. There would be more room to sleep in a storage closet full of supplies than in the wild forest.

In fact, he would rather sleep in mud than inside this nightmarish forest. At least mud has water in it.

Rosaline, in general, was an excellent leader and a very trustworthy friend. She would make sure everybody was as happy as they could be as the circumstance allowed, and if they weren't she would try as hard as she could to fix it. She was easily the most down-to-earth and friendliest immortal he had ever known and she had all the personality quirks that most people dreamed to have.

Except one.

When she was energetic, hyper, and happier-than-normal, she acted like a two-year-old girl that was hopped up on ice cream, which roughly translated to bad decision-making. At these times, Percy often wondered if Rosaline's alternative personality—like the Greek gods' Roman side, or the primordials' bad side—was that of an immature girl. Anything could happen when Rosaline acted like this.

And she was acting like a two-year-old girl that was hopped up on ice cream right now. Which was worrying to Percy, to say the least.

Since it probably meant sleeping in the dense forest where if one sat down for a few minutes, there would be bugs crawling on one an actual possibility.

Rosaline laughed, as though he was a three-year-old who wasn't understanding something. "Oh, you silly. We're not sleeping here!"

Percy took an appraising glance around; he could only see green. "Please enlighten me, then. Where are we going to set up camp? On top of the trees?"

"We're going to live in style, of course!" she snapped her fingers.

"Oh," was what came out of Percy's mouth in a surprised squeak as his surroundings changed in a rapid manner. He appeared to have also voiced out Psi and Adriana's thoughts as well.

In a matter of seconds, a huge chunk of forest around them had been cleared of trees, shrubbery, and anything green or alive. In its place remained a square of dirt that was two miles square. It was a blank slate and gigantic dead trees began to topple onto the empty space as their fellow trees that had supported them had vanished. 

But Rosaline wasn't done yet. While Percy, Adriana, and Psi were watching, bricks and other building materials appeared out of thin air and slowly began to construct something as though they were possessed.

"Invisible wind spirits," Rosaline explained when Percy looked at her in awe when he realized that the thing being built was a house. "They insisted that they owed me a favor for helping them, even though I didn't want anything. I wasn't going to ask for their help since I could make one immediately, but I figured that this would be a perfect chance for me to get them off my back. Plus, it gives me an opportunity to make you all think you're going crazy."

"It worked," Adriana admitted. "Seeing a house being built in front of you seemingly with magic does that to you."

Five minutes later, a sturdy cottage stood proudly in front of them, easily one of the most beautiful things Percy had seen. It was quaint and was made out of bricks and windows. Light was streaming from inside, indicating that it had electricity, while also highlighting the spacious interior, which had modern furniture and sprawling roofs. In the real world, it probably would've cost a lot. 

All the extra bricks and masonry vanished, making it seem as though the cottage had been there all along, untouched by nature.

"Race you inside!" Rosaline exclaimed and suddenly took off towards the cottage.

Maybe immature Rosaline isn't that bad, Percy thought, shaking his head in mock exasperation with a smile on his face as Rosaline and Psi didn't take the bait like him, and watched Rosaline run inside before calmly following Percy to the house. 

***

The cottage was bigger than he expected.

Then again, even a foot of space between two trees inside this forest was surprising.

They had entered a foyer, which had sparse furniture and an exquisite view of the forest—which looked beautiful when Percy was inside a man-made building with all the space he could get. He followed Adriana into a spacious kitchen, which also had a sprawling view of the outside green.

Rosaline was sitting at the breakfast bar, calmly eating an apple with a fruit bowl in front of her.

Psi, Adriana, and Psi immediately grabbed as much fruit as they could carry. Percy took a bite out of a green apple and sighed as the sour fruit's juice glided over his parched tongue, hydrating it again.

Meanwhile, Rosaline looked at all of this with an amused smile on her face. However, it fell off when Psi started to walk out of the room. "Where are you going?" she asked him curiously.

Psi stopped and looked at her. Strangely, even though his hood was ripped and torn in multiple places, he still refused to take it off. "To sleep," he said in a tone that indicated that it should've been obvious. "I'm exhausted."

Percy groaned when he saw the exasperation on her face. "We're not done yet, are we?"

"Did you think this was a vacation?" A bright smile once again appeared on her face, like always when she seemed to make Percy suffer more. "We have work to do."