The Nature of a Demigod

Breaking the Rules

[Y/N's POV]

Apparently, the way Tantalus saw it, this whole thing was our fault. Those birds were just minding their own business when Annabeth, Percy, Tyson and I distracted them with our terrible chariot driving. Which is odd, because I wasn't driving. I tried telling him that and was shrugged off.

I told Tantalus to, quote, "go eat a rock. Probably tastes better than the nothing you get to eat."

Even though he looked like he was considering it, it was clear that he didn't like that very much. Then he sentenced us to the worst thing ever invented by human/demigod kind.

Kitchen patrol.

We spent all afternoon and evening scrubbing pots, pans, and other dishware in the kitchen underground with the harpies. I'd never been down here so I obviously had no way of knowing that the harpies cleaned with lava instead of water, which seemed ludicrous (I did not know that word until Annabeth said it the other day, so now I'm using it. Cool? Cool.)

Apparently the lava was to get that 'extra clean sparkle' and 'kill 99.9% of germs.' I don't know how it didn't kill 100% of everything. You'd think growing up in this world would make things make more sense, but no. It's human nature to question stuff.

Annabeth, Percy, and I had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons to even be able to get close to the sinks.

Not Tyson though. Immune to fire and heat and all that. He just dunked his hands straight in and scrubbed away, not a care in the world. The rest of us though, we had to suffer through the hot, dangerous, entire day of work. Tantalus went out of his way to make things harder, having an entire special lunch banquet to celebrate Clarisse 'winning' the first of the reinstated chariot races.

The only good thing about this all, is that Percy was no longer angry with us. He re-told us his dream, and since the competitive juices weren't flowing anymore, it was easier to believe him. He told us about the thing that could save the camp again.

"If he's really found it," she murmured, "and if we could retrieve it"

"Hold on," Percy said. "You act like this... whatever it is Grover found is the only thing in the world that could save the camp. What is it?"

"What do you get when you take the skin off a ram?" I asked him, scraping a particularly large, thick ketchup stain off of a plate.

"Messy?"

"Oh gods." I sighed, going to wipe some sweat off my face, before realizing my hands were covered in lava. "A fleece, Percy. And what did Midas turn things into when he touched them?"

"Gold?"

"Exactly. Put those things together, what do you get?"

His eyes darted around in thought for a while, then widened in shock. "The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?"

Annabeth scraped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. "Percy, remember the Gray Sisters? They said they knew the location of the thing you seek. And they mentioned Jason. Three thousand years ago, they told him how to find the Golden Fleece. You do know the story of Jason and the Argonauts?"

"Yeah," he said. "That old movie with the clay skeletons."

I rolled my eyes so hard I could've sworn the world around me rolled as well. "Even I know better than that Percy! And that's saying something."

I sighed. Annabeth threw a clean sponge at Percy. "Oh my gods, Percy! You are so hopeless."

"What?" he demanded.