The Son of Death (Percy Jackson x Male Reader)

We Storm The Castle

YN POV

I walked back over to Percy, Hazel, and Frank as the horn blew at the end of the hall.  The officers at the praetor's table got to their feet, even Dakota, his mouth vampire red from Kool-Aid.

Reyna: The games begin!

The campers cheered and rushed to collect their equipment from the stacks along the walls.  I tightened my ring.  It was my engagement ring.  Sarah had Lucas make it for me.  It was also a magic item, that let me contact her in my thoughts whenever I wanted to.  I didn't have to worry about losing it, because it would always reappear on my finger if it falls off.

Percy: So we're the attacking team?  Is that good?

Hazel shrugged.

Hazel: Good news is that we get the elephant.  Bad news-

Percy: Let me guess.  The Fifth Cohort always loses.

Frank slapped Percy on the shoulder.

Frank: I love this guy.  Come on, new friend.  Let's go chalk up my thirteenth defeat in a row!

The grass was cropped short by all the unicorns, bulls and homeless fauns that grazed here.  The earth was pitted with explosion craters and scarred with trenches from past games.  At the north end of the field stood their target.  The engineers had built a stone fortress with an iron portcullis, guard towers, scorpion ballistae, water cannons and no doubt many other nasty surprises for the defenders to use.

YN: Huh.  They did a good job today.

Hazel: That's bad for us.

Percy: Wait, you're telling me that fortress was built today?

Hazel: Legionnaires are trained to build.  If we had to, we could break down the entire camp and rebuild it somewhere else.

YN: It'd probably take maybe three or four days, but we could do it.

Percy: Let's not.  So you attack a different fort every night?

Frank: Not every night.  We have different training exercises.  Sometimes deathball... um, which is like paintball, except with... you know, poison and acid and fire balls.

YN: Damn right!  Most fun sport I've ever played.

Frank: Sometimes we do chariots and gladiator competitions, sometimes war games.

Hazel pointed at the fort.

Hazel: Somewhere inside, the First and Second Cohorts are keeping their banners.  Our job is to get inside and capture them without getting slaughtered.  We do that, we win.

Percy's eyes lit up.

Percy: Like capture the flag.  I think I like capture the flag.

I smiled.  He remembers.  I'm definitely gonna have to talk to Sarah tonight.  About what Nico told me at dinner, and to tell her I found Percy.  But according to Nico, I had to tell her not to tell anyone else.  Ugh.  Frank laughed.

Frank: Yeah, well... it's harder than it sounds.  We have to get past those scorpions and water cannons on the walls, fight through the inside of the fortress, find the banners and defeat the guards, all while protecting our own banners and troops from capture.  And our cohort is in competition with the other two attacking cohorts.  We sort of work together, but not really.  The cohort that captures the banners gets all the glory.

Percy stumbled, trying to keep time with the left right marching rhythm.  I sympathized.  I'd spent my first two weeks falling down, and accidentally knocking my comrades over with my wings.