With the Hope of a Swan

Two: World War Three Is Coming To Town

The copious amounts of green fog at the Temple of Apollo made Annabeth panicked enough. What really did it was the smell of rotten eggs. Sulfur. Delphi.

"This is really, really, bad," Percy gasped. "Like, really, really, bad."

"Very bad," agreed Tyson.

"I know." Annabeth gritted her teeth and took a few more cautious steps into the temple of Apollo Optimus Maximus 2.0 (not really, but she'd known Apollo long enough to figure that would be the approximate title). "Ella! What happened?" 

"Ella-friend read paper. Ella-friend read paper. Ella-friend faint." Annabeth could barely make out the fluttering red shape of the harpy through all the fog. 

Percy ran to Rachel's side. Annabeth followed, close on his heels. She was lying in the fetal position, red hair fanning out behind her, the color of dying embers. Annabeth felt frantically for a pulse on her friend's wrist.

"She's breathing. Her heartbeat's strong," she reported, her voice trembling.

Percy stood up. "We've got to get her help, but can we move her?" Annabeth felt a wave of helplessness rise inside her. The basic medic training they received at Camp Half-Blood didn't exactly cover this scenario. She hated- hated- the feeling of not knowing what to do.

Her boyfriend's quick intake of breath jolted her out of it. "Rachel! Rachel!"

The Oracle's eyes glowed green. Annabeth gave a little yelp and jumped back.

"Child of marriage, go forth to look,
For the ones your grandmother took.
Daughters of green, of war
Sons of love, of trickery
Go forth with you to make ancient history.
But you shall rise alone at the end of the day,
And meet your end at the point of a blade."

The green smoke left Rachel's eyes and she collapsed like a rag doll- only to shoot upright a second later.

"The seven shall go to the places of spell,
Where deceit and betrayal follow them well.
The Swan's wingtip shall guide them true,
To the place which Romans rue.
Raise the statue at all cost,
Else win or lose, the camps have lost."

Hazel closed her eyes and sank to the floor. Percy said several colorful things that Annabeth would have hit him for had she not been inclined to say them herself.

In fact, Annabeth had a strong urge to punch the sunny smile off Apollo's plaster face for no reason at all.

"Two weeks!" she yelled. "Two damned weeks. Is that what we get? Is that what I get for being hounded every day since I was seven? For fighting for my life every single day in the last decade?" She knew that "seeing red" was just an expression, but in that moment, her brain was so clouded with fury that Annabeth's vision seemed to blaze scarlet.

Frank awkwardly put a hand on Annabeth's shoulder. "You've got us. We can figure this out together. First things first, though, is Rachel."

The anger was temporarily replaced by fear for her friend's life. "Right," Annabeth said. She tried to get a firm grasp on her emotions; there was no time to be mad now. Every second wasted here was a second that Rachel might never get back. "We need to get a healer from the legion. We need to be calm, for Rachel's sake." We need her to be fine. Too many of their friends had died while she had watched, helpless. Too many lives had been cut short already. Too many shrouds burned.

Rachel couldn't die. Annabeth refused to accept it.

"Okay." Reyna let out a deep breath. Her eyes were hard obsidian and her face was expressionless. Annabeth knew her well enough to know that Reyna was trying too hard to stay strong. "We need to get her down to the MACJ. Frank, can you transport her on your back?"
Frank nodded and, with a grimace, turned back into the dragon.

"Meet us at the aqueducts on the Field of Mars afterwards. I need to address the legion, and I'm sure Camp Half-Blood would want to be informed as well," continued Reyna. "Can we Iris-Message?"

Percy shook his head. "About this? No way. We owe it to them to tell it in person."

Annabeth blew out a breath. "That's settled, then. Let's get moving."

They ended up laying Rachel like a sack of potatoes on Frank's back. Hazel volunteered to ride with her. Annabeth knew it was a bad plan, especially when Rachel was so unstable. But they all were aware (from experience, mostly) that demigods always had to live with bad plans and hope they lived to make more bad plans in the future.

Frank the dragon took off, with Rachel and Hazel on his back. Annabeth was about to ask how they were going to get down to the Field of Mars again when she saw Reyna scanning the scrolls piled in heaps all around them. Something has piqued the daughter of Bellona's interest, and that something was important.

"Tyson, didn't you say she was reading? What if- what if something she read triggered... the prophecy?" The theory seemed far-fetched to Annabeth, but it was the only one they had.

"Yes, yes. Scroll. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Venus. Jupiter. Pluto." Ella fluttered to Reyna's side with a roll of dense Latin characters clutched in her talons.

The praetor skimmed over it, her forehead furrowed, and then passed it to Annabeth. "It's the line second from the bottom. The other lines also seem to be prophecies, but I don't know what they apply to," she murmured.

Annabeth took the delicate sheepskin in her hands, trembling with anxiety. She cursed. Not only did the passage seem incomplete, but it was also written in Latin- a language she was pretty bad at. "Does this say... something about Jupiter? Like the god, or the planet? And it also mentions a third war."

"We don't know that this prophecy applies to our current situation," Reyna said carefully. "But it says that when a certain astronomical occurrence takes place, there will be a Third War. Combined with the other two prophecies your Oracle just issued, oh, Olympus... help us."

Percy was looking over Annabeth's shoulder at the scroll. "What she said. There's going to be another war." The words settled on them all with a striking sense of finality.

"Not for sure," Reyna hedged. Annabeth knew what was going through the Roman praetor's mind. None of them wanted to believe it. "But... yes, most likely."

She sat down heavily, handing the scroll to Percy. It felt like a giant, cosmic, joke. One war, fine. Two wars, curse Olympus. Three wars...

They'd barely survived the last one. Some of them hadn't survived the last one. How much more blood had to be spilled in her lifetime? Beckendorf, from the Titan war, had been about to go to college in the fall. Like her and Percy next year.

Annabeth heard her dad's voice in her head. Three strikes and you're out; a rule every kid learned in elementary school gym class.

Was their strike three?

"Hang on," Percy was reading through the scroll. Great. More bad news. "I had to learn some Latin when I was with Lupa. This looks like- these are old prophecies. You shall go west to the goddess in chains? You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone? There once was a god named Apollo- okay, maybe not the last one, but the first two?"

"Your old prophecies printed in Latin? Or maybe... when they were printed, prophecies telling about a time very, very far in the future!" Reyna jumped up. "I can't believe I didn't see this before. Look at this. Look at this line!"

Annabeth hadn't seen her this agitated since... well, two weeks ago.

"Roma diu vivere. CXXXVII. Long live Rome, AD 137." Reyna started pacing. "AD 137..."

When she finally spoke again, her voice was deadly serious. "Ella, memorize everything on this page. This scroll could be another section of the Sibylline books."