Chapter Text
HOW TO BE A HUMAN BEING: Camp Half-Blood
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day six // part two: DIONYSUS
The Oracle of Delphi, Rachel, didn't stay unconscious for long.
After maybe ten seconds, during which Jason Grace got her to stand straight, she opened her eyes, and they weren't filled with that sickly green light anymore. No green smoke, and when she spoke her voice was the one of a normal girl.
"Damnit." She blinked, and Jason Grace gave her more space, letting her find back her balance. "Again?"
Grace shrugged, and at the same time Ellis shouted "Again?" from the other side of the arena, and this made the son of Jupiter smile- even though it looked more like a grimace
Dionysus saw them get closer, and Apollo's eyes brightened as he gazed upon the girl, as pure joy overtook his expression. He probably didn't even care about the prophecy they'd just heard, not when their uncle's curse had been lifted and his Oracle was finally free.
No longer forced to pay for sins she hadn't committed, no longer trapped in a body that grew weaker with every year.
(It was so easy, to feel anger towards Phoebus Apollo, beautiful and perfect and bringer of terrible omens, and even easier to hate his priestesses, virgins devoted to him and to destiny itself.)
Dionysus didn't care much about his uncle, but from that position it was impossible not to see how his eyes burned, fixed on the girl.
Said girl straightened out, and raised her arms in the air to stretch like a particularly big cat, tilting her head first, then her whole upper body.
She lowered her eyes and spat out a few curses that made even Poseidon raise an eyebrow, and lifted her foot off the ground. She tugged at the heel towards her face, to properly look at the dirty sole- covered by dirt and blood. And sand, that had stuck to her open wounds and probably hurt like a bitch.
Jason Grace took off one of his own running shoes and gave it to her, who wore it as she grumbled.
"I get walking a bit, but making me run around shoe-less on rocks for half an hour? And making me wear such shoes?"
The were too large for her and she handled the strap with lots of rage, but Dionysus didn't think they were that bad.
She realized then that everyone was staring at her, and looked them up and down, eyes squinted and hip cocked.
"Oh, sorry. You know how it is."
She'd walked a long distance, because that prophecy was intended for Grace's ears. The words of the son of Ares weren't meaningless. Yet another unknown?
"I'd say we have to go to the Big House now, huh?"
"Why are you even asking, at this point."
"Alright." He offered them a genuinely disappointed half-smile. "I'm sorry, but we have to cut it short today. I'll send in someone else, in the meantime Ellis-"
"What are you babbling, Grace?"
"-can tell you what to… what?"
"I'm pretty sure they have to come too."
She frowned, stared at them, sighed.
"Yes, they really do. There are more of you?"
At their silence she huffed. "So?"
Jason's face had lost all softness and kindness.
"They haven't even been here for a week."
"And what can I do about it?"
Despite her attitude Dionysus saw the way her lips got squeezed in a thin line, as she tried to hide how her eyes got stuck Ares and the twins- or how her eyes dimmed when she saw Dionysus and Hermes.
The frown on her face grew in intensity with every second that passed.
"Come on, I'm gonna force Percy to give my feet a massage."
And for the- third time?- they were led to the Big House, with its healthy plants that were obviously looked after by Dionysus himself (he was proud of his future work) and its always open windows, that let in fresh air and warm light; more than twenty demigods walked in, with all the hurry in the world, to fill the same room where they'd discussed of spies and gods and unkempt vows last time. They said goodbye to the silence that had welcomed them.
But this time they weren't left outside in the living room, to wait and eavesdrop.
The room where the demigods of Camp Half-Blood discussed strategies, prophecies and decided how to act when facing threats (and they'd probably used it a lot in the last years, dealing with titans and giants) was large, and half of it was occupied by a blue foldable ping-pong table, and its net had been almost completely burned by something.
Rolling chairs had been placed all around, Dionysus counted sixteen of them. A sofa covered the entire wall opposite the door, and on top of it more than one closed window, covered with hand-embroidered curtains.
Whoever had embroidered it had talent.
Of course, Dionysus would have preferred representations of flowers, stars, beautiful women and men dancing together, but the unknown weaver seemed to like monsters, because Dionysus could swear that that thing embroidered on one of the curtains was a Fury, her teeth exposed and scarily realistic.
Tall shelves, a fridge, and an hammock that someone had tried (and failed) to hang from the ceiling.
Piper McLean, with those dark eyes that became pure water under the sunlight, was guarding Athena's side with her teeth bared, making it obvious that she would jump the first person who'd try to touch her small protegé. The goddess, all tiny and huge-eyed, didn't even look surprised by her treatment.
The Head of Hephaestus' Cabin sat next to her father, quiet as a mouse, but just as menacing as the daughter of Aphrodite. Dionysus was guided to one of the chairs. They were mainly sent to sit there, while the demigods chose the couch or to just stand up.
A boy tried to get them to stop talking, but he failed, since everyone kept talking to the closest person they could find, with expressions raging from troubled, annoyed and exasperated.
They shot looks at the Oracle, who'd introduced herself during their walk as "Rachel Dare, local fortune teller" unaware of the awe hiding in Apollo's shocked expression, Apollo who loved his priestesses with fervor, like he loved no one else except his divine twin Artemis.
The Oracle sat down next to Poseidon's son, and stretched her legs with a groan over the boy's own, hitting with her feet the knees of the daughter of Athena, Annabeth. The two freed her feet from her shoes, with a confused "Why are you wearing Jason's shoes?" that the Oracle ignored in favor of closing her eyes.
"New prophecy," she said, and the room grew a little quieter, then paused, as if trying to build some more tension. "And I fainted on top of Jason after spilling the beans all over his face."
A boy laughed, a little out of place, and a girl with the same hooked nose and jet black hair did her best to run his stomach into dust with her elbow, and so the laughter turned into coughs.
They had to be Nike's twins, the ones who had a thing with Kara from Cabin Fourteen- there weren't many pairs of twins around.
Dionysus couldn't talk for every demigod at Camp, but his son wasn't there- neither was the son of Apollo, William.
"So… Jason? Again?" Nico Di Angelo furrowed his brows, crossing his arms as his face became weighted down by a silent ind of anger- and Dionysus doubted he was upset because he wanted to be in his cousin's place.
"What do they have to do with it then?" McLean asked, "Why did you take them here?" she pushed. No one asked who she was talking about.
Before Rachel Dare could answer Will Solace walked into the room, sided by a tall girl with the greenest eyes Dionysus had seen in the last two hundred years, and he backed down with widened eyes when the Oracle of Delphi jumped up and sprinted towards him.
They could only see her back, but she was so close to the son of Apollo that the green light coming from her eyes shone on the boy's skin.
"Every soul shall return where it belongs."
She breathed out, her voice old and powerful.
She didn't faint, this time. The light disappeared, and Dionysus heard her.
"Sorry."
Will Solace was pale. He gently took Rachel Dare's hands away from his face, which they'd held with a tenacious grip for a few short, intense seconds; he was careful about his hair, and Rachel's arms fell to her sides.
"Don't worry."
They probably had to worry.
The silence was then broken by Solace himself, who sat on the armrest of the nearest couch, next to Hades' son (who'd been covering it until then with one arm), and joyously asked "What did I miss?" with an amount of sarcasm and shameless falseness so great that it almost makes Dionysus laugh.
He fought against himself to stop his lips from curving, and won - it wouldn't have looked good for him to laugh when half the demigods in the room had turned pale and even more wide-eyed.
(One of Nike's kids, however, was slightly less successful than him, and his muffled laughter was heard- another elbow to the guts.)
"You just heard the last verse of our latest prophecy, congratulation," Rachel went back to her seat with a grimace.
"The first part?"
"She grabbed my face and- how did you put it? Spilled the beans on it."
And that made pure fear bloom in Will Solace's clear eyes.
Any pretense of tranquility, of sarcasm or control faded, and it was as if he was waiting for Jason Grace to disappear from before his eyes.
Hades' son- Nico, that was his name, was quick to grab his hand.
"It isn't about Jason," he declared, and his voice was loud above the deathly silence.
William didn't relax, but he gained a bit of color back.
He started to play with the bandaged that covered his arms, white and clean and freshly changed (although there was a small red dot on his left wrist) and paper against the tanned skin and the bright color of his Camp t-shirt. He uncovered a pinky, covered it again, then repeat, another time, showing off slightly paler skin and a normal nail.
"Don't be so confident," was the macabre comment of a girl- one with a familiar voice, he'd heard it before, somewhere he couldn't remember.
Jackson glared at her.
"We're talking about dead things, I doubt you know more about it than Nico."
She pursed her lips. They were thin, and her eyes a bright yellow, like the ones of a cat, and they were pointed straight at the other half-blood.
"Remind me why you're here, I beg you."
"Because New Rome gets boring when I'm not here to hear the bullshit you keep spewing like your life depends on it."
She ignored him, and after casting Grace a quick look looked at Nico Di Angelo again.
"So?"
"So, nothing at all. I spent months researching, I asked everyone and looked into everything. It's not talking about Jason's soul. Trust me about this."
"Only the Fates can be absolutely sure, and unless you've been able to talk to them too, I won't trust you."
Dionysus blinked. This one was a real sweetie.
Then he remembered the girl who'd argued with Connor Stoll and Apollo's son at the last meeting, who had almost ran out from the room in anger and who seemed to hate the gods with an intensity that was passively great.
"I'd say that my father's voice holds its not so little weight."
His voice was vitriol.
A few muscles in the girl's face jumped, as if she was doing her best to hide her nerves under a mask of controlled anger.
"Your father is a god, Di Angelo, he can't promise us anything. Do we know anyone else whose soul is misplaced?"
Piper McLean was shooting thunders with her eyes.
"Jason's soul is exactly where it needs to be."
"Jason would like to be a part of the conversation about his soul," jumped in the son of Jupiter, and Piper glared at him too.
"The prophecy says 'every soul'", Nico began, preventing Poseidon's son from saying whatever he was about to say. "It doesn't say soul, it even sounds like it's referring to multiple souls And if Jason's had been out of place they wouldn't have waited months to kill him off."
Other voices rose, together, and Athena interrupted them all.
"Why are we here?"
Everyone looked at her, and she didn't hide from their stares.
Sitting with her back straight, hands resting on the table in front of her, she looked way older than she was. Well, she looked as old as she really was.
The oracle cleared her throat.
"I'm almost one hundred percent sure you've got something to do with this prophecy."
One of the demigods who'd chosen to stand snorted, eyebrows raised, and spoke with a thick Italian accent.
"And we would love to know what it is that this damn prophecy says."
The oracle didn't seem embarrassed by her own forgetfulness.
Before giving her peers what they wanted, however, she lit up, turning towards Apollo's son.
"Can you fix them up first, Solace?" she pointed to her feet, laid on Perseus' lap.
Nico Di Angelo brutally killed the hope shining in her face.
"No."
"What's your deal, tall, dark and handsome?"
More than one person snickered way more than Rachel's joke deserved.
(Maybe Dionysus was missing some context.)
"In the state he's in he'll probably give you some terminal illness." One of the girls from the couch laughed like it was funny, and both Solace and Di Angelo stared at her with a blank look.
Dionysus saw the joy that had been shining in his brother's face disappear, drop by drop.
It was ironic, really- Dionysus could almost hear the "No" ringing in his head, over and over again like a broken record, because the exact same thing had echoed in his ears when he'd realized the terrible gift the Fates had given his son.
Madness was a terrible thing, as was plague.
"Lou, shut up."
Will Solace got up, and the look in his eyes grew impossibly colder when his boyfriend tried telling him to sit down again. He knelt in front of the oracle, removed her shoes with the delicacy of a collector handling precious china.
She went on to repeat the same words she'd first recited while holding Jason's face between her hands, adding at the end the new, final verse.
Everyone listened, and the daughter of Demeter (she had her height, her eyes, and her smile) who'd walked in with Solace cleared her throat.
"Eight demigods for one quest?"
"It's not referring to them, right?" The daughter of Hephaestus looked ready to start a riot at the mere thought.
The fact that they felt so protective of them, despite not knowing or really trusting them, only because of their age, was- strange.
But it was human. The cubs in the pack always had to be protected, right?
"But it does separate them in two groups, five and three- who are these five?"
"They could be anyone."
Solace stood up, the soles of Rachel Dare's feet healed and bandaged (the boy walked around with bandages and disinfectant in his pockets).
"And then the three could be members of the five," interjected a boy wearing a pair of metal glasses that looked made out of bronze- the infamous Malcolm.
"If Rachel made them come here it's because they have something to do with it."
Jupiter's son didn't like the idea any more than his companions did.
"Then something about Lady Aphrodite? The pearl of the ocean?"
'Lou' wasn't smiling anymore.
"Then sun, and thunder. A child of Aphrodite, with Grace and Will?"
"Let's not jump to conclusion and choose who will go," said the son of Ares, his shoulders tense, and another young man (Dionysus was good with names, he'd had a good memory even as a mortal- except during some very bad times- and he would've preferred to know theirs rather than keep trying to guess whose children they were) snorted.
He had a rainbow tattooed on his arm, and Dionysus told himself that if he wasn't a son of Iris he would shave his head.
"I'd say it's obvious."
He wasn't cruel about it, just very factual.
"Yeah, Rachel literally- 'spilled the beans' on them," supported him Lou.
Will Solace wasn't happy. He really wasn't. Sitting on the armrest again, he drummed his fingers on the outside of his right bicep.
"Third quest in a year? They wan' me to die before I can get my license."
"I'll come to hang out with you if you'll die," Di Angelo jokingly said.
Will copied his creepily genuine smile.
"Mr. D would tell your dad to banish you from the Underworld, since it would be detrimental to your mental health. Stay here at Camp until you die of old age and tell everyone who William Solace was. Sing my praises, so that my name will not be-"
"Will" Jason interrupted him, face split between exasperation and urgency.
Ares talked over them with a loud "So? Five of us?" that brought him under the room's scrutiny.
His eyes were sharp, his arms crossed, he was visibly angry- and Dionysus blinked, realising just how angry he was. Even missing that aura of raging fire that could turn even the most peaceful man into a beast, Ares burned.
"Maybe," the oracle conceded, but immediately the daughter of Aphrodite jumped in. "Yeah, and let's be clear- if any of you have to go, then we'll choose based on ages. So you're already benched, brother."
And Dionysus didn't hold in his laugh, this time, not that anyone was paying attention to him now.
Five of them, only five, the oldest five, and casually the children of Kronos were five and all physically older than the rest of them. Casually.
So whoever had turned them into mortals, and sent them ten years in the future (what a thought to formulate) had wanted them to take part in this quest. That five of them, to be exact, would live in mortal bodies, as demigods, and as demigods it was only natural that some god would send them on a special mission from which they would've gotten very little in terms of benefits.
Dionysus met Athena's intense gaze from across the room, and offered her a slight smirk. She read the real meaning of his amusement on his face, and even if she didn't reciprocate Dionysus clearly saw the way her dark eyes shone with hilarity.
Even the serious, rigid and perfect Athena could find it a reason to feel a little bit of joy.
"Let's worry about- everything else. We all heard the 'abandoned embers", right?" asked the daughter of Demeter, and Percy Jackson's cutting "No" made her blink.
"What?"
"No," he repeated, voice harsh, hands tightened into fists, his left leg bouncing up and down with enough strength to make the couch tremble
Dionysus could suddenly feel the tension rise in the room, weigh on them, he felt goosebumps rise on his arms, and then a shiver silently rippled through his body- and only a few demigods looked shaken by the change in pressure.
Athena's daughter placed a hand on the knee of his shaking leg, with enough strength to force it into submission. Perseus stopped moving and the pressure gradually decreased, although it did not disappear.
Her gray eyes were unnaturally still, just like the eyes of every other offspring of Athena, and they were fixed on the boy as if they wanted to swallow him whole.
That look must have meant something to him, because the pressure ceased to be.
Nobody blinked.
"Unguarded and abandoned embers," repeated the girl- Annabeth, or something like this, hand now lax over her partner's knee, "It can only be referring to Lady Hestia."
And that, that was the thing that truly shook them to their core.
Dionysus was afraid, and he accepted it as soon as he took notice of the intensity of his fear. He banished any thought of repressing it, of pretending that nothing bad was happening, because if there was anyone he would let himself feel fear and worry for, it was Hestia.
He would've felt bad for most of his family members, despite everything. Even for their divine rulers, because no one could say that Dionysus was heartless.
But Hestia?
Then he took a look around, and the first thing he noticed, more noticeable than the sun in the sky, was the raw horror clinging to all of their faces: gods in mortal bodies, who had worried so much about their pitiful condition and those "difficult" few days, who heard that name being pronounced in such a context.
Dionysus observed them, and his heart wouldn't stop trying to beat out of his chest.
He'd never seen his father with an expression this honest and genuine and naked. Never one so open on his step-mother's. Never so much fear in the eyes of Poseidon, indomitable and wild and always changing, never still. His whole body was locked, now.
Aphrodite looked ready to cry, her large, dark eyes glistening with tears, and Hephaestus' skin had turned two shades lighter.
Dionysus could almost see and hear the same thought, ringing in their heads.
'Not her.'
"Not her," it was the only answer that the son of Poseidon managed to give, his eyes lit up with a dark sort of fury, "Who would ever want - not her. She has no enemies, she doesn't-"
"Percy," Annabeth interrupted him, her voice placid as if she was talking to a scared animal, the planes of her face kinder than they'd been until then, "If she has no enemies then she only has allies, who can be easily be hurt through her."
No particular emotion was reflected in her words, so similar to Athena, pragmatic and almost insensitive, who had the ability to give the most neutral and flattest accounts of the greatest massacres and tragedies in history.
This usually annoyed them a lot.
Perseus' frown softened, slightly, he held one of the girl's hands as if he was trying to comfort her, give her strength, seeing in the flat surface of her eyes something they were blind to.
"It would be the dumbest thing in the world," argued Piper McLean, "Come on, who would survive the consequences? The whole of Olympus would jump to their throat."
Malcolm avoided everyone's gaze, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, eyebrows furrowed.
"If it's a quest they can't do anything, though."
A beat passed. Even the air seemed to freeze, cold and still like their hearts. A beat that lengthened into a silence that no one seemed to have the courage to break.
And Dionysus, with fear cloying up his lungs and worry making it hard to breathe, felt a deep, intense sense of satisfaction, in seeing what little color was left in his father's face disappear.
Then he saw his jaw clench and his traits harden into the marble mask Dionysus knew and had despised since the beginning, every emotion Dionysus knew he was feeling hidden, pushed into the same hole where he'd thrown every crumb of paternal and brotherly love that his wrinkled little heart could produce.
All hidden in the dark, so that no one could see it, so that no one could appeal to them to try and make him change his minds about one of his dumb ideas.
(Dionysus always saw them, and his Father knew it.)
Hestia.
The glue that held together their family.
No one ignored Hestia's advice, or didn't trust her words, because Hestia loved them all equally, and even when she'd sided with someone no one had even tried to accuse her of favoritism.
It would have been useless.
Hestia was the goddess of the family, and Dionysus had known her ever since he was a boy.
Still covered by long drapes of cloth that felt like a vice around his body, still aware of what would have happened to him had the Queen of the Sky found out about his existence, the goddess had appeared next to Dionysus, his fire suddenly warmer than before, more lively, kinder than it had ever been.
She'd smiled at him with the face of a young girl, and at first Dionysus had thought her to be the daughter of a porr farmer, who'd run away from home or got lost in the forest where he'd been raised, and he'd asked her if she needed any help.
She'd smiled even more, called him a "kind and sweet boy", and Dionysus had looked up at the sky, waiting for a wild beast to come out and eat him alive. His aunt had asked him to stay with her, and said "My fiery sister won't find us, you can rest for now", and Dionysus had spent the whole night talking with her.
The goddess had asked him about his life, she'd complimented his peplos, and she'd eaten with him.
Dionysus didn't see her for years then, because only a few weeks after their first meeting Hera found him and took his mind as payment for his existence- as if his madness could make her husband's infidelity less painful.
When the divine powers granted to him grew and multiplied not by the will of his father, but by the will of the Fates, Hestia gave her throne to him to the dismay of all Olympus, and ignored his protests, and smiled as Dionysus tried his best to stay lucid for her, despite the vortex in his mind.
Hestia had given him that throne, and from that point on she never hesitated again in calling him to her hearth.
Dionysus had got her drunk so many times that his Father had forbid it from happening ever again- only because when she was drunk, Hestia lost her control and half of the times she ended up traveling all around the globe to show her loved one just how much she loved them, and cover her siblings, nephews and nieces, cousins and siblings-in-law with affection.
(She once confessed that she believed it was her fault.
That because of the same curiosity that had led her to look for her brother's mysterious son, Hera had found him. Dionysus thought to himself that it was probably true, and he didn't blame her, not even for a second.)
Dionysus, in his three thousand years, had never tried to imagine a world without Hestia. Without gods, yes. Without his father, without Dionysus himself, but never without the protector of the family and the hearth, alert and soft like no other in the history of their universe.
A dark-skinned boy with curious scars on his biceps was looking at Malcolm with widened eyes.
"They'd… make an exception, right?"
The daughter of Hephaestus snorted, face devoid of genuine amusement.
"I doubt it."
"Don't count on it," Jason warned him somberly.
What had Hestia done for him, to look this full of sorrow?
And for the son of Poseidon, who looked ready to upturn every rock on the surface of their planet to find and save her?
Everything, probably.
Or maybe something small, like eating with them on a may evening to compliment their clothes and ask them about their most impossible dreams, with the smile of someone who would've done everything in their power to help achieve them.
As a small group of demigods began to speak hushedly, the girl with the Italian accent exclaimed in disbelief, "The third goddess who disappears in what, five years? And each time some mystical enemy was miraculously resurrected."
Lou's voice rose. "I'll blame you if anything like that happens," which was soon followed by a venomous "Go do your anti-evil-eye spells, at least with those you have no rivals" that would have made Dionysus smile in another situation, but not that one.
Hestia, the third.
Who else- and then he felt like hitting himself.
Olympus's two greatest enemies, titans and giants, had returned to kill them all, and two goddesses had disappeared. Another vanished goddess, another great enemy of Olympus. But who?
Poseidon, with his furrowed eyebrows, his face reduced to a mask of barely contained anger, his eyes as stormy as the sea- Dionysus could almost see it, his oldest and most primal physical form, with its dark, liquid hair and a body made out of fury and unflinching strength.
"How are we qualified to save a goddess?"
Funny.
Perhaps a few thousand demigods had died just because they were sent to complete a task too great for them.
(The Athena Parthenos was the perfect example.)
The oracle tried to answer with a firm "If so the Fates will-" that made Piper McLean jump to her feet.
"-You definitely aren't. That's why-"
And this time it was the oracle that raised her voice, that ended up almost resounding in the silence it created.
"If a damn oracle tells you it has to go this way, it will go this way. Trying to act like a bad prophecy can be fixed is pointless. So stop acting like we're about to open their neck above a sacrificial altar. Take it out on the world, but don't try to take it out on me."
William didn't hesitate.
"Rachel's right, Piper," he said, and she sat down again, gloomy though she seemed less inclined to jump on the first person who dared to look in their direction.
Then Perseus raised his hand.
"If it's to save Hestia I'm coming too."
Someone laughed.
Rachel sighed.
"I don't think you're included in this one."
"Why not? Alright, five of them, Will, Jason- there's still an empty spot."
"We've already said that it has something to do with Aphrodite."
Percy looked at the daughter of Hephaestus.
"It talks about the ocean."
Still terribly annoyed, Piper quipped a "I didn't know you were a pearl of the ocean, Jackson" that made several demigods laugh again, regardless of the tense atmosphere.
Jackson blinks a couple of times.
"I'm a... jewel in my father's eyes?"
Annabeth shot him an exasperated look.
"Someone from Cabin Ten," insisted the very-not-nice girl.
Piper frowned, biting the inside of her cheek.
"I'm the oldest, together with Drew. I have the experience, but Drew has the right to… choose. If she wants to seek glory and all of that. I already had my chance at it."
The (probable) son of Iris raised his eyebrows.
"We know it won't end well if we force Drew to spend more than a day with Will."
The latter didn't say anything, but Dionysus saw his eyes darken for a moment before his carefully built mask could cover it all up again.
"The problem is hers and hers alone," Nico hissed, and at the same time Athena whispered something to Hera, and they began to mutter things to each other's ear furiously.
"We'll ask him anyway. Then there's Kath, but her leg is still unstable. And I think Mitchell would laugh in my face."
(Percy chuckled, and Athena's daughter offered him a grin, a hand clutched in his.
"And then they say we're the smart ones.")
"The others are too young."
And then, then, then, everyone focused on them again.
Ares' son was no less hostile than he had been six days earlier.
"What about them?"
The look on Nico Di Angelo's face was closed off, and anything but happy.
"Which of you is at least eighteen years old?"
When no one raised their hand, he asked instead, "Seventeen?", and this time the five of them raised their hands.
And then his face did something strange, and he turned to Rachel.
"Okay, I understand what you meant. I'd say it's too perfect to be random."
"Five to hold a crown- what crown? Not like, Olympus' crown, I hope."
"It'll probably fall over itself without auntie Hestia."
It was kind of obvious by now that they knew a great deal about the way Olympus functioned.
And it was strange to see demigods being so… aware.
Dionysus didn't interact with a lot of them, usually, but through his siblings and aunt and uncles he happened to meet a few sometimes. The younger ones were too enthusiastic and constantly tried to explain and rationalize their world through mortal logic- which ended up either with said demigods burying themselves in denial or accepting the truth with a sort of hateful disgrace.
Both cases ended up with them hating Olympus in one way or another.
Dionysus had hated Olympus as a boy. He'd done it with the burning weight of guilt in his chest, with the foreboding sensation that light would rain down from the sky to punish him. Because he doubted, and didn't believe as he should have, and didn't respect as much as he should have.
It was different for these kids.
They were young, they'd been raised to believe in other gods, in another god, and one that was very different from them, so seeing them as real gods was even harder.
Understanding how true, genuine love or friendship between a mortal and a god were rare and even more rare was their good-ending was three times harder.
They were parents before they were gods, in their eyes, even if everyone knew that they were gods first and then anything else.
The hate wasn't strong in that room.
There was resentment, but it was tired and old like an elderly man who lies down on his bed to wait for death to take him away.
But- the way the talked about them?
It was as if they were both parents and gods at the same time, and this seemed almost paradoxical to Dionysus.
It was as if they were both parents and gods at the same time, somehow. Even more paradoxical.
Even he wouldn't have been able to, between his personal limitations and those imposed by their "omnipotent" king.
"When should we go?" asked Hades, addressing for the first time (as far as Dionysus knew) someone who was not his son, but rather his nephew.
Jason was tense, and stiff. He took his glasses off his face, and began carefully cleaning one of the lenses with the flap of his t-shirt.
"We have to ask Chiron, he'll want to contact Olympus. Then I'll have to talk with Hazel, one of the praetors of Camp Jupiter, and-"
"Probably tomorrow," Will interrupted, and Jason lightly glared at him. "Too many strange things have happened in the last few weeks to put it off."
"It would be nice not to be in the dark about everything, considering we're more than involved," Era pointed out to him.
The very-not-nice girl shook her head.
"You're involved, but not all of you. And we can't risk any leaks, so we'll talk about it tomorrow."
Percy raised his hand, and started talking before anyone could comment on it.
"Wouldn't it be better to give them an idea of what they'll have to deal with, Sylvia?"
Sylvia (finally a name for the sweetest soul of Camp Half-Blood) curled her nose.
Who knew, maybe she was a daughter of Eris.
(She had Nemesis' nose, but Dionysus wouldn't have bet on it.)
"Not all of them need to know."
Percy narrowed his eyes. "Why do you care? They'll find out everything anyway."
"Yes, with the others."
"Ugh, stop it," grumbled the daughter of Demeter. "I can't stand the two of you anymore. Those who want to tell everyone everything right away and stop arguing about nonsense, raise your hand."
Percy looked pink enough in the face as he raised his hand together with every other demigod except for Sylvia and Sherman.
If the latter shrugged and glared silently, his expression screaming 'You asked for it!" (Miranda smiled and waved her rings covered fingers), Sylvia looked ready to walk away. She didn't, but the expression on her stern face grew even more thunderous.
"Perfect." Miranda nodded. "So, Hestia. There have been problems with the bonfire for days, but the dryads told us this morning that they've fixed everything. So maybe Lady Hestia is still safe and we could try to do something to help her, even though I doubt it's gonna work."
"We should ask Mr. D. If anything happened, he probably knows," muttered a boy who looked like someone had dragged him away from his bed, who screamed softness and comfort with every line of his face and body.
"Right. Nico, go."
Sherman reminded the room that Dionysus was probably busy with Chris Rodriguez, and the son of Poseidon wilted like a crushed flower. Chris Rodriguez was barely older than him- they must've known each other.
"Perfect."
Nico Di Angelo raised his voice, so that Percy would turn to look at him. "I'll go in a bit. And don't give me orders like I'm your personal carrier pigeon."
Poseidon's son didn't relax, but he still replied, "If I asked Mr. D anything, I'd be the carrier pigeon, and literally" (to which Nico Di Angelo gave a vaguely proud smirk).
Then he turned to look at them, frowning, worried blue-green eyes.
"Monsters' activity has neither grown or dropped, but there were some strange sightings on the border between Texas and Louisiana, and someone who left Camp a few years ago and now lives in Denver warned us that stranger than usual things have been happening."
"Things like a drakon?"
"Not that bad, but I doubt there are enough demigods there to attract a drakon. Then there's the issue with Iris messages, it's been two months since they stopped working."
Jason Grace was suddenly tense, under his cousin's stare.
"So… do you think it has anything to do with… Her?"
Jason, who had seemed so relaxed that morning, in their presence, became more akin to a piece of stone than a living, breathing boy. His blue eyes seemed to have been gifted a life of their own, and two deep lines formed between his eyebrows. Lips narrowed in a thin line, shoulders stiff, seemingly ready to jump on the first lost soul that would move.
"Lady Hebe was generous enough to give me a few minutes of her time, and I asked her about Lady Iris - it's as we suspected."
Dionysus blinked. Hebe?
What the hell was that about?
Hera's voice grew full of (what Dionysus was pretty sure was) concern.
"What happened?"
And, to be fair, Dionysus could believe that Hera was worried about someone other than herself (or something other than the picture perfect family she wanted so bad but couldn't sacrifice anything but the lives and happiness of others for), just because Iris was probably the only person on Olympus who Hera truly sincerely liked.
(Everyone knew that the winged goddess didn't just like the Queen of Olympus, everyone but said Queen. It was incredibly funny, and Iris' loyalty was admirable. Dionysus would have liked not to see her wasted on someone like Hera, because Iris was a treasure to be around.)
Jason Grace looked at her, hesitated for a second. Then he made his decision.
"This doesn't concern you. Don't ask, please."
He wasn't cruel in his refusal, but he was firm. Suddenly Dionysus was more than sure that asking would be useless. Hera wasn't happy, however. She knew something- she'd understood something, even though she said nothing else.
"Without Iris Messages, how will we keep in touch?" McLean asked, "Do you Romans have some tricks up your sleeve that you haven't shared with the rest of the class yet?"
"No tricks and no sleeves," Jason reassured her, and she sighed, "But we'll find an alternative.)
After that cryptic sentence- which made Dionysus think that he already had in mind a way to solve that problem- he stood up, as if he couldn't no longer stand sitting down, and went to rest with his back on the wall, right next to the armrest of the sofa where Will Solace was sitting.
Dionysus heard them say something else, but he didn't really register their words.
He looked down at his hands, which were resting on the ping-pong table, and quickly pulled them back, deciding that the dark blue hue of the plastic was acceptable.
A quest to save his aunt- that would be saved by her siblings.
A quest.
Had they been sent in that confusing, strange and painful time because of that? To save her? Why them? Why all of them? Their presence hadn't been needed when giants and titans had tried their hand at ruling the world, again, but now it was?
Out of everyone, why the five of them?
Of all of them, he couldn't think of anyone less suitable.
Just having mortal bodies was driving them out of their minds, and now a quest?
Who knew what deity would enjoy ruining their lives.
It would've been funny if they were to ruin it themselves - if their divine, older versions were to treat them like the average demigods, with everything that it entailed. Would justice have been done?
At the cost of their aunt?
Someone was probably laughing, looking at them sitting around that table, surrounded by demigods who were discussing their lives and Hestia's survival rates unable to recognize or help them, or understand what was behind the sudden appearance of the half-bloods they seemed to distrust so much.
And Dionysus would have been tempted to laugh with that someone, if only he wasn't being hit in the face by the raw severity of their situation.
Eight of them would be left behind, five would search for Hestia.
Innocent, in what way? How could the sun save them from their innocence? And how could a simple son of Apollo be called the sun? Apollo himself would get involved somehow?
Waves- a storm waiting for them? It couldn't have been more vague. Dionysus hated prophecies.
There were minor deities connected in some way to storms and then there were Zeus and Poseidon, who could wreck havoc on earth with a mere thought, with storms that the mortal world wouldn't have been able to explain or survive.
Who would try to stop them, and how could the daughter of Aphrodite save them from their death?
And then- they hadn't been wrong, when they said that losing Hestia would be too much of a blow for them.
They wouldn't disappear into thin air, they wouldn't die instantly like mortals struck by the all-powerful Bolt- but everyone knew that the precarious balance that allowed them to live in relative tranquility with each other had been practically imposed by Hestia, who over and over again had pledged to keep them together, trying to stop old feuds or ephemeral emotions from damaging them irreparably.
What would have happened without Hestia in the picture?
Who would've made the weigh of their gaze known on their skin, during every Winter Solstice or extraordinary meeting?
A gaze that grew heavier with every insult, when their voices got too loud, when the air frizzled with statics, or when it became warmer, colder, when their physical bodies started to tremble, ready to disclose and show their raw self- a heavy gaze that always lacked anger of judgement.
Hestia treated their fights like bickering when it was just that, but she was always ready to step in when things got too heated- when it started to look like the consequences could be too great for them. She was always calm, and she judged them with more impartiality then their King.
She'd suffered, Dionysus had been told, in situations such as the Trojan War, where Olympus had been split in two.
No one had listened to her, when she had reminded everyone of the consequences that failing to demonstrate a united front would bring.
When the giants had attacked them at their weakest, she hadn't accused any of them of being responsible, but Dionysus knew that it had been the darkest moment of her life.
She'd told him, once, because he'd asked and because he'd been young and full of questions and judgment for his older yet dumber relatives.
"Watching your loved one suffer and not being able to help, it's painful, nephew," she'd told him, eyes alight, pupils inhabited by flames that were less playful than usual, "It's even more painful when they're the ones hindering you."
From her hearth she'd kept on watching them, alert (like she'd never been before, according to a troubled Hephaestus, one of the few gods he'd managed to talk with at the start of his godhood- with most of the others he'd liked to pretend to be crazier than he was, to keep them away) and attentive, never cruel or pushing in her fear.
A tangible fear that Dionysus could feel cling to her spirit.
Intense enough to torment her day and night, in every moment of her immortal life, a constant fear to see them become their own doom that followed her everywhere and never let her be.
Dionysus could feel it: not in her fire, because she kept it pure and happy and warm like the home she build for every soul on earth, in particular for those who shared an immortal life with her, but in her mind, in her core.
Dionysus looked up, and beyond the group of teens he could see the lush grass, the trees, the sky outside the window. The air moving the green leaves, a pair of demigods ascending the path, sending cautious glances to the locked windows of the room they were in, the sun hitting branches, people, and birds and casting shadows on the ground.
What had those wars done to his aunt?
Had they worn her down slowly? They'd been betrayed by their children, after all, and attacked by their progenitors. A civil war, yet another civil war within their family, yet another fight for her to witness.
Hestia had fought against the pact between her three brothers, insisting that it would only lead to quarrels and fractures.
Hestia had cried for Maria Di Angelo and her young children, for years she'd stayed in the Underground to be at her brother's side, and without hesitation she'd gone to Olympus to guard her youngest brother's side, enough sorrow and pain in her eyes to make the Queen of Olympus lower her head, to make the world feel shame trickling down its spine like sticky honey, when Thalia Grace had been transformed.
But if Zeus had refused to show his shame after killing his brother's lover and children, with all the superiority of a king, Hades had ignored it, to ignore Hestia, prey to his wish for vengeance and the kind of pain that a father could never forget, no matter how many decades went by.
Hestia had suffered from the punishment inflicted on Apollo by Zeus, from the punishment inflicted on his Oracle by Hades.
She'd suffered from every thundering word her brother said, from every insult and threat thrown at his sons, from his increasingly constant avarice when it came to understanding, empathy, and kindness.
Hestia believed in all of them, and never was she not disappointed.
(Poseidon had looked at his brothers angrily, and had even dared to bring up Hestia's pain.
Demeter had silenced him in a second, cuttingly reminding him that he would've done the same in their situation, that he'd done the same in the past and hurt his sister the same.
And maybe Poseidon wouldn't have electrocuted his brother's lover along with their children, but he would've done something even more terrible than curse an oracle and torment a young girl.
Poseidon, as kind as he was hypocritical.)
How much had she suffered in those ten years?
She wasn't weak: she was a goddess, a daughter of Kronos, not one of the Twelve but as powerful as any of them, she'd been called goddess of all goddesses and not even Hera had done more than scoff and hide a smile.
She had them in the palms of her hands. She could calm Ares down with a kind smile and a few encouraging words; she could show Zeus the right way to proceed with enough caution to avoid his anger, fear and insecurity; she could make Poseidon see reason, even when he insisted that the waves couldn't be tamed so easily; she could make Demeter smile, when winter came and her daughter left to be with Hades in their palace underground, she could distract her from the pain Demeter caused every year- hurting even Hestia with her coldness and anger.
She was the firstborn and she'd lived years inside her father, only to come out more convinced than ever that their strength was in being a family.
She represented things that were intrinsic in the humankind- home, the city itself, family, bonds that couldn't be broken, that could heal or fester wounds but would never kill, not in her home. A home open to every lost soul of their world.
She was strong, in ways that they didn't understand even after so many centuries.
How much must they have weakened her, with their quarrels, their feuds, their wars?
Was it their fault, if she had been kidnapped? If someone had managed to overpower her?
(They had tried- they'd tried to do unspeakable things to her, during the Gigantomachy- the first Gigantomachy. They hadn't succeeded, because all the love Hestia gave her family meant something to them, regardless of their inherent cruelty. It had been invaluable for violent, merciless Ares, who had spent months in a damned urn for her.)
That evening, just before nine, when the campers gathered around Hestia's hearth, the Head Counselors shared a look, ready to take advantage of that moment to share what had been discussed that morning, the fire shining bright and tall.
Then the fire went out, and darkness fell over them.
——