Chapter 34 The Golden Fleece

​We cut through the strawberry fields and the volleyball court, making it to the big house. We opened the door and found mother there with all the youngins. Mother stayed with them since they were not allowed to watch such a gruesome sport like the races.

"Lucian, what's happening? Why are you in such a rush?" Medusa asked. "Birds are attacking, no time to explain." Lucian said as he followed Percy and Annabeth to look for the music. After a bit of searching they were able to find it, the worst one out of the bunch.

They all rushed back to the chariots and Annabeth put the CD in the boom box. The all time greatest hits of Dean Martin started to blast through the boom box as we approached the birds.

The birds hearing the horrible music all stopped ripping at people's hair, skin, and clothes, and all screeched in agony. It seemed like they would want nothing more than to die on the spot. They all flew up into the air and bundled up making easy targets.

I quickly hop off the chariot and grab some spare arrows from the rack. "Archers! Fire!!" I said as I shot multiple arrows toward the birds. Every archer followed suit, and pretty soon all of the birds were now carcasses on the floor. Now that the birds were killed, we were able to see the aftermath. Everyone were in tatters and all looked upset, but the ones who looked most upset were my siblings. Everyone from camp Aphrodite were screaming because of their hair and tattered Gucci clothes.

"Bravo!" Tantalus said as he walked right past us and toward Clarisse. "We have our winner! Now...to punish those who disrupted the race." He looked at us with a twisted smile.

____________________________________________

Basically Tantulus explained that if it were not for us bothering the birds, they wouldn't have attacked. I told him to shut it and stick a doughnut in his mouth, if he could touch one first. This only served to further piss him off and gave us dish cleaning duties in the underground kitchen with the harpies. The thing is, the harpies clean the dishes with lava. Something about it killing 99.9 % of germs, so we have to use asbestos gloves and aprons.

The only one who seem to didn't mind was Tyson, who plunged his hands into the lava and got to work happily. Me, Percy, and Annabeth however have to suffer in the unbearable heat. There were a shit tone of plates to clean, all because Tantalus had a feast prepared to celebrate Clarisses win.

However...I found out something as we cleaned. Percy informed me and Annabeth about a dream that he has been having. Apparantly, he has been having dreams about Grover. In these dreams, Grover talks to him and says that he needs our help. Apparantly Grover was captured by Polyphemus, a Cyclops who now thinks Grover is a woman Cyclops and wants to marry him. But that's not the important part. The important part is that he has found the golden fleece, the one thing that can save Thalia, at least according to Annabeth. Annabeth said that these dreams that Percy is having is called an empathy link. It was a form of communication through a dream, because the two people are spiritually and physically connected, meaning that if Grover dies then basically so does Percy, or at least leaves him seriously brain dead.

Now for those who dont know what the golden fleece is, it's basically a magical goat coat that originally belonged to Zues' magical goat, but it was skinned by Perseus. It had the powers to rejuvenate a dying land and improve all plants and water sources. No matter how badly the plants were, they would be able to get better with the fleece.

Although this was perfect in solving our situation, Annabeth thought it was too perfect, and to be honest it did sound too perfect. Grover went to look for Pan but found the Golden Fleece instead? Quite the coincidence.

"Look guys, I dont know if doing this is the best Idea. I mean, we will have to go through the sea of monsters!" Annabeth said, but me and Percy had a confused look on our face. Annabeth seeing this sighed.

"You know how the gods move wherever western civilization goes right? How mount Olympus is in the Empire state building and the underworld is in los Angeles? Same concept apples to the sea of monsters." Annabeth explained to us as if we were children. "I have an Idea as to where the sea of monsters is located then." I said as I rolled my eyes. Percy just looked more confused. "Where is it?" Me and Annabety looked at each other, then back at Percy. ""The Bermuda Triangle."" We said at the same time.

"Now that we know where Grover is, now all we have to do is recieve the quest officially. I know Tantulus is not going to give it to us, since he believes the camp is perfectly fine. Even if we did tell him how to save it, he would give it to someone else just to spite us." I told the two, making Annabeth go into thought. "True, but we still have to try. Now, we have to get these dishes done. We can ask Tantalus tonight at the campfire."

After about hours of scrubbing, we were finally able to finish and headed to the campfire. There we saw everyone singing and having a good time, trying to forget about the bird attack. A few moments after we sat down on a log, Tantulus came strolling in with a marshmallow on a stick. He tried to pluck it out looking really casual but the marshmallow jumped off the stick. Tantalus tried to make a wild grab for it but the marshmallow committed suicide by jumping onto the flames. He turned around and smiled with his usual ugly smile.

"Now then!" He started, but I cut him off. "Hey prisoner." I said, making his eye twitch. "Does our kitchen boy have something to say?" He said with a crooked smile. But this only got him many glares from the girls of the camp. "We have an idea to save the camp." The moment I said this, everyone became deadly silent. You were only able to hear the fire crackle and the logs shift in the fire. Tantalus glared as he spoke coldly. "Do you now?"