The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

25. Tyson, Son Of Poseidon

The sun was setting down behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. Y/N, Annabeth, Ethan, Percy and Tyson stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken, but she promised she'd talk to the rest of them later. Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin—a dozen boys and girls with blond hair and gray eyes like hers. Annabeth wasn't the oldest, but she had been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace—one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin—six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith's forge all day. He was nice once you got to know him, but no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles. Most just called him Beckendorf. Rumor was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing birdbath for a grandmother's garden. Whatever anyone wanted.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs.

After the satyrs filed in to diner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy who'd fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren't twins, but they looked so much alike it didn't matter. Y/N could never remember which one was older. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes's kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you—like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt.

As soon as the last camper had filed in, Y/N walked into the middle of the pavilion, Percy and Tyson following a little behind. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. The Ares shoot lethal glares at Y/N. "Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured, pointing at Tyson.

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Y/N L/N and Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."

"Percy Jackson . . . sir," Percy corrected.

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever."

He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who'd stayed up too late in the casinos.

Next to him, where Chiron usually sat—or stood, in centaur form—was someone Y/N had never seen before—a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at Y/N; his eyes made Y/N nervous. He looked . . . fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.

"This boy," Dionysus told him, "he's the son of Hera. The other, you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."

"Ah!" the prisoner said. "That one." He smiled coldly. "I am Tantalus. On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing more trouble."