Life at Camp Half-Blood settled into a rhythm of training, gossip, and simmering tension. The summer heat baked the strawberry fields and shimmered over the combat arena. The theft of Zeus's master bolt was the only topic of conversation, a storm cloud hanging over the idyllic valley. Nicholas, as Nick, moved through it all with an air of detached bemusement, playing his part perfectly while pulling invisible strings.
He found time to work on Luke Castellan. The counselor of Hermes was a walking wound, charismatic, skilled, and radiating a bitter sense of betrayal that was a potent fuel source. Nicholas sought him out during sword maintenance, leaning against the armory wall.
"Nice form," Nicholas remarked as Luke executed a flawless, punishing series of strikes on a practice dummy. "You make it look effortless."
Luke wiped sweat from his brow, offering a tight, un-reassuring smile. "Practice. Lots of it. It's the only thing you can really count on."
"Sounds lonely," Nicholas said, his tone carefully neutral.
Luke's smile vanished. "It's smart. Rely on the gods for strength, and what happens when they get bored? When they decide you're not useful anymore?" He slammed his blade—Backbiter, Nicholas noted, the cruel dual-metal blade—into the dummy's neck. "They leave you with nothing but their mistakes to clean up."
Nicholas nodded slowly, as if considering a novel concept. "So your own strength… that's the only thing that's truly yours. The only thing that can't be taken away or deemed unworthy."
Luke looked at him, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Most campers offered pity or empty platitudes. This new Dionysus kid spoke with a quiet understanding that felt dangerous. "Exactly," Luke said, his voice low. "Remember that. Whatever 'gifts' they give you, they're just loans. With interest."
The Oracle's prophecy came, as he knew it would, in a haze of green mist and cryptic verse. It named Percy as the one to go west, face the god who had turned, and retrieve what was stolen. The formal quest was issued: Percy, with Annabeth and Grover as his companions.
The night before they left, Nicholas found Percy by the beach. "Four's a crowd on a quest, you know," Nicholas said casually, skipping a stone across the waves. "Ancient rule. Terribly bad luck."
Percy scowled, kicking at the sand. "They need all the help they can get. And you're my friend. You can handle yourself."
"I'm also the son of the god of bad parties and accidental metamorphosis," Nicholas replied with a dry smirk. "Not exactly quest material, according to the brochure."
"I don't care about the brochure," Percy said, his jaw set. It was the stubborn, loyal defiance Nicholas had been carefully nurturing. "You're coming."
Such boring, predictable idealism, Nicholas mused internally, a part of him marveling at the sensation. He was no longer just reading about these moments; he was in them, a ghost in the machine of his own favorite childhood story. The thrill was deeply satisfying, like watching a complex theorem unfold exactly as derived.
The next morning, as Annabeth and Grover fretted over the "four-person rule," their argument was passionate and logically sound. Nicholas simply caught their eyes, one after the other. He didn't weave a complex spell. He just leaned just used a subtle twist of misperception, a gentle nudge of indifference. To Annabeth, the logistical concern suddenly seemed pedantic, a waste of energy better spent planning. To Grover, the bad luck felt like a distant, silly superstition. Their objections melted away into vague shrugs.
"Maybe it'll be fine," Annabeth said, frowning slightly as if trying to recall why she'd been so upset.
"Yeah," Grover agreed, munching on a Snickers bar. "The more the merrier?"
Percy looked triumphantly at Nicholas, who gave an innocent smile. The quartet set off from Half-Blood Hill, Dionysius making sure nobody knew Nicholas was tagging along.
The journey was a gritty, uncomfortable parade of mortal transportation. Nicholas observed it all with anthropological interest. The sweat and grime of the bus, the constant low-grade fear in Grover's eyes, Annabeth's sharp, analytical gaze scanning every face for threats. He played his part: the slightly cynical, supportive friend, using minor illusion charms to help them sneak onto trains or distract ticket collectors, always careful to keep his displays within the plausible range of a Dionysus child, a flicker of light, a momentarily confusing sound.
Then they stumbled upon Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium.
The place reeked of magic, a cloying, stony smell beneath the scent of hamburgers and mildew. Statues of terrifying realism filled the yard. Annabeth, daughter of the goddess who had orchestrated Medusa's punishment, tensed immediately, her wisdom fighting against the magical haze clouding the place.
Inside, the woman was grotesque, her veiled head too still, her voice a syrupy rasp. Nicholas felt the gorgon's aura, a knot of eternal bitterness and petrifying power. As Annabeth argued for immediate, violent action, citing her mother's legend, Nicholas saw his opportunity.
"Wait," he said, his voice calm, cutting through Annabeth's urgency. He looked not at the veiled woman, but at the statues in the garden, their faces frozen in terror. "Listen to her story first."
"Her story?" Annabeth hissed. "Nick, she's a monster! She turns people to stone!"
"Was a woman," Nicholas corrected gently, his gaze sweeping over the tragic stone figures. "According to the myths, she was a priestess of Athena. Beautiful. Then Poseidon attacked her in Athena's own temple. And Athena's punishment for being violated was to curse her with snakes for hair and a gaze that turned all who looked upon her to stone. To exile her, to make her a monster forever."
He turned his grey eyes on Annabeth. "So the god commits the crime, but the goddess punishes the victim. Makes her the monster. And then sends heroes to 'clean up' the horrible creature she created." He gestured to the garden. "These aren't trophies. They're a monument to divine injustice. She didn't ask for this. She's just surviving with the only power they left her with."
The veiled woman—Medusa—was silent, but the air grew heavier.
Annabeth's face flushed with anger and loyalty. "You don't understand! My mother is wisdom itself! She upholds justice and order! Medusa defiled her temple—"
"By being assaulted in it?" Nicholas fired back, his voice still quiet but now like sharpened ice. "Where is Poseidon's punishment, Annabeth? Where is his statue in this garden? Why is the victim eternally cursed, while the perpetrator gets temples and kingdoms and children on quests?" He took a step closer, and for a moment, the aura of the calm camper fell away, replaced by something powerful, "This is the system, Annabeth. The cruel, capricious, selfish system. The gods don't care about justice. They care about pride, power, and who cleans up their messes. Medusa is one of their messes. Percy," he nodded to his friend, whose face was a mask of conflicting emotions, "is being sent to clean up another one. Where does it end?"
Annabeth opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The logic, as a simple, cold observation of the myths she revered, struck at the core of her identity. Her loyalty to Athena warred with the glaring, horrible truth of the story. She looked at the statues, truly looked at them, and for the first time, she didn't just see monsters' victims. She saw victims of the gods.
This is it, Nicholas thought, the scholar in him exhilarated. This is the moment her blind faith cracks. The daughter of Wisdom is being forced to see the ugly truth behind the glorious myths.
In the end, survival won out. They fought Medusa, a chaotic, terrifying scuffle in the dark. Percy, using the reflection in a iPad they'd shoplifted, managed to behead her. As her body dissolved into sand, Nicholas looked at the head, now safely wrapped in a sack, and then at the countless statues.
"Do you think they're at peace now?" Percy asked quietly, his voice strained.
"No," Nicholas said, picking up the sack. "But at least no one else will join them because of her. The cycle of the gods' cruelty here is stopped. For now."
They left the emporium behind. Annabeth was unusually quiet, her brow furrowed in deep, troubled thought. Grover was just relieved to be alive. Percy carried the weight of the decapitation and the new, ugly perspective.
Nicholas walked beside them, the gorgon's head a weightless burden in his hand. Internally, he was alight with a cold, scholarly joy. He was not just following the story anymore. He was annotating it, editing it, highlighting its hypocrisies for the main characters to see. He was in the pages, turning them, and slowly, carefully, beginning to rewrite the text. The quest for the bolt continued, but a more important quest had begun in Annabeth's mind, and Nicholas, the hidden author, was thoroughly enjoying the new, rebellious direction of the plot.
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