On the Wings of Victory (A Percy Jackson Quest)

A tall wall looms in front of you. Not metaphorically, quite literally as you gaze at the peak of Camp Half-Blood's famed climbing wall. It's been a few days since you had your ass handed to you and you've moved on to other things, trying to find what you're good at and what you're not. So far, you're good with a weapon, and you're as quick as the Hermes kids. Your quests to shoot lightning from your hands, control the water or summon the dead haven't been fruitful. Speaking of fruit, you took a quick walk into the orchard outside camp only to be shoo'd away by Demeter's kids once you grabbed an apple from a tree and they realised you weren't planning on helping.

In your quest to find out what you're good at you find yourself here. A gentle breeze flows through the area, swaying you slightly as you sit off the wall held up by another camp member taking a quick breath. To the left of you there's a string of curses as a plume of magma shoots out of the wall and scorches their hands. They quickly wave themselves down and you watch those around you through their own struggles.

And as you watch others, you note others gazing at you in turn. Not just your fellow climbers but those at the bottom. Prying eyes all waiting for you to show a glimpse of magic or might that will make your parent known. In truth, it's more irritating than anything as you take another breath and then will yourself to resume. Your hands sting from effort of holding up your weight and you settle your feet into the familiar grooves which you've been launching your climbing efforts from the entire morning. The path ahead is tricky. You know that firsthand having climbed into a passage of unreachable gaps or slipping on a particularly small hold for the last thirty minutes.

But you'll be damned if you don't find a way through this.

You gaze back up the wall again, slowly inching your way up until you come to another footrest. Far off to your right you see a handhold, one that if you were to pull yourself up with it the rest of the course would be a breeze.

Roll DC 100 – Result 8!

You steel yourself, test how much weight you can put on your feet and then you swing yourself by the handholds and leap for it.

You hang in the air for seconds, and it feels like you're flying.

Only for a moment.

Gravity remembers you and your hands flail as you realise you're not going to make it. Your index finger scrapes against the hold and you feel a stab of pain, the nail and the hold becoming one as it rips off your finger. You wave your hand against the stinging sensation and realise you're still falling. Your buddy hasn't caught you and you look down to see him busy chatting up the girl next to him.

With no recourse left you yell as you fall to the bottom. Some might say you screamed, but whatever it is the guy gets the point and quickly tugs you to safety. The sudden halt in your fall makes you feel like all the circulation has been choked out of your legs, but at least you're not falling four metres onto nothing more than dirt and the unfortunate people walking under you.

"Want to go again?" The guy asks you, looking down at the rope in his hands and very much avoiding your gaze.

The girl he was chatting to giggles as you take off the harness and leave without a word.

You make your way into the cabin, avoiding the glances of your fellow campers as you cradle your hand, trying to block it from any thing it could scrape against. You make your way over to the tap, running it under cold water, seething as you do so. You almost want to leave it but if you found out you were part god just to lose a finger from infection, you'd probably never forgive yourself. You gently put a hand towel over it, drying it off before you move to the communal supplies, surely bandage or wrapping tape would be a something you can find easy in this spot.

Roll D5 – Result 4

"Let me take a look." A voice says and you turn around to see a girl about your age standing right behind you.

These silent Hermes kids are going to kill you one day. Yesterday, you'd dug into breakfast alone, looked at the head table and turned to find Amos having slipped in next to you without making a sound.

You're fairly sure he was munching on your bacon too, but you had no way of proving that.

You stare at brown hair and green eyes. The girl is lithe, maybe an inch shorter than you and you're sure there's almost no muscle to her but that is disproven in a second as she roughly grabs your hand and looks at the wound. She presses her fingers into your nailbed and you hiss in pain before she drops it and moves over to her space, a few feet down from yours. She drops underneath it, scrummaging around for something. Her humming fills in the silence between the two of you as you watch what she's doing, the pain in your finger slowly receding, constant but less. You hear wheels scraping against the wooden floor and she pulls out a suitcase almost larger than her.

You're impressed as you watch her throw it on top of her bed with surprising ease before she goes to unlock it, turning to look at you pointedly and you turn away to give her the privacy she wants.

As a flurry of locks click into place you decide it's safe to turn around and you aren't lying when you see her staring at about thirty vials all carefully secured as spins each one around and reads what's on them. With a satisfied nod she grabs on that's far to the right, a thick brown liquid that looks like mud and she grabs your hand again, uncorking the vial in one hand before she dumps the liquid on your finger without warning.

As it settles onto your hand you know that it doesn't just look like mud, it is. Mud that immediately settles on top of your finger and you feel the moisture flood through you, while the mud instantly dries on top of your nailbed, forming cracks along the surface as the two seem to fuse together.

"Leave it for the hour." She tells you as she closes her suitcase and throws it under the bed. Already you can feel the pain ebbing away, vanishing altogether as you stare at the dried mud that is your new fingernail in wonder.

"What are you? A witch or something?" You say out loud as you run your finger over it curiously, marveling at how it feels exactly like the ground you walk on.

"Something like that." She says with a wry smile. "Daphne."

"Hector."

The sound of a horn rips through the camp before you can continue talking and you stare in the direction it came from. "What's that?" You ask her as you kick out the chair next to your bed and take a seat on it. As you do a flurry of bodies storm into the cabin and begin to pick up pieces of armor and equipment from their personal stock.

"Border patrol." She says, pulling a piece of armor out and strapping it on. "Seems like you won't be sitting down for much longer."

A second later one of the older Hermes cabin members, a dark-skinned girl with white scars running up and down both arms steps in and selects ten of you. You note that most of you are younger than the rest of the cabin and you remember Amos saying he was going to put the new recruits on the border. Slowly you fall into step behind the girl in charge, Laura you eventually find out and you march straight from the cabin into the forest. A painted tree marks a path that leads into the forest and you follow it, Daphne next to you as you move quickly.

"How long have you been at camp?"

"Six? Maybe seven months." She says. "I got pissed at a girl and turned her hair into tree branches. Dad shipped me out pretty quickly after that."

"That's… Impressive?" You venture, not quite sure what to say to that and she shakes her head.

"I was aiming for snakes." She says and Laura looks over her shoulder at the two of you and you both fall silent.

Eventually the path leads to a clearing. Two other cabins are standing in the middle and you can tell which one the Ares cabin is by the fact they're all wearing the exact same color armor Kyle was wearing when you met him the other day. At the front of them is an older guy, short blond hair spiked to the fullest extent that physics allows. If you remember right that must be Dimitri. Behind him is a surly looking kid about your age who glares at all of you upon arrival. You promptly look away from him and turn to the other cabin instead, armed to the teeth with bows and arrows. The closer you get to them the warmer you feel, almost as if they're giving off a heat of their own and it clicks into place almost instantly.

The leader of the Apollo Cabin clears his throat as your group approaches and Dimitri turns, flashing a welcoming grin as Laura tells you all to wait here and they quickly fall into an animated and sometimes heated discussion while the rest of you stay apart in silence. You feel your armor digging into your shoulder blade and dig your hand underneath to adjust it. On your back a spear is strapped, and a sword hangs loosely from your waist. Apparently, the Apollo kids were archers enough and all you'd needed to bring was weapons to fight up close. You glance curiously at Daphne as her foot taps restlessly against the ground.

You don't remember her bringing anything.

Eventually the group leaders come up for air and the Apollo leader flashes you all a grin.

"We're going to split up the cabins equally." He says at last. "One half will come with me and Dimitri and head West, the others will go with Laura and head East."

You all stare as you hear the instructions, but no one is the first to move. That is until Dimitri claps his hands and tells everyone to get moving and in an instant everyone does.

To your left, Dimitri and the head of the Apollo cabin sit, the surly kid who had been staring daggers at you earlier stalks over to them and resumes his intense gazing. To the right Laura is quickly positioning the people with her into teams and giving everyone's equipment a once over. You look at Daphne who shrugs aimlessly and it seems like if you're going to make a decision you won't be getting any help.

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Small update to tide over the weekend.