Camp Hermit-Blood - The Sea of Monsters

Grian

Dishes wasn't the worst punishment Tantalus could have come up with. Of course, Grian didn't say that out loud.

Why was he a part of this, you might ask?
Well, that was because Grian was salvaging the unused explosives from the Hermes chariot. Tantalus took that as a bad thing.

It wasn't a bad thing before but, it was a bad thing now. Grian was going to explode him right back to Punishment now.

The dishes gave Percy and Annabeth plenty of time to talk out their problems while Grian and Tyson had a bunch of staring contests with the lava. Tyson lost interest in their conversation after minutes.

Grian did not.

Apparently they had forgotten he was there, or maybe they trusted him enough to talk about Grover being captured with him around. Either way, it was probably a mistake.

"So your dream about Grover... you're telling the truth?" Annabeth asked.

Grian scrubbed a plate and pretended to not be listening.

Percy rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm telling the truth. Why would I lie about this?"

"But an empathy link... that's a hard thing to do," Annabeth stressed. "If he's really in danger, and he actually made an empathy link-"

"I could die. I know," Percy grumbled.

"I've just been thinking about what the Grey Sisters told you," Annabeth said. "They sent Jason to the Golden Fleece back in ancient times. Do you remember that story?"

"Yeah, the old movie with the clay skeletons."

Now it was Annabeth's turn to roll her eyes. "No, idiot. The actual quest. They wanted the Golden Fleece because of its nature magic."

"So this Cyclops guy is using the Fleece to lure satyrs in by making them think it's Pan."

Grian had no idea what they were talking about, other than the whole thing with Grover and Pan. He knew the satyr was searching for the wild god.

"Yeah," Annabeth said. "It also has some crazy healing magic. Magic that could..."

She suddenly gasped.

"That could what?" Grian and Percy said in unison, and then the two other demigods finally remembered he was there.

"Save Thalia's tree," Annabeth said.

"HA! I TOLD YOU GROVER FOUND SOMETHING!" Percy cheered.

"But it's been lost for centuries," Annabeth said. "It'd be impossible to find."

"Except Grover found it!" Percy said.

"What about those coordinates?" Grian suggested.

They fell silent.

"You know, the pointless numbers that Zedaph thought were coords?" Grian said.

Annabeth dropped the lava-proof sponge. "Oh, you're right," she said. "Of course a Cyclops lives in the Sea of Monsters!"

"I actually said something smart," Grian muttered happily to himself. If Mumbo had been here, he would have been proud.

"We need a quest," Annabeth decided.

------

At the end of the campfire that night (the fire was the color of cyan terracotta)  Clarisse stood up and reminded some of the campers that they had watch duty that night.

Since the barriers on the camp were down, the campers had organized a watch to kept the monsters out. It was a good solution, but everyone knew it wouldn't last long. One of these days, someone was going to die and they would have to find another method.