Myth Mashup (A Percy Jackson, Magnus Chase, and Kane Chronicles crossover)

Chapter 11: Hazel's POV

I was walking away from the praetor villas, with my arm wrapped around Frank Zhang, my boyfriend. We were enjoying the beautiful landscape of Camp Jupiter on top of Temple Hill - it was especially gorgeous when the sun was just rising above the terracotta white buildings of New Rome. We saw some children running around, playing with each other even at this ungodly (pun intended) hour of the morning. As praetors, we had to get up even earlier than everyone else (I didn't really mind - I was an early bird anyway).

That's when we got the Iris message. Honestly, I was still surprised every time one popped up. We Romans never used them - it was an exclusively Greek thing. So, when a life-size image of Annabeth, Percy, Leo, Piper, Nico, Chiron, and Dionysus appeared right before my eyes, I jumped back a little. Leo was smiling maniacally (pretty standard behavior for him, actually), but the rest of them looked grim. Made sense, at least for Annabeth, Nico, and Chiron. Usually Piper and Percy were a bit more animated. As for Dionysus, I don't think he actually cared about anything, so he was just ignoring me and Frank.

"Guys! Hey! Why're you calling?" Frank spluttered, and I realized that he had also been startled by the sudden message.

"Well, it all started-" Leo started to say, but was cut off.

"Long story. I'm not exactly in the mood to explain it for like, the fourth time, so I'll just give you the short version. The Norse and Egyptian gods are real, and we think that a few of them are plotting something along with a Greek or Roman deity," Percy explained in one big breath.

"Excuse me?" I said, a bit frazzled by the sudden onslaught of information. But honestly, it made sense. Reyna had told me that Harpocrates was who had been ruining communications for everyone, and he was a Greco-Egyptian hybrid god. But the fact that Norse deities were real was news to me and Frank.

"Uh... yeah. I don't really know how I can explain this better without all of us being here for hours. Annabeth has a cousin, Magnus, who's a Norse demigod. She and I ran into the Kane siblings, two Egyptian magicians, last year. That's how we discovered all this crazy stuff. We decided not to tell anyone except Chiron, since we figured it would be too dangerous."

Frank was just staring at them in silence, trying to process all of this. He blinked a couple of times, and then said, "Um... okay. Sure."

"What do you need us to do? Should we go over to Camp Half-Blood, to prepare?" I asked.

"That's what we were hoping," Chiron replied. I had only met the old centaur a few times; either from Iris Messages, or times when Camp Jupiter headed over to the Greeks' camp for a little get together.

I nodded, but looked at Frank with a worried expression. "The entirety of Camp Jupiter can't come. We've had three major battles in the past year. Our numbers are low, and if we had everyone come, the morale would be even lower. We can't risk it. Someone needs to lead the legion while one of us comes. We all know what happened last time when the praetor left Camp unattended."

Everyone grimaced at the thought. A year ago, Reyna Ramírez- Arellano had left Camp Jupiter to bring the Athena Parthenos statue to Camp Half-Blood, leaving Octavian in charge. Terrible decision. Without Reyna to boss Octavian around, he advanced the entire legion to Camp Half-Blood to wipe out all of the Greeks, despite Reyna's direct order to not initiate a battle. That had ended in Gaea almost winning, and Octavian accidentally blowing himself up in a huge fireball, For the glory of New Rome. I still shuddered when I thought about how disastrous it was.

"Sorry, can I talk to Hazel for a sec?" Frank asked the others. They all nodded.

"Go ahead," Chiron said.

Frank grabbed my arm, and pulled me aside, facing the opposite direction of the message.

"You should go. I can stay here and handle the legion," he said.