Champion of Love

The Oracle Is Stuck In A Corpse And She Makes It Everyone Else's Problem

The Attic was warm and smelled like mildew and rotten wood and something else....a smell Percy remembered distinctly from biology class-reptiles. Specifically, snakes.

He wrinkled his nose, but approached the dusty form of the mummy that likes to stare at him from the window when no one else was around to see it move. There were still clumps of dry, brittle black hair laying over the skull, clinging to it with only a hope and a prayer. She was dressed like a hippie, with a tie-dyed dress and lots of bead necklaces around her neck. Percy wondered if she'd actually died up there or if her body had been moved to this dusty old attic to serve as the Oracle of Delphi even in death. He wondered why the spirit hadn't passed onto another host like it was supposed to. He knew some people with pretty dark senses of humor, but none of them would leave the spirit of an oracle behind in their dead bodies and make it everyone else's problem. Maybe the Oracle had a grudge against the gods. But, like always, it was taken out on the children of the gods.

Percy knew a good amount about the Oracle because Aphrodite liked to rant about how boring it was to remain a virgin forever. As a result, Percy knew a lot about the virgin goddesses who'd sworn maidenhood forever, along with the Oracle of Delphi and the Hunters of Artemis. Unfortunately, that also included knowing how Athena "gave birth," so to speak, and every time Percy saw the Athena campers, that information popped up in his head and weirded him out.

He examined the rest of the Attic curiously, hoping to forget about how this girl died and still had to serve the gods and their children even in death.

There were all sorts of spoils of war and souvenirs and pickled parts of monsters in jars one would probably see in some evil cartoon scientist's lab. There were armor stands covered in cobwebs, once-bright and shiny shields covered in rust, old leather steamer trunks and other various containers plastered with stickers saying things like ITHAKA, CIRCE'S ISLE, and LAND OF THE AMAZONS, and even THE LABYRINTH. Interestingly, that last one was slapped on an old- fashioned glass milk bottle that milkmen used to deliver and collect back in the day.

One long table was stacked with mason jars filled with pickled body parts-sharp bloodstained claws, huge ugly eyes, long crooked fingers, and even a set of fanged dentures, weirdly enough. A dusty trophy mounted on the wall looked like a giant snake's head, but with horns and a full set of shark teeth-a hydra head? That was a lucky spoil, usually they left just claws or teeth behind(Aphrodite had shown him how to make jewelry out of his collection of spoils he had from monsters he'd fought -primarily claws and fangs). The plaque for it read, HYDRA HEAD #1, WOODSTOCK, N.Y., 1969. Percy wondered how that went down. He imagined more or less something like a hippie riot with a lot of screaming about Peace and Love while some poor demigod had to fight a hydra and convince the angry hippie mortals around them that killing the hydra would be what brought them peace.

Percy looked back to the mummy at the sound of a CLACK!, like her bones had just shifted against each other. Just looking at her sent a shudder up the young hero's spine. And that was before she sat up on her stool and opened her mouth.

If he jumped about five feet in the air, he'd never tell and only Percy and the oracle would ever know. He got the feeling she wouldn't be telling anyone either.

Green mist poured out of the mummy's mouth, coiling over the floor in thick tendrils, hissing
like snakes. Percy backed away from them, but they coiled around his feet.

In his head, a voice hissed, "I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seeker, and ask."

Percy debated asking it why it was taking up residence in a dead body, but he wasn't looking to get cursed, so instead, he asked, "What is my place in this quest?"