At dinner, Tantalus was very excited.
"We are reinstituting the chariot races!"
Everyone's jaws dropped. Whatever he was getting at, it wasn't good. The chariot races were discontinued because of all the injuries and deaths from previous years. Many murmurs went through the pavilion before Tantalus clapped his hands to get our attention back.
"I know you will all join me in welcoming the return of this camp tradition," A few people cleared their throats awkwardly. "Golden laurels will go to the winning charioteers each month. Teams may register in the morning. The first race will be in three days. We will release you from most of your regular activities to prepare your chariots and choose your horses."
I raised my hand to object. We couldn't just abandon the border patrol and camp guarding. Tantalus wasn't finished.
"Oh, and did I mention, the victorious team's cabin will have no chores for the month in which they win?"
This changed everyone's minds pretty quickly. Except Clarisse.
"What about patrol duty?" She was wringing her hands. "If we drop everything to ready our chariots—"
Tantalus practically laughed in her face. "Not to worry, my dear! This is a summer camp. We are here to enjoy ourselves, yes?"
Clarisse started to object again, but one of her siblings pulled her down to her seat.
I ignored the rest of what Tantalus was talking about. He pulled up the Cyclops from earlier and made some very not-good comments and jokes. Meanwhile, I was already designing my chariot.
"Hey," I leaned over the table to talk to my siblings. "Who wants to si—"
"Is there something so important that you must interrupt all the fun we are having, girl?"
I slowly turned back to Tantalus. Everyone was looking at me. This was my chance to object about the whole drop everything and play deadly games situation, but I just gulped and stood up.
"No... sir." I added that last word with distaste. "I was just asking my cabinmates about building a chariot for your oh-so-important war games."
Tantalus apparently liked to laugh at teenagers, because he did so again. This time, more people were reluctant to laugh at me along with him. "Not like a Demeter child to want to do anything, is it?"
"Watch your mouth, oldie. She's listening." I clenched my fists.
"Oldie?" He narrowed his eyes. No one was laughing anymore. "I'm going to ignore that, but watch your tongue from now on."
"Oh, go chase a hamburger." I growled as I sat down. That one hit, apparently, because more laughs rang out than the ones directed at me. The Hermes kids especially appreciated that one, and Connor winked at me. Nice one, he mouthed at me silently.
Mr. D wasn't too happy with that one. "Mindy," He warned. "Tantalus is here on request, and you will treat him the same way you treated Chiron. That goes for all of you!"
Everyone went silent. Sure, Dionysus was always grumpy. But he never yelled, especially not at a group of this size.
"Now," Tantalus suddenly forgot about everything that had just happened and was back to his grossly cheery self. "Let's get back to where we'll put this thing!" He pointed to the Cyclops. The enthusiasm wasn't as high as it had been before I'd been singled out.
Apparently we didn't need to worry about where 'we'd put this thing,' because a brilliant green and blue trident shimmered over the Cyclops' head.
Poseidon had claimed him as his son.
•
I scraped half of my breakfast into the brazier and prayed to Demeter asking her to kick Tantalus' sorry ass back to Tartarus. She didn't like to dabble in the underworld — for obvious reasons — so I doubted that she'd answer.
After a quiet breakfast, I went to search for someone to join up with for the chariot race. My half-siblings weren't interested and I had a half hour until it was too late to sign up. Annabeth was with Percy, the Ares Cabin would never branch out from their family, Beckendorf was nice enough but we weren't friends.
"Greetings."
I turned around. "Hi, Travis."
"So..." He looked around. "Wanna design a chariot with us?" Connor popped out from behind him.
I crossed my arms. "How can I trust that you won't just shove me off the chariot and into oncoming traffic? And isn't it only one driver and one fighter?"
Connor raised an eyebrow. "Since when have we ever followed the rules? I'm hurt that you think we'd even consider for one second what Tantal-ass has to say."
"Tantal-ass." I scoffed, smiling. "Cute."
"Well?"
"Fine."
We went up and the boys wrote their names down. They then added my name in some invisible ink they'd nicked from a joke shop out of camp.
An hour later, we were sitting on the Hermes cabin roof, notebooks in hand. Turns out, sixteen years of being prank masters really helps with designing the perfect armed chariot.
After a couple hours of designing and planning, we went to pick out our horses. I rarely spent time in the stables, but the Stolls definitely had some sort of bribe worked out with the pegasi and horses so I followed their lead.
Next step: actually building the chariot. I left that to the boys, while I figured out what weapons we would need and where they'd go.
We used the rest of the three given days working and reworking the chariot. We finally finished at night before the race.
It wasn't yet dark outside, but the sun was going down. All three of us stepped back to inspect the chariot. I tucked my pencil behind my ear and smiled.
"It looks great, guys. I never pegged you for engineers."
Connor threw one arm over my shoulder and the other over Travis'.
"There's plenty of things you don't know about us, Callaghan." He winked. "Let's make a deal. We win this race tomorrow, you sneak into the city with us for a celebratory dinner overnight."
"You think you can do that?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Sure we can! We're sneaking masterminds." Travis hit my arm playfully.
"Alright. Deal. But if we get eaten by harpies, I'm gonna kill you in the underworld."
•
The boys had built a little compartment for me to hide in until the race to avoid any complications. I had to admit, they were pulling out all the stops to bend the rules.
Our chariot wasn't much of a looker, but we had some nice things planned.
It was a hot and foggy morning, and there were probably thousands of birds sitting in the trees. Pigeon-like, but they didn't coo. It was more of a nuclear bomb alarm type of sound.
The racetrack was built between the woods and the archery range. It had gone up quickly, thanks to the metallic bulls.
The spectators — Tantalus, the other campers, satyrs, and the nymphs — sat in rows of stone steps. No Mr. D yet.
Tantalus yelled across the pavilion as we started setting up. I could only see the ground and Tantalus' feet through the cracks in my compartment.
"You all know the rules! A quarter-mile track. Twice around to win. Two horses per chariot. Each team will consist of a driver and a fighter. Weapons are allowed, dirty tricks are expected, and try not to kill anybody! Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s'mores at the campfire for a week! Now, ready your chariots!"
Travis kicked my box, signaling for me to come out. I thought the whole thing was rather ridiculous, but I complied.
"Hey! Hermes!" Tantalus noticed immediately. "You can't have three people! You didn't sign her up either!" He looked pretty funny, hobbling over to us shaking his bony hand.
"Ah," Connor grinned innocently, which I didn't know was something he could do. "But we did! And you didn't say anything about it, so we thought it was fine."
Travis and I nodded. Tantalus rushed back over to his table and snatched up the paper. "No, you didn't!"
Travis hopped out of the chariot and strolled over to Tantalus. He took out the little flashlight and showed my name in invisible ink. "Right there!"
Everyone was silent. I hadn't met a single camper who actually liked Tantalus, so I was hoping no one would object.
Tantalus looked about ready to explode, but he'd certainly be crushed to death (again?) if anyone woke up Dionysus before ten o'clock.
Tantalus sighed, and waved Travis off. He probably thought we were going to reach a weight limit with three people anyway, and he loved seeing us get hurt.
Travis bounded back and we all got set.
"Charioteers! Attend your mark!" He waved his hand and the starting signal dropped.
Travis was driving, and Connor and I were fighters. Everyone got the horses moving and the race set off.
"Apollo! On the left!" I shouted, and Connor threw a javelin right into their axle. A loud crack! rang out and the whole chariot flipped. First chariot down, and we were still going strong.
"We make a good team!" Travis shouted over his shoulder. We were all pretty confident, so we sped up a bit to pass Hephaestus.
So... that was short lived. One of the frantic horses of the broken Apollo chariot kicked one of our wheels and we went skidding to the left, before ultimately flipping and landing in a pile of our chariot wood.
"Yup," I lifted a chunk of our wheel off my head. "Good team."
We lay in defeat for a bit, then grabbed our broken chariot and started to drag it to the spectator stands to sit and watch the rest of the race. Our horses had run off back to the stables on their own.
"That was fun." I deadpanned. Travis grunted, but Connor tried to cheer us up.
"At least we- holy shit!"
I looked up from my shoes to see what he was looking at. A huge tornado. No, a tornado of those alarm pigeons. And it was headed straight for the track.
"Uhhh..." I started to stand up. "Should we run?" The birds were much advancing toward the stands at a worryingly fast rate.
No one had time to answer. The birds had reached us and were starting to dive-bomb the spectators and the chariots.
I blocked the first bird with a piece of the broken chariot, but they weren't letting up. With every bird I pushed away, five more came back even faster. The Apollo campers were trying to shoot at the birds, but there was so much chaos that it couldn't be helped. There were so many swords, shields, and beaks flying all over the place, I could hardly see anything.
I stomped as hard as I could on the ground, and a multitude of wooden shards from the other broken chariots stabbed the birds. I quickly found that if I was controlling weapons with my powers, it would be a much more direct hit than a wild guess with an arrow.
I wasn't as lucky as I thought I was, though. My first hit came in my shoulder. It was such a searing pain I couldn't help but cry out. Another one at my lower back, then my arm, then my other shoulder, et cetera, et cetera.
There were, miraculously, still moving chariots on the track. The Athena and Poseidon chariots had... turned around? Ares was still moving towards the finish line because Clarisse couldn't judge when things were dangerous and when things were fun.
The Stolls didn't have it any better than I did. Both of their shirts were ripped, and they hadn't brought weapons other than the ones in the chariot. They had started throwing rocks at the birds. It was working, but they also hit a few campers in the process.
I was too busy trying not to get eaten alive to notice that Percy and Annabeth had completely left the venue, but they had returned already.
Suddenly, Dean Martin started playing as loud as you can imagine, and the birds went crazy.
I'm not sure if they really loved Dean Martin and were trying to dance, or if they hated Dean Martin and wanted to put themselves out of their misery. Either way, they started flying in circles up into the sky.
All of the archers let their arrows fly at the now clear targets. In minutes, all the birds were either dead on the ground or far away on the horizon.
The birds were gone, but not without mayhem. I looked down to see that my clothes were absolutely torn apart. And not in a sexy, teasing way, in a the person your mom told you to stay away from kind of way.
Everyone else was in pretty much the same boat. I was bleeding from practically everywhere and what was left of my clothes were covered in bird poop.
People had quieted down, and it was mostly crying rather than screaming at this point.
"Bravo!" Tantalus clapped. I couldn't imagine what he was cheering about at a time like this. "We have our first winner!"
He awarded Clarisse with the golden laurels. The air hung with stunned silence. After what has just happened, the wrinkly old thing still made a contest out of it.
"And now," He turned to Annabeth, Percy, and Tyson — the cyclops. "To punish the troublemakers who disrupted this race."
I thought it was completely absurd, but I was a bit proud when Percy told Tantalus to go chase a donut.
•
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