That night was pretty horrible.
They camped in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food papers.
They had taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, but they didn't dare light a fire to dry their damp clothe—and except Annabeth, nobody knew how to light a fire. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. They didn't want to attract anything else.
They decided to sleep in shifts. Percy volunteered to take the first watch.
Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Y/N and Ethan lay on the ground, arms behind their head as pillows, watching the sky. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and starred at the night sky, too.
"Go ahead and sleep," Percy told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."
Grover nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. Y/N and Ethan neither, for that matter.
"It makes me sad, Percy," Grover said.
"What does? The fact that you signed for this stupid quest?" Percy asked.
"No. This makes me sad." Grover pointed at all the garbage on the ground. "And the sky. You can't even see the stars. They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr."
"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist," Percy said.
Grover and Ethan glared at him. "Only a human wouldn't be," Ethan retorted. "Your species is clogging up the world so fast...ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human."
Grover sighed. "At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."
"Pam? Like the cooking spray?" Percy said.
"Pan!" Grover cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"
A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. Suddenly Y/N was nostalgic for something he had never known.
"What's the search?" he asked.
Grover looked at him cautiously, as if he were afraid he was just making fun. "The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," he finally said. "A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, 'Tell them that the great god Pand has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refused to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden and wake him from his sleep."
"And you want to be a searcher, isn't it?" Y/N said.
"It's my life's dream?" Grover said. "My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand...the statue you saw back there—"
"Oh, right, sorry."
Grover shook his head. "Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive."
"Hang on—the first?" Percy repeated.
Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. "No searcher has ever come back. Once they set out, they disappear. They're never seen alive again."
"Not once in two thousand years?" Percy asked.
"No."
"And your dad?" Percy continued. "You have no idea what happened to him?"
"None."
"But you still want to go," Y/N said, amazed. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?"
"He must believe it, Y/N," Ethan said. "Every searcher must. It's the only thing that keeps us, satyrs, from despair when we loo, at what humans have done to the world. We have to believe Pan can still be awakened."
"And you? You want to be a searcher too?" Y/N asked him.
"I'm not brave," Ethan simply said. Then he starred at the sky.
Y/N tried to understand how Grover could pursue a dream that seemed hopeless. I followed Percy. It's not much crazier.
"How are we going to get into the Underworld?" he asked aloud. "In your opinion, what chance do we have against a god?"
"I don't know," Grover admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling me—"
"Annabeth already has a plan all figured out," Percy sighed.
"Don't be so hard on her, Percy," Grover said. "She's had a tough life, but she's a good person. After all, she forgave me...." His voice faltered.
"What do you mean?" Percy asked. "Forgave you for what?"
Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.
"Wait a minute," Percy said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth has been at camp five years. She wasn't...I mean, your first assignment that went wrong—"
"I can't talk about it," Grover said, and his quivering lower lip suggested he'd start crying if anyone pressed him. "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Annabeth and I agreed there's something strange going on with this quest. Something isn't what it seems."
"Well, duh. I'm getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took," Percy said wryly.
"That's not what he meant," Ethan said. "The Fur—The Kindly Ones were sort of holding back. On the bus, they just weren't as aggressive as they could've been."
"They seemed plenty aggressive to me," Y/N said.
Grover shook his head. "They were screeching at us: 'Where is it? Where?' They seemed to be asking about an object, not Percy."
"That doesn't make sense," Percy said.
"I know," Grover agreed. "But if we've misunderstood something about this quest, and we only have nine days to find the master bolt...." He looked at Percy like he was hoping for answers. Obviously, he didn't have any.
Once again, Y/N thought about what Medusa had said: he was being used by the gods. What lay ahead of him was worse than petrification. But wasn't it the case for all half-blood?
"I haven't been straight with you," Percy told them suddenly. "I don't care about the master bolt. I agreed to go to the Underworld so I could bring back my mother."
Y/N looked in turn at Grover and Ethan. They didn't seem surprised, not even a bit.
Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. "We know that, Percy. But are you sure that's the only reason?"
"I'm not doing it to help my father. He doesn't care about me. I don't care about him."
Grover gazed down from his tree branch. "Look, Percy, I'm not as smart as Annabeth. I'm not as brave as Y/N or Ethan or you. But I'm pretty good at reading emotions. You're glad your dad is alive. You feel good that he's claimed you, and part of you wants to make him proud. That's why you asked Y/N to add your name when he sent Medusa's head to Olympus. You wanted him to notice what you'd done."
"Yeah? Well maybe satyrs emotions work differently than human emotions. Because you're wrong. I don't care what he thinks."
Grover shrugged. "Okay, Percy. Whatever."
"Besides, I haven't done anything worth bragging about. We barely got out of New York and we're stuck here with no money and no way west."
Y/N stared at the ground. True, they hadn't made a good start toward arriving in the Underworld.
"How about I take the first watch, huh?" Grover said. "You get some sleep."
Percy tried to protest. Y/N and Ethan didn't. The moment Grover started to play Mozart, soft and sweet, they were asleep.
In his dreams, Y/N stood in the void again. And again, the old woman was there. She smiled as she walked around him, yet said nothing. When she left, she waved her hand lightly, as if she wanted to send all the blackness away, and Y/N felt propelled backward.
He was back on the edge of the icy cliff. Below, the infinite stretch of frozen water was still the only scenery, swept by an icy wind. Yet he didn't shiver. The land became clearer. He was standing at the top of a glacier ridge. The stretch of water was an ocean, and sunlight shone on the ice like on a skating rink. Out of the corner of his eye and on his left, Y/N caught sight of what looked like the remains of a very old, abandoned camp. He turned around, looking to his right. The Amphisbaena was right there, raised in front of him, its mouth opened wide, its fangs dripping with venom. He backed away and fell, tumbling down for what seemed an eternity before hitting the ice. He passed through without more difficulties he would have passed through a breeze.
He was on his feet again, and he ran. Behind him, a deep crevasse, so deep no one could have seen what lied under its blackness. In front of him, the ground. The ground under his feet kept falling in the darkness, and with each step he barely managed to remain on it. Suddenly the ground where he put his foot tore off the rest. He leaped, desperately trying not to fall.
The land changed again. He was on a hill now. Heaven tried to touch the earth. They were extremely close. Too close. They were going to—
Somebody was shaking him.
Y/N opened his eyes, and it was daylight.
"Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives."
Y/N was still dazed by his dream. He could still feel his stomach going up in his throat as he fell. "How long was I asleep?"
"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Annabeth tossed him a bag full of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "And Ethan went exploring. Look, he found a friend."
Ethan was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in his lap, a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal.
No. It wasn't a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle.
The poodle yapped at Y/N suspiciously. Ethan said, "No, he's not."
Y/N blinked. "Ar you...talking to that thing?"
The poodle growled.
"This thing," Ethan warned, "is our ticket west. Be nice to him."
"You can talk to animals?" Percy asked.
Ethan ignored the question. "Percy, mett Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy. And here's Y/N, my best friend. Y/N, Gladiola."
The poodle—Y/N could definitely not think of it as "Gladiola"—yapped.
"Gladiola tells you it's funny how you suck your thumb while you sleep," Ethan translated.
Y/N turned to Annabeth, waiting for her to laugh, but she looked deadly serious. Or maybe she hid her grin really well.
"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," Percy said. "Forget it."
"Percy," Annabeth said. "Grover said hello to the poodle. I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle. You too, Y/N."
The poodle growled.
Y/N and Percy said hello to the poodle.
Ethan explained that he'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd struck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich local family, who'd posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn't really want to go back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping Ethan.
"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" Y/N asked.
"He read the signs," Ethan said. "Duh."
"Of course," Y/N said. "Silly me."
"So we turn in Gladiola," Annabeth explained in her best strategic voice, "we get the money, and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple."
Y/N thought about his dream—the Amphisbaena, the first fall, the enemy in the darkness, the second fall, the hill. Was it what was waiting for him in the West?
"Not another bus," Grover said warily.
"No," Percy agreed.
Annabeth pointed downhill, toward train tracks Y/N hadn't been able to see last night in the dark. "There's an Amtrack station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, the westbound train leaves at noon."
A/N: Hello! Hope you enjoyed this chapter ^^ It was a lot of talking, I know, but there will be more action in the next one UwU
I don't know if the part with the dream is really clear so...well, tell me if it is or isn't (I mean clear in the sense you understand what he's seeing, not what it mean; the meaning will be for later)
See you next time and happy reading!