ʙᴏᴏᴋ ɪɪ : 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙖 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 | 𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚢 𝚡 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

Chapter 4

Their suspicions turned out to be right. The birds were slashing at any bit of exposed flesh, driving everyone into panic. When observed closely, they realized that they weren't normal pigeons. Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their beaks were made of bronze, and judging from the yelps of the campers, they must've been razor sharp. Those were Stymphalian birds as Annabeth yelled in the middle of the chaos. 

The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the track altogether and flew skyward in a huge dark wave.

"Now!" shouted Annabeth. "Archers!"

With clear targets, Apollo's archers had flawless aim. Most of them could knock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on the horizon.

The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn't pretty. Most of the chariots had been completely destroyed. Almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from multiple bird pecks. The kids from Aphrodite's cabin were screaming because their hairdos had been ruined and their clothes pooped on.

While Tantalus announced Clarisse as the winner, he also blamed Annabeth and Percy for what happened. The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson, and Percy hadn't disturbed them with their bad chariot driving. 

Y/N was too tired to save her friends from the punishment they received - kitchen patrol-scrubbing pots and platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Annabeth and Percy had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

She knew her special bow and arrow weren't working the way it was supposed to. So she took some time and practiced using the normal ones and clearly her training paid off. When her friends were busy with their punishment, Y/N was busy treating the wounds with the rest of the Apollo kids. It was good for training, but took a lot of energy out of her. Experience wise, she was still a few steps behind than the rest of them.

"Honestly why did you stand still like that?" Y/N said applying some medicine of Harris's scratched arm. 

His nose scrunched as the area stung and he chuckled, "Wow, nice way to say thank you for saving your ass. TWO TIMES."

She huffed and dabbed a bit harder at the comment as he yelped. She smiled and said, "You could've ran you know? Tch, look at what your stupidity did."

"Okay you gotta stop scolding me like my parents do," He laughed.

She stopped for a moment and looked at him, "Turns out we DO act the same way as our parents when shit happens."

"So are we gonna talk about it or...."

"We are not."

"Well atleast you accept that you've been feeling down."

Y/N cleaned up the medical supplies and chuckled, "You are not gonna let this go, will you?"

"Glad we are on the same page," he laughed, "By the way, I saved your ass two times and still had to wait in the queue for treatment? Like there's no respect for friendship down here huh!"

She laughed and said, "We serve every patient equally. Oh, you gotta go now, the others are-"

"Take a break Y/N," one of her half brother said, "You've been working non-stop. We can handle the last few of them."

"Okay thank you," she said, getting up and stretching her arms. She walked outside towards the canoe lake along with Harris. As she sat down, she said, "Look, I know I'm stuck in a weird situation but they are my friends. You can't expect me to not support them."