Thalia shuddered as Silena and Luke and Beckendorf came to vet her and the Hunters as they appeared at the borders of Castellan. There was an oppressive air that surrounded the kingdom that she hadn't felt since the Second Titanomachy. There were cracks in the ground that the mortal and skeleton crews were trying to fill and pave away. Katie's "babies" were climbing out of their soil, making way to her private garden and dripping poison everywhere. They didn't even have eyes, but Thalia still felt like they were staring into her soul.
She dropped some of her belongings off in Yew Village even when knowing that she'd be spending most of her time at the palace with the others.
She could hear Annabeth and Clarisse barking orders as they trained their recruits into the ground. Talia knew her friends well enough. It was unacceptable that Ariadnê was stolen away from them; they were going to ignore every rule of inevitability to tear Ilion to pieces to get her back.
Death lingered in the air heavily. If she didn't find it so normal, it would be concerning. A large prism sat not too far from the temple of Haidês that were carting souls off to domoi Aïdao. Nico was standing to the side, marking off the bodies to send back to Ilion. She wouldn't have been surprised if he had placed something poisonous within the bundles of bodies for revenge.
Thalia felt her throat clog. Her family was hurting, and she was chasing after a life already lived. She never thought that she would see her friends so disheartened ever again. They hadn't looked this bad since Annabeth had been taking and collecting the bodies after the Second Titanomachy. The weariness had been shared between over a hundred campers, but these feelings were not even a third of that.
That was without mentioning the oppressive air that she knew was coming from Percy. Thalia honestly felt that one wrong move would end with a storm of unmanageable magnitude or a one-way first class express ticket to the Underworld.
And Katie's garden was giving her the creeps. There was something evil within there, and the way that her "babies" made their own spiked gate was terrifying.
The girl in question seemingly didn't even notice in the midst of her stress baking as Sweet Sito and Deione's Daily Bread was overflowing with goods. Grover's Grocery was being wiped clean as she used every fruit and vegetable that were placed within.
Luke had moved back to help her, tables and baskets were overflowing from in front of the storefronts. The spirit was basically handing them out for free. Thalia inwardly cooed when she saw a few hellpups get the puppy biscuits and some disappear down to the Underworld to take some to the realms' King and Queen and their retinue. That was without mentioning the hydrapups that were taking some back to the sea.
Connor and Chris and Travis were being comforted by Krokus and Apollôn. Travis was stress-eating the things that his girlfriend was stress-baking while coming up with incredibly detailed plots to force feed Paris' spine to Menelaos. Chris was nodding along, throwing out various amendments to Plans that the Eleventh Cabin had ever created for punishments. It was all the god could do to soothe Connor's rage when it rose to almost treacherous heights. She decided to ignore the moments when saw him kiss the younger, throwing his concentration far from the girl who held his heart.
And she had Beckendorf beg her to pull Will away from his forge as the child of the sun was making literally boatloads of arrows. She was impressed by the tetrodotoxin mixed with ellada fire and black plague arrow that he made. She bought a few off of him as a gift for Artemis.
Nico and Katie had clearly sensed her, appearing abruptly from their chosen tasks. She understood of course. She could sense it, the death magic that radiated from the two of them. Dêmêtêr did presided over the foremost of the Mystery Cults which promised its initiates the path to a blessed afterlife in the realm of Elysium and Haidês was of course the king of the underworld and god of the dead who presided over funeral rites and defended the right of the dead to due burial.
