A Son From Lands Unknown (PJO x Male Reader)

Working With the New Leg

For the most part, it was in that bed that (Y/N) sat for the next few days. He would occasionally get up to try and walk again, but without assistance, it always ended the same way: taking a faceful of concrete as he fell when he lost balance on the prosthetic leg. Beckendorf would occasionally stop by and make small adjustments to the leg to see if that would help, but it rarely did. At most, it would allow him to take a couple more steps before face-planting.

This left him with a lot of time to practice his alchemy. He still couldn't do what the alchemists of the past were trying to do in turning lead into gold, but he could do the inverse. Each time, in doing so, he found himself energized, even more so than when just in direct contact with gold. He also found out what the primary elements in alchemy were, those being metals of antiquity. He could turn gold into silver, silver into copper, copper into iron, iron into tin, tin into mercury, and mercury into lead. However, he was unable to go backward in this process at all, quickly finding himself exhausted before even getting partway through. As such, he was left with an abundance of lead in his room, something the Apollo campers were quick to clear out due to the chance of poisoning others.

When Annabeth came to visit him, (Y/N) asked her to bring him any and all books they had on alchemy. He had already read through a few of them in his free time, but not all of them. He figured then was a fantastic time to fix some of that. He kindly asked (read: demand under threat of snitching) one of the Stoll brothers to retrieve his iPod from his section of the Hermes cabin, popped the earbuds in, and got to reading. He skipped all the chapters that he recognized as well as those that theorized things he had already confirmed. What really interested him was the section on the Magnum Opus, or the Great Work. It detailed a theory on how the ultimate creator and storage of energy, or at least a piece of matter holding so much energy that it could be confused for infinite. It even had a name for what the supposed material would look like and be called.

The Philosopher's Stone.

Considering that everything in the book had been theorized correctly (barring the occasional clerical error in amounts or ratios and the like), (Y/N) wondered why the thing hadn't been created yet. Though there were also no confirmed cases of anyone doing what (Y/N) had done in changing the materials to another form, so perhaps his being the son of Mammon allowed him to actually test those theories.

The book he was reading outlined three methods, one far simpler than the others, and therefore less likely to work in (Y/N)'s mind. The first method was to simply char, wash, sunbathe, and then soak in blood whatever material you were using. Needless to say, it was unlikely to work at the best of times.

Before he could read further and see what the other processes outlined in the text were, there was a knock at the door, one loud enough that (Y/N) heard it even though he had his earbuds in. It was Beckendorf, there to make more adjustments to his leg. The son of Hephaestus was taking a socket wrench to the knee joint, wondering if loosening the tolerances of the joint would allow it to say better. He also swapped out the lightweight foot for one that was much heavier, also in an attempt to give it better balance through a lower center of gravity.

"Alright, give it a shot," Beckendorf said, gesturing for (Y/N) to stand and try walking again. (Y/N) did so, finding the change in hardware to be a fantastic one. His leg felt smoother than before, more natural. He was able to walk from one end of the room to the other without falling, though he was definitely leaning hard on his cane.

"Yes!" (Y/N) shouted, excited that he could finally get out of the Big House. He took his first cautious steps out of the Big House with the new leg, leaning on the cane a damn-near excessive amount. With his ability to move around the camp on two feet restored, he was finally able to do the camp activities again, something he was excited about. However, that would have to wait until the next day, as the sun was beginning to set over the horizon. So, for the first time since his encounter with the Eidolon, (Y/N) went to bed in his own sleeping bag in the Hermes cabin.