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"I had a dream last night."
Drowsily, everyone turned their attention to Percy, blinking slowly and chewing their breakfast even slower.
Fighting that monster in the dead of night had left the crew of the Argo II absolutely wiped. Cleaning up the mess from the battle took hours, and by the time anyone's heads hit their pillow, the sun was already peaking over the horizon, like, You thought you were gonna get to sleep tonight? Bahahaha!
Nobody else was laughing. In fact, nobody else was speaking. Breakfast had been an entirely silent affair, up until Percy cleared his throat.
Jason blinked, the piece of bacon in his hand hanging limp and forgotten with Percy's words.
"You had a dream," he repeated, after a too-long silence. Jason shrugged, faking mystification. "How on earth did you manage that, Percy?"
Percy shifted in his seat, glancing down at his plate of blue pancakes. "Well, I slept a little," he said defensively. "Before... you know. In the sickbay."
"Which you're going to get back to as soon as we finish breakfast," Theo reminded him with a short nod. "But go on."
"It was all sorts of undersea politics," Percy said, shrugging. "Merpeople are pretty territorial. The gist of it was that they were warning us—to get into Rome, we're going to have to face Tibernius, the Tiber River god."
"That sounds easy enough," Leo chimed in, giving himself a break from shoveling eggs + ketchup into his mouth. "You are the son of the god of the sea, aren't you?"
Percy twisted his lips in thought. "Yeah, but like I said, there's all sorts of undersea politics. It's all impossible to follow. This Timberness guy could hate my guts, for all I know."
"Tibernius?" May supplemented.
"Yeah, him." Percy shrugged. "Poseidon's stepped on a lot of toes. We'll just have to see whether he's come in close quarters with the Tiber River god, I guess. But as for the merpeople, they don't mind us passing through the Atlantic. I told them about the sea creatures trapped in the Atlanta Aquarium, so they granted us safe passage in return."
"How nice," Hazel said. "Can they grant us super speed so we can make it before my brother asphyxiates?"
The thought of Nico di Angelo brought a stabbing pain into Theo's chest. She shut her eyes for a moment too long. Under the table, she felt Percy squeeze her knee.
"Nico must have some information about the Doors of Death," Theo said, once again—and not for the last time in her life—putting aside her own feelings in order to keep composure as leader of the quest. "He's going to be essential to the Great Prophecy. We're going to save him, and after today, we have two more days left to do it. Leo, how far until Rome?"
