The Blood of Olympus

Chapter 2: Jason

Sorry it took so long to update, my teachers have been piling a lot of work lately, so I've been kind of busy, but here is Chapter 2!

Enjoy!

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Chapter 2: Jason

It took some time for Jason to convince Leo that there were really magical islands in their path, and his maps had been wrong. In the end, it took bringing him up to the deck and physically showing him the cliffs looming up in front of them for Leo to believe him.

It didn't help that Percy spent the entire time stifling laughs. Apparently, he found the idea of Jason almost getting squashed by a couple of rock cliffs pretty funny. So did Frank, Hazel, Annabeth, and  - well, pretty much everyone else. 

Once Leo had accepted he was really telling the truth, they held a meeting over breakfast. Piper was taking her turn at watch above deck, but Jason would fill her in later. The only problem was, Annabeth was refusing to eat anything,

"Annabeth, seriously, you look like you haven't had a meal in the last three weeks!" Hazel protested. That was true. Percy was digging into his food like it was his last meal, but she had barely taken a bite out of her pancakes, and had already announced she was full. That wasn't good, because she definitely couldn't afford to miss any meals. Annabeth was stick thin, and, though it may have been Jason's imagination, she resembled, ever so slightly, a corpse. Just the way her lank curls hung around her face, the circles under her eyes, and the dark look in her eyes...Jason could almost imagine that a kind of eerie mist was surrounding her, cutting her off from everyone else.

Annabeth looked up, and her stormy gray eyes met Jason's. He got the feeling she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"It's been less than a day since they got out of Tartarus," Frank said nervously, "I'm sure that Percy and Annabeth will bounce back with some rest,"  But he didn't voice what everyone else was thinking. Percy seemed to be "bouncing back" much more quickly than Annabeth, though it may have had something to do with the hour long shower he had taken as soon as they had gotten back onto the ship...

Annabeth nodded numbly to the table, and resumed staring at the opposite wall while Percy tried to coax her into eating some of the untouched pancakes. Otherwise, they finished their breakfast in silence. 

Finally, once the crumbs had faded from their magical plates, Piper spoke,

"So, we have thirteen days, counting today, to defeat the giants and all that happy stuff. What's the plan?"

"Wait" Leo piped up, "I want to talk about those islands in front of us. By the sound of it, they could crush the ship, and - "

"We're going around them, right?" Jason interrupted, "so they shouldn't be a problem," 

Leo nodded, but Jason got the feeling he still wasn't satisfied. Sure enough, as soon as Hazel started talking about possible routes to Athens, Leo spoke up again,

"I'm not sure, though," everyone rolled their eyes, but Leo pressed on, "I have this weird feeling about them. Jason, you mentioned the wreckage of hundreds of ships in that pass between them, right?"

"Yeah," Jason said, slightly defensively.

"And that means that hundreds of ships actually sailed through those cliff thingies,"

"Leo, where is this going?" Frank said, exchanging confused looks with Jason. Leo stood up, a maniacal glint in his eyes,

"But why sail through a narrow pass like that? Even if they were mortal ships, which I doubt they were, why would you sail through a narrow pass like that when you could just sail a couple hundred feet to the right and avoid them without going off course? It's common sense, what would motivate hundreds of sailors to take leave of their senses and sail through an obviously dangerous pass like that?"