The characters and Percy Jackson books are owned by Rick Riordan, not me.

The next morning, most of the campers steered clear of me as much as possible. The Hermes kids were too scared to do sword fighting lessons with me, so they became one-on-one with Luke. I didn't feel too bad about that--- at least Luke posed a challenge.

Sometimes when I passed Annabeth, she would be muttering things like: "Quest... Poseidon... Dirty rotten... got to make a plan..."

Even Clarisse kept her distance, but her venomous looks made it clear she wanted to kill me for breaking her electric spear.

That night, I had a nightmare.

I was running along the beach in a storm. There was a city behind me. There were palm trees and hills in the distance.

About a hundred yards down the surf, two men were fighting. They looked like TV wrestlers--- though I wouldn't really know, I hadn't watched TV in about seven years. Both wore flowing Greek tunics, one trimmed in blue, the other in green. They fought with each other, and every time they connected, lightning flashed, the sky grew darker, and the wind rose.

I had to stop them, but the harder I ran, the more the wind blew me back, until I was running in place, my heels digging uselessly in the sand. So I slowed down and walked, and I actually moved forward, slowly.

Over the roar of the storm, I could hear the blue-robed one yelling at the green-robed one, Give it back! Give it back! Like a kindergartener fighting over a toy.

I yelled, Stop it! Stop fighting!

The ground shook. Laughter came from somewhere under the earth.

Come down, little hero, the voice crooned. Come down!

The sand split beneath me, opening up a crevice straight down to the center of the earth. I fell, and darkness swallowed me.

Then I woke up.

I could tell it was morning, but the sky was dark, thunder was rolling across the hills.

I heard a clipping sound at the door, a hoof knocking on the threshold.

"Come in?"

Grover walked inside, looking worried. "Mr. D wants to see you."

"Why?"

"He wants to kill...I mean, I'd better let him tell you."

I got dressed and followed Grover.

I brought my backpack with me.

At the volleyball pit, the kids from Apollo's cabin were playing a morning game against the Satyrs. Dionysus's twins were walking around the strawberry fields, making the plants grow. Everybody was going about their normal business, but they looked tense. They kept their eyes on the storm.

Grover and I walked up to the front porch of the Big House. Dionysus sat at the pinochle table in a tiger-striped Hawaiian shirt with a can of Diet Coke. Chiron sat in a magical wheelchair. They were playing against invisible opponents---two sets of cards hovering in the air.

"Well, well," Mr. D said without looking up. "Our little celebrity."

I waited.

"Come closer," Mr. D said. "And don't expect me to kowtow you, mortal, because you defeated a hellhound all by yourself."

"Thank goodness," I sighed. They all looked at me weird. "What?" I asked. "I don't want anyone to treat me any differently then they already do. Though they do anyway."

They looked away after a second. Chiron feigned interest in his pinochle cards. Grover cowered by the railing, his hooves clopping back and forth.

"If I had my way," Dionysus said, "I would cause your molecules to erupt in flames. We'd sweep up the ashes and be done with a lot of trouble. But Chiron seems to feel that this would go against my mission at this cursed camp: to keep you little brats safe from harm."

"Spontaneous combustion is a form of harm, Mr. D," Chiron put in.

"Nonsense," Dionysus said. "Boy wouldn't feel a thing. Nevertheless, I've agreed to restrain myself. I'm thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead, sending you back to your father."

"Mr. D---" Chiron warned.

"Oh, all right," Dionysus relented. "There's one more option. But it's deadly foolishness." Dionysus rose, and the invisible players' cards dropped to the table. "I'm off to Olympus for an emergency meeting. If the boy is still here when I get back, I'll turn him into an Atlantic bottlenose. Do you understand? And Perseus Jackson---" I flinched at the name, "---if you're at all smart, you'll see that is a much more sensible choice than what Chiron feels you must do."

Dionysus picked up a playing card, twisted it, and it turned into a security pass.

He snapped his fingers.

The air seemed to fold and bend around him. He became a hologram, then a wind, then he was gone, leaving only the smell of fresh-pressed grapes lingering behind.

Chiron smiled at me, but he looked tired and strained. "Sit, Percy, please. And Grover."

We did.

Chiron laid his cards on the table, a winning had he hadn't gotten to use.

"So, Percy," he said. "Do you accept your quest?"

"Yes," I replied firmly.

"Then you must go to the Oracle," Chiron said.

"Okay," I said, and got up.

"But you don't know where it is," Grover said.

"Its upstairs, isn't it?" I replied.

"How do you know that?" Chiron asked. "You're not supposed to."

I looked him straight in the eye. "I know a lot of things I shouldn't know."

Then I was gone.

I climbed into the attic. It was filled with Greek hero junk: armor stands covered in cobwebs; once bright shields pitted with rust; old leather streamer trunks plastered with stickers saying ITHAKA, CIRCE'S ISLE, and LAND OF THE AMAZONS. One long table was stacked with glass jars filled with pickled things---severed hairy claws, huge yellow eyes, various other parts of monsters. A dusty mounted trophy on the wall looked like a giant snake's head, but with horns and a full set of shark's teeth. The plaque read, HYDRA HEAD #I WOODSTOCK, N.Y., 1969.

By the window, sitting on a wooden tripod stool, was the Oracle.

It was a mummy. Not the rapped-in-cloth kind, but a human female body shriveled to a husk. She wore a tie-dyed sundress, lots of beaded necklaces, and a headband over long black hair. The skin of her face was thin and leathery over her skull, and her eyes were glassy white slits, as if her real eyes were replaced by marbles; she had been dead a long, long time.

Then, she sat up on her stool and opened her mouth. A green mist poured from the mummy's mouth, cooling over the floor in thick tendrils, hissing like twenty thousand snakes. Inside my head, I heard a voice, slithering into one ear and cooling around my brain: I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seeker, and ask.

"What will happen during my quest?" I asked.

The mist swirled more thickly, collecting right in front of me and around the table with the monster-part jars.

I saw Gabe.

He looked just as I remembered him from all those years ago when he killed my mother. My fists clenched at the thought.

He spoke in the grasping voice of the Oracle:

You shall go west, and face the god who has turned.

You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned.

To keep your secrets you will have no choice but to lie and pretend,

And you shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.

The green Mist retreated, coiling into a huge green serpent and slithering back into the mouth of the mummy.

The tail of the mist snake dissapperated into the mummy's mouth. She reclined back against the wall. Her mouth closed right, as if it hadn't been opened in a hundred years. The attic was silent again, abandoned, nothing but a room full of mementos.

My audience with the Oracle was over.

"Well?" Chiron asked me.

I sat down. "She said:

You shall go west, and face the god who has turned.

You shall find what was stolen and see it safely returned.

To keep your secrets you will have no choice but to lie and pretend.

And you shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend."

No one talked for a while.

"So," Grover said, breaking the silence, "who's the god who has turned?"

"Think, Grover," Chiron said. "If Zeus and Poseidon weaken each other in a war, who stands to gain?

"Hades," Grover said at the same time as I said, "Ares."

They stared at me. "What?" I asked. "Ares might wants war; he's the war god. Someone could easily get Ares to turn if there is a war in it for him to watch."

The others thought about it.

"Maybe," Chiron decided. "But either way you should go west. You should check with Hades just in case."

"Wait a second," I said as a thought occurred to me. "If whoever the person who actually did it wanted them to blame Poseidon, then wouldn't they not only take something of Zeus's, but also something of Hades's? The theft must've occurred on the day Hades also went to Olympus for a reason. And the person who actually did it would be the person who betrays me."

They both thought about it and agreed.

"Then I'll go to Hades and offer to help him find whatever it is he lost," I said.

"Okay," Chiron said. "Now you need to choose your two companions."

I knew Grover was nervous, because he was eating the pinochle cards like potato chips.

"Do you want to go, Grover?" I asked him.

He just nodded nervously.

Then my gaze fixated straight at a point behind Chiron. "Would a certain daughter of Athena with her invisibility hat like to join us?"

The other two looked at me like I was crazy, until Annabeth simmered into view right where I had been staring.

"Of course I would," she said. "I've been waiting for a long time for a quest, seaweed brain."

I ignored her.

"I think you should all get packing," Chiron said.

"Done," I said.

I opened the door.

"Yup, I knew it." I looked at the pouring rain. I took off my backpack and opened it. I pulled out two umbrellas, then closed the backpack. I handed the others the umbrellas.

"Bye," I said, then ran off to my cabin.