The train got to Denver at two in the morning, and the only place still open near the station was a motel called the Rocky Mountain Rest. It had a flickering sign and a pool full of leaves and a night clerk who looked at four unaccompanied teenagers and a wolf cub and decided, very clearly, that it was not his problem.
Percy paid for two rooms with his System card. Ezra and Grover took one. Annabeth took the other. Percy said he'd sleep in the car, except they didn't have a car anymore, so he said he'd sleep on the bench by the empty pool. Annabeth gave him a long look and didn't argue.
He didn't sleep on the bench.
He waited until both doors were shut and both rooms were dark. Then he walked around the back of the motel, behind the ice machine, where nobody could see, and summoned the Gate.
[Time remaining until the solstice: 6 days, 22 hours.]
Six days.
He'd done the math on the train. They were going to Los Angeles. To the Underworld. To Hades. And at the end of it, he was pretty sure, to a beach and a god of war. In his first life, he'd fought Ares at twelve with Riptide and the sea at his back. He'd won by luck and by water and by the Fates deciding he should.
This time he didn't have the sea. He had a training sword, a lightning bolt he'd only been throwing for two days, and eight shadows.
And a sliver of blue glass in his inventory, with lightning sleeping inside it.
[Key Item: RUNE OF LIGHTNING (Fragment) — It is waiting to be reforged.]
[Next Floor: 7 — THE INFERNAL FORGE]
Reforged, Percy thought. In a forge.
Okay, Loom. Subtle.
[Great Sage notes: A complete clear of Floor 7 is estimated at 4–5 tower-days. The Host will incur THREAD-WORN.]
I know.
[Great Sage notes: The Host incurred THREAD-WORN four days ago. A second instance within one week will increase its duration to 36 hours.]
Percy stopped with his hand on the Gate.
Thirty-six hours foggy. Through Denver, and whatever was waiting in Denver. Through the road to Vegas. Through the Lotus Hotel. Gods, the Lotus Hotel, where time went wrong and you forgot who you were.
He thought about it for a long time.
Then he thought about Ares. About the god of war, laughing on a beach. And a mortal boy with a training sword.
I'll be careful, he thought. I'll be so careful.
He walked through the Gate.
[FLOOR 7: THE INFERNAL FORGE]
[Rank: E]
[Enemies: Lv 35–45]
[Main Quest: Defeat the Infernal Blacksmith.]
[Side Quest: APPRENTICE — Work the forge for 3 tower-days.]
[Hidden Quest: ???]
[Environmental Effect: Extreme Heat. Fire damage over time in exposed areas.]
It was the inside of a volcano.
That was the only way to describe it. He stepped out of the Gate onto a ledge of black rock in a vast underground cavern, so big he couldn't see the roof. Rivers of lava ran across the floor far below, glowing orange and red. Chains as thick as tree trunks hung from the darkness overhead, holding up bridges of iron and stone that spanned the lava rivers in every direction. The air was so hot it hurt to breathe. It shimmered and rippled and smelled like sulfur and burning metal.
And everywhere, from every direction, came the sound of hammers.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Thousands of them. Echoing off the walls of the cavern in a huge, deafening rhythm, like the heartbeat of the mountain.
[HP: -8 per second (Heat).]
Okay, Percy thought, already sweating through his shirt. Okay. Hot. Got it.
He pulled Aerokinesis around himself without thinking about it. A thin layer of moving air, cool and constant, like standing in front of a fan. The burning eased.
[AEROKINESIS — Cooling Barrier. Heat damage reduced by 70%. MP drain: 2 per minute.]
He'd learned that on the train. Annabeth had been complaining about the heat, and he'd tried it without really meaning to. The breeze had felt so good that she'd fallen asleep against the window.
The first Fire Imp came at him about ninety seconds later.
[Fire Imp — Lv 36]
It was the size of a small dog, red and leathery and grinning, made of burning coals, and it laughed a high cackling laugh as it threw fireballs at his head.
He killed it with the xiphos. It took four hits. His blade came away glowing cherry-red and smoking.
[WARNING: Weapon heat damage. Bronze-Edged Training Xiphos durability: 71%.]
Percy looked at his sword. The cheap little training blade from the Spindle Room rack, that he'd carried through seven floors and two worlds. It was glowing. The edge was softening. He could see it starting to warp.
Oh no, he thought. Oh no, no, no.
He'd gotten attached to that sword.
The Lava Beasts were worse. Huge lumbering things of molten rock that walked out of the lava rivers and swung fists like boulders. The Flame Knights were worst of all. Seven-foot suits of black iron armor with fire burning inside them where people should have been. They fought like real soldiers, with sword and shield, and every hit he blocked sent heat roaring through his shield arm.
[Flame Knight — Lv 42]
[HP: -94]
[Xiphos durability: 54%]
He fought his way across the bridges for a whole tower-day. And by the end of it, his sword was nearly gone. Warped, notched, half-melted, the bronze edge rolled over like a cheap kitchen knife. He'd started fighting with the Orc King's Cleaver instead, the heavy iron blade from his inventory. But it wasn't his. It didn't feel right in his hand.
Then he found the hall of anvils.
It was a huge chamber built into the side of the cavern, with a ceiling of black stone held up by pillars carved like giants. There were a hundred anvils in rows, a hundred forges, a hundred bellows. And at every one, a worker. Small and bent and gray-skinned, with soot-black hands and leather aprons and eyes that glowed like coals. Dwarves, almost. Or something like dwarves. They were working, all of them, hammering at glowing metal on the anvils with that endless, deafening rhythm.
They didn't look up when he came in.
Except one.
She was at the anvil nearest the door. Very old, very small, with a face like a walnut and arms like knotted rope. She looked up at Percy as he came in, and her coal eyes went straight to the ruined sword in his hand.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she spat on the floor.
"Disgraceful," she said. Her voice was like gravel in a tumbler. "What did you do to that poor blade? Use it to stir lava?"
"Kind of," Percy admitted.
The old smith snorted. She held out a hand, black with soot, palm up. "Give it here."
Percy hesitated. Then he handed her the sword.
She turned it over in her hands, slowly, squinting at it. She ran a thumb along the warped edge. She tapped the blade against the anvil and listened to the ring.
"Training blade," she said. "Cheap bronze. Badly tempered. Wouldn't last a week in a real war." She looked up at him. "You've killed a lot of things with this."
"Yeah."
"It likes you." She said it like it was a fact. Like a doctor reading an X-ray. "Blades remember. This one remembers you. Every fight. Every time you didn't let go." She grunted. "Shame to let it die."
She tossed the sword onto the anvil and picked up a hammer.
"Well?" she said. "Don't just stand there. Grab the bellows. If you want it fixed, you'll fix it yourself."
[SIDE QUEST TRIGGERED: APPRENTICE.]
[Work the forge under the Old Smith for 3 tower-days.]
It was the hardest work he'd ever done.
He'd thought fighting was hard. The Loom had taught him fighting was hard. But fighting was over in minutes. This went on for hours. Days. Pumping the bellows until his shoulders screamed. Carrying coal in buckets from the bunkers at the back of the hall. Holding hot metal in tongs while the old smith hammered it, every blow jarring up his arms into his teeth.
And then, on the second day, she handed him the hammer.
"Your turn," she said.
He was terrible at it. He hit too hard and cracked the metal. He hit too soft and nothing happened. He hit in the wrong place and bent it crooked. The old smith watched him with her coal eyes and said nothing, and every time he ruined a piece she tossed it in the scrap bin and handed him another.
"Again," she said.
"I don't know how—"
"Nobody knows how. Again."
He hit it again.
He learned. Slowly. The way he'd learned everything else in The Loom: by getting it wrong until he got it right. He learned to read the color of the metal, how cherry red meant one thing and orange meant another and white meant too hot, you idiot, you'll burn it. He learned to listen to the ring of the hammer, how it changed when the metal was ready. He learned to feel the shape hiding inside the blank, waiting to be let out, the way Annabeth had once told him an architect could see the building inside an empty lot.
On the third day, he reforged his sword.
He heated the old warped bronze until it glowed. He hammered out the bends and the notches. He folded it, once, twice, three times, the way the old smith showed him, and folded something else in with it. A strip of metal she pulled from somewhere in her apron and handed him without explanation. It was dark and shimmering, like oil on water.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Something old," she said. "Something I've been saving. Hit it."
He hit it.
When he quenched it at the end, plunging the glowing blade into the barrel of oil in a great hissing billow of steam, and pulled it out, it wasn't the same sword.
It was the same shape. The same length, the same simple crossguard and leather grip. But the bronze had gone darker, almost black, with a faint shimmer running through it like oil on water. The edge was sharp enough to cut the air. And when he held it, it hummed. Faintly. A sound just at the edge of hearing.
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: APPRENTICE.]
[New Skill acquired: SMITHING (Lv 1).]
[New Skill acquired: WEAPON REFORGING — The Host may reforge any weapon he owns, combining it with materials to change its nature. Some reforgings require special forges or catalysts.]
[WEAPON REFORGED: Bronze-Edged Training Xiphos → STORMBRONZE XIPHOS (Rare, Evolving)]
[ATK: +6 → +28. Durability: Restored. Heat Resistance.]
[Note: This weapon remembers its wielder. It will grow as he grows.]
Percy stood in the hall of anvils with his sword in his hand, and grinned so wide his face hurt.
The old smith looked at it. Then at him. Her walnut face cracked into something that might have been a smile.
"Better," she said. "Not good. Better."
"Thank you," Percy said. "Really. Thank you."
She waved a hand. "Thank me by not letting it die again." She paused. Then she looked at him, really looked, and her coal eyes narrowed. "You've got something else on you, boy. Something that hums. I can feel it from here."
Percy hesitated. Then he reached into his inventory and pulled out the Rune of Lightning.
The sliver of blue glass lay in his palm, with the lightning coiling lazily inside it.
The old smith went very, very still.
Every hammer in the hall stopped.
All at once, all hundred of them, as if someone had cut the strings. The silence was so sudden and so total that it rang in Percy's ears. A hundred pairs of coal eyes turned toward him. Toward the sliver of blue glass in his palm.
"Where," the old smith whispered, "did you get that?"
"A necromancer. On Floor 3. He was using it to raise the dead."
"A necromancer." She laughed. It was not a happy sound. "Of course. Thieves, all of them. Thieves of thieves." She looked up at him. "Do you know what that is, boy?"
"A piece of lightning."
"A piece of a lightning," she said. "A very particular lightning. Stolen a very long time ago, from a sky that was not yours, in a world that was not this one. Broken off the edge of something great." Her voice dropped. "There is only one forge in all this mountain hot enough to work it. And it belongs to Him."
She pointed. Past the hall of anvils, across the cavern, to the far wall. To a great black door, forty feet high, carved with a hammer and a flame. Lava ran down its face in glowing sheets.
"The Master Forge," she said. "Where the Infernal Blacksmith works. If you want to reforge that, boy, you'll have to take his forge from him."
[HIDDEN QUEST TRIGGERED: BRING THE STORM TO THE FORGE.]
[Carry the Rune of Lightning to the Master Forge.]
The Infernal Blacksmith was twelve feet tall and made of iron.
Not armored in iron. Made of it. A giant of black, rusted, riveted metal, with fire roaring inside his chest behind a grate like a furnace door. His eyes were two glowing slits. He stood at the biggest anvil Percy had ever seen, in the middle of a round chamber with a pool of lava for a floor, and he was hammering. A blade, glowing white-hot, the length of a car.
He didn't stop when Percy came in.
"A thief," he said, in a voice like a landslide. "Come to steal my forge."
"I just want to borrow it," Percy said.
"No one borrows my forge." The Blacksmith lifted the blade off the anvil. It was a sword. A giant sword, glowing, still dripping molten metal. "No one leaves my forge."
[FLOOR BOSS: THE INFERNAL BLACKSMITH — Lv 50]
[HP: 14,000 / 14,000]
[Abilities: Adaptive Forging (forges weapons mid-battle to counter the Host's tactics), Molten Strike, Furnace Heart]
He attacked.
And it was the strangest fight Percy had ever been in, because the Blacksmith learned.
Percy came at him with the Stormbronze Xiphos. The Blacksmith blocked with the giant sword, and while they fought, he was already hammering something else at his anvil with his other hand. When Percy fell back and switched to the Orc King's Cleaver, the Blacksmith pulled a shield off the anvil, still glowing, shaped exactly to catch a cleaver's heavy chop.
When Percy threw lightning, the Blacksmith pulled a spear off the anvil, and drove it into the stone floor, and the lightning bent toward it and ran harmlessly down into the ground. A lightning rod.
[LIGHTNING CALL — Grounded. 0 damage.]
Oh, come on.
When Percy called his shadows, the Blacksmith pulled a chain off the anvil, white-hot, and whipped it through them. Wherever it touched, the shadows hissed and smoked and pulled back.
[Shadows damaged by Sanctified Iron.]
Everything Percy tried, the Blacksmith answered. Before Percy had even finished trying it. Every weapon, every trick, every plan.
[HP: 312 / 1,180]
Percy fell back to the edge of the chamber, breathing hard, sweat pouring off him despite the cooling barrier, and stared at the giant.
He's not unbeatable, he thought. Nothing is. He's just answering everything I do.
So what can't he answer?
He looked around. At the giant anvil. At the forge behind it, a great roaring furnace mouth carved into the wall, where all the fire in the chamber came from. At the Blacksmith's chest, where the same fire burned behind its iron grate.
At the quench tanks.
There were four of them, set into the walls around the chamber. Huge stone cisterns, each one the size of a swimming pool, full of dark water. For cooling the blades. For quenching.
He thought about the old smith. Thank me by not letting it die again.
He thought about what happened to fire when you put water on it.
And then he thought about this floor's entry in the System's index. The one line it had given him. Percy wins by cooling the forge.
"Asterion," he said. "Gorrath. Chi-Chi. The tanks. Break them."
The Blacksmith's eyes flared. He understood a half-second too late. He reached for his anvil, for something, anything, to forge an answer.
Asterion's shadow-axe hit the first quench tank. Gorrath's cleaver hit the second. Chi-Chi's lion head slammed into the third like a battering ram.
The stone cracked. The water came out.
And Percy, standing at the edge of the chamber with every scrap of MP he had left, called the wind.
[AEROKINESIS — OVERCHARGE!]
He didn't push the water. He couldn't, not anymore. He wasn't the son of the sea. But the air could push the water. And the air was his.
The wind came screaming down out of the dark of the cavern and caught the water pouring out of the broken tanks, three swimming pools' worth of it, and threw it. In a great crashing wave across the chamber, straight into the Master Forge.
The forge exploded in steam.
It was like a bomb going off. A white billowing roar that filled the whole chamber, so thick Percy couldn't see his own hands. And under it, the hissing, screaming sound of a fire that had burned for a thousand years being drowned all at once.
The Blacksmith screamed too.
Because the forge was his heart. Percy understood it now. The fire in the forge and the fire in his chest were the same fire. And as the forge went dark, the furnace grate in the giant's chest went from white to orange to dull red.
[FURNACE HEART: Weakened. Adaptive Forging: DISABLED.]
[The Blacksmith can no longer forge.]
The Blacksmith came out of the steam at him with the giant sword, staggering, his iron body creaking, the fire in his chest guttering.
And Percy met him with the Stormbronze Xiphos.
He'd reforged it himself. With his own hands, over three tower-days, in the hall of anvils. He knew every fold in it. Every strike of the hammer.
He blocked the giant sword. He felt the impact all the way up to his teeth. He held.
[ACTION SURGE!]
He stepped inside the next swing and drove the black blade straight through the iron grate in the Blacksmith's chest. Into the dying fire.
Then he let the lightning go. Not out. In. Down the blade and into the iron giant's heart. Into the metal body that conducted it perfectly, with nothing to ground it now. No spear, no lightning rod, no forge to answer it.
The Infernal Blacksmith lit up like a light bulb.
And went dark.
[FLOOR BOSS DEFEATED: THE INFERNAL BLACKSMITH.]
[FLOOR 7 CLEARED. Thread tied off.]
[+48,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 46 → Level 47]
[LEVEL UP! Level 47 → Level 48]
[LEVEL UP! Level 48 → Level 49]
[Loot: Fire-Resistant Gear (Rare). Molten Core Ingots x6. Infernal Hammer (Epic) — Smithing +3, Crafting bonus.]
The steam was clearing.
The Master Forge was dark. Cold. For the first time in a thousand years. The giant iron body of the Blacksmith lay in the middle of the chamber in a pool of cooling water, his chest grate black and empty.
And at the back of the forge, where the fire had been, something was glowing.
Not orange. Not red. Blue.
Percy walked over to it. It was a small stone altar, carved into the back wall of the forge, hidden for a thousand years behind the fire. And on it, glowing faintly, was a hollow in the shape of a sliver of glass.
The Rune of Lightning, in his inventory, was humming.
He took it out. He set it in the hollow on the altar.
It fit perfectly.
[HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: BRING THE STORM TO THE FORGE.]
The Master Forge came back to life.
Not with fire. With lightning. It crawled up out of the altar in blue-white streams and ran across the dead coals and into the walls, and the whole forge lit up from inside like a thunderstorm in a bottle. The Rune on the altar blazed so bright Percy had to shield his eyes. And in the light, hanging in the air above the altar, a shape appeared.
A drawing. Lines of blue light, like a blueprint. It turned slowly in the air.
It was a lightning bolt. Not the zigzag of a cartoon. A real weapon. A long bar of crackling energy, tapered at both ends, with a grip in the center wrapped in something that looked like storm cloud. Lines of runes ran along it, in a language Percy didn't know, glowing and shifting.
He'd seen it before.
In a throne room. In his father's hand. Raised high over the floor that opened beneath him.
The Master Bolt.
Not the bolt itself. A plan of it. A pattern. The shape of the thing, written out in light, so that someone with the right forge and the right skill and the right materials might, one day, make something like it.
[REWARD: BLUEPRINT — LIGHTNING BOLT (Personal Variant)]
[A pattern for a weapon of the sky, derived from the Rune of Lightning.]
[Requirements to forge: Weapon Reforging (Acquired) · A worthy base weapon · The Rune of Lightning (Acquired) · A Master Forge (Floor 7 Waypoint) · ??? (Catalyst: a true sky-weapon must be touched and understood.)]
[Note: The final requirement cannot be met inside The Loom.]
Percy stood in front of the altar for a long time, staring at the turning blueprint and the last line.
A true sky-weapon must be touched and understood.
There was only one true sky-weapon in the world.
And it had been stolen. And he was on his way to find it.
[Great Sage notes: The Host appears to have reached a conclusion.]
Yeah, Percy thought. Yeah, I have.
The old smith was waiting for him at the door of the hall of anvils when he came back.
She looked at the Stormbronze Xiphos on his hip. At the Infernal Hammer in his hand. At the faint blue crackle still dancing in his hair.
"You took his forge," she said.
"I borrowed it."
She snorted. Then, slowly, the walnut face cracked into a real smile, wide and gap-toothed.
"A thousand years," she said. "A thousand years I've worked under that iron tyrant. Making blades for wars that never end." She looked out at the hall, at the hundred anvils and the hundred bent gray smiths, who were all looking at Percy now, coal eyes glowing in the dark. "You come back, boy. Whenever you want. Bring us something worth making."
[The smiths of the Infernal Forge will craft for the Host at the Floor 7 Waypoint.]
He came out of the Gate behind the ice machine of the Rocky Mountain Rest at seven in the morning. Five tower-days later. Five real hours.
[THREAD-WORN (Compounded): -25% INT, -25% WIS. Duration: 36 hours.]
The fog came down over his brain so thick he staggered and had to grab the ice machine to stay upright. The world tilted. Everything was slow and heavy and far away, like trying to think through a mouthful of cotton.
Thirty-six hours, he thought, slowly, word by word. Okay. Okay. Be careful.
He walked around the front of the motel.
Annabeth was sitting on the bench by the empty pool, where he'd said he'd be sleeping. She was wrapped in a motel blanket with her knees pulled up, and her eyes were red, like she'd been up all night.
She saw him and stood up so fast the blanket fell off.
"Where were you?" she said. Her voice cracked. "I came out at three. And at four. And at five. You weren't here. You weren't anywhere. I thought— I thought something—"
She stopped. She was staring at him.
At the new sword on his hip, black and shimmering. At the burn marks on his arms, a tenth of what they'd been. At the soot on his face. At his eyes, which he was pretty sure were glazed and unfocused and very, very tired.
"Percy," she said slowly. "Where do you go? At night?"
He looked at her.
He was too tired to lie. Too foggy to come up with anything clever. So he said the truest thing he could think of.
"Somewhere I get stronger," he said. "So that I don't have to watch people die."
Annabeth stared at him for a long time.
Then she picked up the blanket off the ground, walked over, and put it around his shoulders.
"You're freezing," she said quietly. "And you're shaking. Come on. There's a diner across the street. You need food."
She took his arm and walked him across the parking lot. He let her.
The diner was a chrome-and-vinyl place called the Silver Spur, mostly empty at seven in the morning. Ezra and Grover were already in a booth by the window, eating pancakes.
Ezra looked up when they came in. His eyes went to Annabeth's hand on Percy's arm. His face did something complicated. Then it went carefully neutral.
"Wow," he said. "You look like garbage."
"Thanks," Percy mumbled, and slid into the booth.
Annabeth ordered him eggs and toast and a hot chocolate. Percy stared at the menu and couldn't read it. Not even a little. The letters weren't swimming anymore. They were just shapes. He couldn't even remember the word for pancake.
"Seriously," Grover whispered, leaning across the table. "Percy. Are you okay? You're kind of... gray."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Annabeth said. "You're—"
The door of the diner banged open.
And the whole room changed.
It wasn't the door. It wasn't the man who came through it. It was the air. It went hot and red and heavy. Percy's Storm Sense felt it like a punch: a pressure, a crackle, a smell of gunpowder and blood and burning gasoline. Every person in the diner tensed at once. The cook stopped flipping pancakes. The waitress dropped a coffee pot. A trucker at the counter put his hand on his belt, where there was no gun, and started looking around for someone to hit.
The man in the doorway grinned.
He was huge. Six and a half feet of muscle in a black leather jacket and a red muscle shirt, with a buzz cut and a scar across his chin and wraparound sunglasses that hid his eyes. Except they didn't hide them. Behind the dark lenses, where eyes should be, Percy could see fire. Real fire, burning, flickering.
He walked into the diner like he owned it. Every step was loud. He slid into the booth next to Ezra, shoving him over so hard Ezra nearly fell out the other side, and helped himself to a strip of bacon off Ezra's plate.
"Well, well, well," said Ares, god of war. "The famous quest." He chewed the bacon. Looked around the table. His fire-eyes moved behind the sunglasses, from face to face. Grover, shrinking against the window. Annabeth, gone white and stiff. Ezra, frozen, bacon-less, staring.
And Percy.
The fire-eyes stopped on Percy, and stayed there.
"And you," Ares said. The grin got wider. Sharper. "You I've heard about."
Percy didn't say anything. He couldn't think of anything to say. His brain was thirty-six hours of cotton. He just looked back at the god of war across the table, foggy and slow and tired, and tried very hard to keep his hand away from his sword.
"The mortal kid," Ares said, savoring it. "With the shadows. And the sky in his blood. The one who took down Tisiphone's whole family on a bus. The one my sister's owl has been hooting about all over Olympus. The one who killed a god last week. Some swamp thing, sure, some nobody. But a god."
He leaned across the table. Close enough that Percy could smell the gunpowder on his breath.
"And the one my old man just claimed as his own," Ares said softly. "Out loud. In front of everyone. The first kid he's claimed in seventy years. And he's not even his." The fire behind the sunglasses flared. "You know what that makes you, kid?"
Percy looked at him.
"Your brother?" he said.
It came out before he could stop it. Thread-Worn. No filter. The fog in his head just let it out.
The diner went dead silent.
Annabeth made a tiny, strangled noise.
Ares stared at him for one long, long second.
Then the god of war threw back his head and laughed. A huge, booming, delighted laugh that rattled the windows and made the waitress drop another coffee pot.
"Brother," he roared. "Oh, I like you. I really do. You're gonna be so much fun to kill."
He slapped the table so hard the plates jumped. Then he leaned back, and the laughter drained out of his face, and what was left was something a lot colder.
"Here's the deal, little brother," he said. "I've got a job for your quest. A favor. You do it, I give you a ride to Vegas, and some information you're gonna want. Real good information." He smiled. "You don't do it, and I tell every monster between here and the Pacific exactly where you are."
"What job?" Ezra said. His voice was shaking, but he said it.
Ares turned and looked at him, like he'd forgotten Ezra was there.
"I left my shield at a water park," he said. "Couple miles from here. Abandoned place. Had a little date there, and things got... interrupted. Go get it for me." He smiled wider. "Simple. Easy. Fun."
Percy knew that water park.
He remembered it from his first life. The Tunnel of Love. Hephaestus's trap. The mechanical spiders, and the net, and the water rising.
He remembered the god of war smiling at him across a diner table, exactly like this. And he remembered, much later, finding out who'd been whispering in that god's ear the whole time. Who'd sent him to steal the Master Bolt, and the Helm of Darkness, and turn the Big Three against each other.
Percy looked at the god of war across the table. Through the fog. Through the thirty-six hours of cotton.
You, he thought. You're the one who has the bolt. Or you know who does.
You're the one who started all this.
Ares was still smiling at him. But something in the smile had gone sharp around the edges. Watching. Waiting. Like a cat with a mouse it hasn't decided whether to kill.
"What do you say, little brother?" Ares said softly. "We got a deal?"
Percy looked at Ezra. At Annabeth. At Grover, pressed against the window, trembling.
Then back at Ares.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "We've got a deal."
[NEW QUEST: THE SHIELD OF ARES]
[Retrieve the shield of the god of war from the abandoned Waterland water park.]
[Warning: This is a trap.]
[Reward: ???]
Yeah, Percy thought. I know.
Ares grinned, and stood up, and stole one more strip of bacon off Ezra's plate. Then he walked out of the diner, and the door banged shut behind him, and the hot red pressure went with him.
The waitress started crying. The trucker at the counter sat down, looking confused. The cook went back to flipping pancakes like nothing had happened.
At the booth by the window, four kids and a wolf cub sat in total silence.
"You called him brother," Annabeth said finally. Her voice was faint. "You called the god of war brother. To his face."
"I'm really tired," Percy said.
And then, because he was Thread-Worn and foggy and fourteen and had just stared down a god across a diner table, he put his head down on the table next to his eggs and fell asleep.