𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐝𝐲; 𝖺𝗇𝗇𝖺𝖻𝖾𝗍𝗁 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗌𝖾

Prophecies suck (Octavian's version)

On the way out of camp, Hazel bought them food.

Percy had an espresso drink and a cherry muffin, and Ivy had a hot chocolate and a chocolate chip cookie, which she finished in a second.

The hot chocolate was great, and for some reason she had given up trying to understand, had made her extremely happy.

Now, she thought, if she could just get a shower and a change of clothes, she'd be golden. She did not want to sleep anymore.

She watched a bunch of kids in swimsuits and towels head into a building that had steam coming out of a row of chimneys. Laughter and watery sounds echoed from inside, like it was an indoor pool.

"Is that your kind of place, water boy?" Ivy nudged him. Since she'd met him she just felt like using nicknames was better than his actual name.

"It actually is. Is it a pool?"

"Bath house," Hazel corrected. "We'll get you in there before dinner, hopefully. You haven't lived until you've had a Roman bath."

Ivy sighed with anticipation.

As they approached the front gate, the barracks got bigger and nicer. Even the ghosts looked better— with fancier armor and shinier auras.

Ivy tried to decipher the banners and symbols hanging infront of the buildings.

"You guys are divided into different cabins?" Percy asked.

"Sort of." Hazel ducked as a kid riding a giant eagle swooped overhead. What the hell? "We have five cohorts of about forty kids each. Each cohort is divided into barracks often — like roommates, kind of."

"There's 350 hundred kids at this camp?" Ivy asked.

Percy frowned. "I suck at math and I still know that's way off"

"Shut up"

"About 200 roughly." Hazel intervened.

"And all of them are children of the gods? The gods have been busy." Percy said, making Ivy chuckle.

Hazel laughed. "Not all of them are children of major gods. There are hundreds of minor Roman gods. Plus, a lot of the campers are legacies — second or third generation. Maybe their parents were demigods. Or their grandparents."

Ivy froze for a second. "Children of demigods?"

"Why? Does that surprise you?"

"No, it's just—" She shook her head and tried to ignore the whispers in the back of her mind. "Nothing."

For the hundredth time, she found the concept familiar. However, when she gave it a thought, the idea of living long enough to be an adult and have kids of her own being a demigod— that seemed like an impossible dream.

"These Legos— "Percy started.

"Legacies," Hazel corrected.

"They have powers like a demigod?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes not. But they can be trained. All the best Roman generals and emperors — you know, they all claimed to be descended from gods. Most of the time, they were telling the truth. The camp augur we're going to meet, Octavian, he's a legacy, descendant of Apollo. He's got the gift of prophecy, supposedly."

"Supposedly?"

Hazel made a sour face. "You'll see."

Were their lives about to be destined by a legacy with performance issues?

"So the divisions," the boy asked, "the cohorts, whatever — you're divided according to who your godly parent is?"

Hazel stared at him. "What a horrible idea! No, the officers decide where to assign recruits. If we were divided according to god, the cohorts would be all uneven. I'd be alone."