PP092
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SOS 9
🕑 Added 2022-10-17 04:32:04 +0000 UTC“Wake up Harry,” a warm, amused voice entered his ears, and Harry groaned in response, burrowing deeper into the soft, warm embrace of his blanket. Waking up could be put off for later. For now, he just wanted to sink in and die in the toasty, calming heat enveloping his whole body, his whole soul. A finger tapped the end of his nose, and he groaned even more, turning his face away from the interfering voice—and pressing it into the blanket as his arms wrapped around the warm body, a smile coming over his face as he slept upon…someone’s thighs? His brows furrowed in question as sleep slowly left his mind, and he realized that his hands were actually around someone’s waist, “Come on now Harry, no use in acting, especially in front of me.”
“Mm not acting,” he mumbled, groggily lifting his head and rolling on his back as his eyes opened fully, revealing the Goddess of Hearth sitting beside him on…the familiar bed of Zeus’ cabin. She was in her adult form, a wide, beaming smile on her face as she ran her hand over his head dare he say…lovingly. Though, given that he had been using her as a pillow, maybe that wasn’t such a far-off thing. And not a bad one either—especially when even a single touch from her sent his whole mind floating off into the clouds, free of any worries or thoughts except for calmness and warmth, “Hello Aunt Hestia.”
“Hello to you too child,” she smiled brightly, her auburn brown hair falling down to her chest in waves as she stroked his head—and a part of Harry imagined this is what his mother would have done, had she been alive today. “Are you able to sit up?”
“Don’t wanna,” he mumbled out, his voice so close to a whine that she laughed, mussing up his hair as he acted like the child he was. Tickling his neck, she delighted in the giggles and laughs that escaped him, her domain of home making both of them happier and comfier than normal. “Stop it. Let me sleep for a few more minutes!”
“You have slept enough already, young hero,” she admonished him, pinching his cheeks as she stood up from the bed. “Come on now. You have been sleeping and healing from the various injuries you took for a week. Get up and go outside before Abigail starts to think you are really dead—like what half of the camp is saying.”
“I am too stubborn to die, Dear Aunt,” he sighed, giving up sleeping further as a lost cause, giving her a mock glare. “Couldn’t you have let me sleep a little more. I swear, your legs are a better pillow than anything anyone could or would ever make.”
“Thank you for the compliment Dear Nephew,” she replied in kind, bending down to kiss his brow as she started to disappear from the room, fading away into embers as the smell of chocolate cookies invaded his nose. “A gift for you, in your achievement of killing the Hydra.”
“Well, this is certainly a better wake up than the last time,” he muttered as Hestia left the room, leaving behind a box of cookies in her place. However, just as he sat up properly, a sharp pain stabbed through his abdomen, and Harry gasped at the sensation. Moaning in pain, he summoned the staff lying by the wardrobe, supporting himself with it as he stood up slowly, “Ugh…I think I am gonna hurl my guts out. Fuck, did they get the teeth out or not?”
Stumbling and grasping the staff tightly, he walked out of the Zeus cabin, summoning a shirt over his bandaged and bruised torso. Raising a hand in front of his eyes at the sudden flash that went off in front of him, Harry lowered his arm to see Andrew, a son of Hermes, clutching a camera excitedly, his eyes practically sparkling as the developed photograph slid out. Blinking bemusedly at the sight, his eyebrows shot up into hairline as he saw the sight behind Andrew, a few dozen or so demigods standing with a large, bright pink ‘thank you’ over their heads.
“The fuck am I seeing?”
“A thank you note, I guess,” Chiron's amused voice came over from his left, and he gave the aged, immortal Centaur a withering glare at the words. Turning his eyes once more towards the gaggle of demigods, Harry felt some of that irritation bleed away as he noticed that quite a few Aphrodites were also standing there, all looking at him as if he was an oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Given that his accelerated puberty—something that was more evident than other demigods given the power of his father—made him look like a thirteen-year-old at the age of ten, Harry didn’t really have a problem with it. Though, maybe that was because he was the son of the horniest God in their pantheon, or any pantheon in different mythologies? His thoughts of Bella's rather spectacular bubble butt as she posed in those jeans were cut off as Chiron laid a hand on his shoulder, his voice soft and…fatherly? “I am glad you are up and well, my boy. You don't know how much you scared me with the stunt you pulled, and how proud I am of you. You saved us all quite a lot of casualties and damage that day Harry, the Hydra would have demolished half of the camp before we would have defeated it. I th-thank you Harry, for saving this old centaur much heartbreak and sadness.”
“Oh come on now, Chiron,” Harry muttered, blushing a bit at the praise and genuine affection in his voice. He rubbed the back of his head and the centaur squeezed his shoulder and patted his back, pushing him towards the demigods. “I did what anyone would have done…though, I won’t mind a few days of leave from the watch and patrol duty if you are that grateful.”
Chiron just snorted at the words, and Harry grinned as he walked forwards, trying his best to not show how much pain his abdomen was causing him. Honestly, what use were the literally harder-than-steel abs he had?! Though, given how randy the demigods were most of the time, maybe they had some use after all. He shook his head, wondering if his lust and horny nature were going to increase with each passing year, even as he took a long look at the lineup of Aphrodites standing a little apart from the other kids. By the Gods, he would have prayed to his father for help…but he’d run the risk of Zeus somehow increasing his rising libido instead of guiding him.
Or he would do the helping, only to help himself to the mature, buxom, voluptuous women of the camp himself. He strangely disliked that thought very much. Very, very much. Shaking his head once again, Harry raised an eyebrow as Ashley, the son of Apollo who had treated him after his first quest came forwards, a broad, beaming smile on his face. It was so reminiscent of Michael that for a moment, he went back in time, to the days when the older demigod had taught him about different things.
“Heya Harry,” Ashley grinned, ruffling his hair fondly, “What is with you and venoms, dickhead? First a Chimera, then a hydra, and now you top them both by getting injected by The Hydra! You sure you are not going to fight the Pit Serpent next?”
“I don’t have any plans of fighting any snakes which can swallow a man whole, thank you very much.”
“You just jinxed yourself, Harry,” Ashley shook his head sadly, a sympathetic expression on his face, “I just felt a change in your fate. I fear you have tempted the wrath and interest of the Moirai, my dear boy. They have decided that you will fight a serpent big enough to swallow your ass whole. So it has been ordained by them! And so it has been noted by my Father!”
“Bitch please,” Harry deadpanned at the dramatically posing son of Apollo, all of his lust and fantasies vanishing into a pit of despair and irritation. If something like that wasn’t in his fate before, it surely was going to be now, what with Ashley tempting the Fates by proclaiming it as a jest. Fucking bastard! “Now that you have made my future, tell me about what happened after I cut the Hydra's necks. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Uh-Hydras necks. Right,” the boy nodded, honestly a little scared by the momentary glare the younger demigod had thrown at him. Seriously, was this what his father felt like in front of the Big Three? Powerless and small? Dispelling those thoughts from his head, he looked at the repaired walls and continued. “Well, you had already roasted half of the monsters with that rainfall plus lightning combo—which by the way, has earned you the nickname Darth Potter, or Darth Evans depending upon which name the campers use. So, after you used your lightsaber to behead each of the monster's necks, you fell to the ground. Your stomach was damaged badly from its compound venom. Honestly, it is a little fascinating, since I found neurotoxins, cytotoxins, and hemotoxins, all three inside your blo-”
“Ashley, can you tell me about what happened first? I really don’t have any interest in some venom that was destroying my insides in three different ways.”
“Um-sorry, its just I want to be a toxicologist…and I am gonna shut up now,” Ashley stopped his sheepish explanation as Harry sighed beside him, sparks dancing across his midnight-black hair for a moment. Gulping quietly, the son of Apollo resumed recounting the events of that night, “The Ares campers once again entered the fray, slaughtering the remaining monsters while I and a few others tried to keep you stabilized. Your skin on the right side was completely torn up, Harry. It was so bad that we had to pour pure nectar directly on your wound, otherwise, the slightest movement could have resulted in your very guts spilling out of the side. We slowly brought you back inside, and two or three times, I feared we had lost you simply because of the massive blood loss you were experiencing. We poured nectar down your throat, along with the medicinal herbs to improve blood regeneration and flush out the toxins in your body. We had to remove that section of skin from your abdomen, and pull out the Hydras fangs from your flesh.”
“That sounds…nasty and dangerous.”
“It was, disgustingly so,” Ashley shivered, almost gagging as he remembered the blackened, flaked flesh and organs that had greeted him once they had cut open Harry. Each fang held several milliliters of half a dozen different types of toxins, each more potent than anything found in the mortal world. It was only the sheer amount of lightning he had absorbed before and after the attack, as well as his own power that had kept him alive by that point. Otherwise, had there been any other circumstance, then Ashley was sure that the demigod would have died a horrible, agonizing death—literally getting dissolved away from inside had to be painful. It had taken them hours to operate upon him, making incisions, pulling out the fangs left behind, and pouring nectar inappropriate, precise quantities. But in the end, they had taken all twelve fangs out of him, and each one was somewhere between three to six centimeters long. “You were literally rotting and melting away from the inside Harry. If the Hydra had gotten even a single fang more inside you, then I am not sure we would have been able to save you, especially since you also had an overdose of divine energy…once again. We couldn’t use too much Nectar or Ambrosia without setting you up for an explosion, and we couldn’t use less than what was required, otherwise, the venom would again start to progress. This...this was the toughest, hardest test of our skills as Healers, Harry. Bloody hell, it was probably the toughest operation in the history of medicine.”
“Uh…sorry?” He hedged, rubbing the back of his head once more, looking down at his stomach. He hadn’t really considered it before…but Apollo Campers really got way less praise than they deserved. Every Demigod could kill a monster—sure, Ares and Hephaestus cabins would have an easier time of it, and the less said about him, the better. But given time, every demigod could kill monsters. The same couldn’t be said for the healing that the Apollo kids performed. They had a gift for it that no one could replicate. They instinctively knew how much nectar, how much ambrosia, how much whatever grass they picked up was needed for an injury or treatment. Intricate, delicate operations which would have required several years of study in the mortal world, physiotherapy, and a literal healing superpower that each of them possessed to a different degree.
Some of them specialized in one facet of healing or the other, much like how a demigod inherited one facet of their parent's domain more than the others. Ashley, he had come to know after his fight with that chimera, was especially talented in dealing with toxins and poisons. He was much better at sensing them in the patient's body, and he…well he was leagues ahead at treating poisons than the others. “Thanks, Ashley,” he spoke up, his voice small but grateful, something which made the son of Apollo blush—it was rare that he got to employ his talents in the infirmary, “How many did we lose this time?”
“Eighteen,” he answered, as they came to a stop in front of the training grounds, and he frowned, looking down at the demigod. “Nope. You aren’t in any state to train yet Harry. Your insides are nothing more than tenderized meat right now, and the lingering effects of the venom are slowing your natural healing. You do anything drastic, and you will vomit your guts out.”
“Understood Doc,” he nodded, but given the bored look on his face, Ashley knew that Harry wasn’t going to listen to him, Right in front of his eyes, he hobbled over to the area where the Hephaestus campers were sitting, replenishing the traps and various mumbo jumbo they had expanded in the last week's attack, “Hey Brainy, do you have those batteries you were talking about. The one you said was strong enough to power a block for two days straight?”
“I do pipsqueak,” Brandon, or Brainy as the camp knew him nodded, his auburn hair pulled into a bun and his big, muscular arms straining as he wound a thick wire of Celestial bronze around a cylinder, “What do you need them for? Just raise your hand and go Thor like you always do.”
“Wonder Woman and Black Adam are better,“ he shot back instantly, gritting his teeth as his stomach flared, that little stumble somehow more painful than getting a punch to his nuts, “and I can’t summon lightning right now. I am too tired, and I feel as if my stomach will come out of my throat if I do anything like that. So give me those batteries, and let me have some food you narcissistic asshole!”
“Pot, kettle,” he deadpanned at the much younger demigod, his eyes moving over the bandages that were wrapped over his abdomen. He had not been here on the night of the attack, but the recordings of it were there to appraise him of how it went about. He was not a weak demigod by any means. Probably in the top five within the Ares and Hephaestus cabins for pure strength…but even a mere recording of that Hydra had shaken him to its core. While they used to poke fun at the legends of Bellerophon and Hercules as kids, seeing that clip reminded him of the gap that existed between him, and someone who could fight true monsters like that. And win. Nodding at Simons, he watched as Harry followed his younger sister, his gait unsteady and his skin unhealthily pale, “Leave some for me, will you? I am trying to make a car for the camp!”
“Will do!” He called out, waving his hand above his head. However, his attention was next grabbed by Ashley, as the son of Apollo sat down beside him and looked at the coils he was creating.
“What are you doing?” He asked, and Brandon sighed, too tired to explain the mechanics of the trap he was developing—only for Ashely to elaborate his question the next moment, “Why are you helping Harry?”
“Should I not?” He grunted in response, baffled by the question as he threw a look at his siblings, one they understood all too well as they nodded and took away their things, leaving them both alone, “I am not like those cunts from the Athena cabin, Ashley. I don’t care that he was born despite the Oaths they took.”
“Its just…most of the camp avoids him, you know,” he sighed in response, picking up a blade of grass and twisting it, “Except for Aphrodite and Apollo cabins, everyone behaves as if he is some time bomb waiting to go off. He doesn’t show it on his face, but I know that on some level, he is hurt by it. I just didn’t want someone taking advantage of his strength and offering a shoulder only to snatch it away as a joke.”
“I have better things to do than play with a kid's emotions,” Brandon snorted, picking up a plier and cutting the wire, grunting as the thick cord broke with a sharp sound. And he would be stupid to pick a fight with a kid like that, “Saw the recordings of the fight. Never thought we’d see the Hydra attack the camp.”
“Something is happening in the world Brandon,” Ashley mumbled, uncharacteristically serious, enough so that Brandon gave his full attention to the son of Apollo. His eyes were staring at the blade of grass in his hands, but his gaze was somewhere far away, unfocused and heavy, “Old and powerful monsters are beginning to stir again. The Hydra, the Higher Drakon those years ago, the sudden appearance of several Tier 4 monsters…and my blood hums when I am near Harry. Something big is coming Brandon, and it is centered around him. He is…part of some world-changing prophecy, and he-he is the herald of a new age.”
“Do you think it is that one?” Brandon asked, his hands stilling upon the coils as he looked in the direction Harry had gone, “The Prophecy we found in Chiron's office?”
“I don’t know,” Ashley shook his head, remembering the bone-chilling words of the Great Prophecy they had discovered in Chiron's office, the parchment seemingly as old as civilization itself, “But whatever it is…it will be dark, it will be filled with death, and our lives won’t ever be the same after it.”
“Just another Tuesday then,” the son of Hephaestus quipped after a few moments, a forced smile on his face as he tried to bury those morbid words in the back of his mind. Sighing heavily, Ashey gave him a weak smile and nodded, before his eyes turned toward the thing in his hands, “So, what are you making?”
“Just something that runt inspired me to make,” he answered, picking up the knife and making some grooves in the top of the cylinder, “Basically, it will be part of a big machine I am building. Twelve lightning rods all around the camp will attract lightning whenever a storm passes overhead or Harry feels like feeding ‘em, and that power will be stored in large, underground batteries. Whenever there is a monster attack, these will power the shock wires that I will lay around the border of the camp, as well as target the monsters whenever the system is activated.”
“Huh? That’s..cool.”
“Better than your idea of shooting the Hydra with arrows.”
“Fuck you Brainy.”
Comments
PP092
Sorry. I couldn't remember or see this one, s9 I thought I hadn't posted it here that day. I will correct the mistake soon. Thanks for pointing it out
I am lord dems
Why is this chapter here twice you also posted it on September 30th
