It only took a few seconds for Arachne to realize she may have made a mistake.
Perhaps her first reaction, upon seeing a zombie, shouldn't be to throw her spear at it.
Though, she blamed her family.
From her mom, who quite literally killed undead for most of her life so they didn't escape the Land of Shadows. To her Aunt Izzy, who also disliked dead things, as a goddess of death. All the way to her Aunt Meridia, who despised undead things with a passion.
"WHY DID THE ORACLE GO FLYING OUT THE WINDOW!?"
Arachne recognized Chiron's voice.
She recognized the anger and panic too.
"Uh oh." Percy whispered.
"Ah, a am gonna be in trouble." Arachne said quietly. "Mum gonna take away me spear again…."
"Damn, we're screwed."
"It's okay, a will take the blame; a was the one who did it." Arachne reassured.
"No way, we did it together." Percy crossed his arms.
Arachne choked, mostly because she wasn't used to having a friend stand by her like this.
It wasn't just a passing comment when she mentioned that she didn't have friends. It was hard for her to relate to other kids her age for the most part. Even kids of non-human parents always seemed to care about other things compared to her, so it was difficult to make long-lasting friendships.
"A have an idea." She thought of a way to get out of trouble.
"What's the plan?" Percy quickly asked her.
"How quickly can ya start crying?" She asked.
"Uh…?"
"My big sis taught me when a was younger, but a havn't had the chance to use it. But she said if a start crying when I mess up, a can get out of a lot of trouble." She was, of course, talking about Kunou in these circumstances.
"I don't think I can cry without a reason." Percy admitted.
Arachne let out a breath. "A can't either."
"Dang, we're screwed then."
"...maybe not." Arachne shook her head. "Percy a need you to do something for me."
[Line Break]
Chiron trotted up the stairs of the house with a purpose.
Mr. D was right behind him.
Frankly, Mr. D didn't really care that the Oracle was sent down the mountain on the spear express. If anything, he was laughing as he saw that old bag of bones flailing helplessly as he watched.
But, also, he did sort of have a job.
Mordred was also with them.
Sorta as the de facto 'adult supervision' on Arachne's behalf, she recognized that her little sister shit the bed.
They were about to burst into the attic when Chiron paused.
"Harder!" He recognized Arachne's voice along with the shaking of the floorboards. "Hard, do it harder!"
"I'm doing it as hard as I can!" He heard Percy respond.
"It's okay, a can take it. Give it to me as hard as ya can!"
"I'm trying; it's just uncomfortable and awkward!"
"A trust ya, it's okay, just do it as best as ya can. Set a rhythm and go from there."
Chiron's hand was frozen on the doorknob.
He had been around teenagers long enough to know that he really didn't want to open the door. The shaking of the not-so-well-kept floorboards certainly didn't help his desire to not open the door.
"That's it, Percy; precision and technique are just as important as doing it hard."
Chiron finally worked up the courage to open the door, but Mr. D stopped him.
Chiron looked at him in confusion, but Mr. D just shook his head.
"Let that brave boy finish." Mr. D raised his glass of wine up.
Chiron didn't want to actually voice his thoughts, but his face pulled back, scrunching as the actual thought now crossed his mind in more vivid detail.
Mordred, to her credit, kept her mouth shut.
Mostly because she knew her stupid little sister. That brat barely even acknowledged boys, let alone be willing to do that so quickly.
Chiron decided to ignore Mr. D and finally pushed the door open.
All three of them peered inside and saw what was happening.
Arachne's cheek was red, and Percy had his arm reeled back like he was ready to punch her…..
The two kids went still, awkwardly standing there.
"We weren't doin nothin." Arachne quickly said.
"Yeah, we weren't doing anything." Percy nodded.
The three of them stared silently before Chiron spoke up.
"What happened to the Oracle?" He was blunt.
"Okay, but it's not me fault."
"What. Happened. To the Oracle."
"...it was a zombie. Me mum said zombies are bad…" Arachne shrank under his gaze.
Chiron face-palmed as his answer had apparently come.
"Honestly, she's not bullshitting either. She hears a lot of shit about killing anything 'undead.'" Mordred spoke on her behalf. "Should have warned her if whatever she was meeting was a zombie or something."
"It was a zombie, really creepy." Percy nodded.
"Shit, yeah." Mordred just sighed. "But, uh….maybe it's not dead…more dead?" Mordred offered.
Mr. D took a sip of his drink. "Well, it is cursed with undeath, so it's probably not fully dead."
Chiron's eyes flashed, and he quickly bolted out of the room to go find the Oracle now that things had been clarified.
"Well…that didn't end too badly." Percy perked up, expecting a lot more yelling and punishments.
Mr. D let out a sigh. "I suppose I should go help. I know Apollo won't let me hear the end of it if his Oracle actually does bite the dust."
Mr. D slowly, casually, walked out too.
Arachne was about to follow, but Mordred grabbed her arm.
"...Hey, big sis." She forced a smile.
"You were having him punch you so you would start crying, weren't ya?" Mordred asked with a deadpan.
"N-no." Arachne looked away, though her red and a tiny bit swollen cheek was rather obvious.
Percy flushed a little and also looked away.
Mordred knew that her stupid little sister probably planned some waterworks to get out of trouble.
Mordred decided not to mention that her plan did work, just not the way she expected.
[Line Break]
Rather quickly, the others tracked down where Chiron was. Far down the mountain, between two crevices, they found the Oracle.
She was currently twitching, a certain red spear impaling her to a rock formation.
Chiron seemed completely unsure of what to do.
Mr. D, on the other hand, just watched rather curiously. "So, nice throw."
"Thank you." Arachne responded without a second thought.
Mordred smacked her on the back of the head. "Don't take the compliment, you idiot."
"Okay, we're going to gently pull the spear out—" Chiron was vocalizing the game plan before Arachne interrupted him.
"Um, maybe this is a bad time to say that me spear is meant for killing undead….." Arachne bit her lip.
Chiron's head snapped to her.
"Well, she isn't wrong." Mordred confirmed it. "Her mum used it to kill a lot of undead over time. That thing is as anti-undead as it can be. The fact that your weird zombie is still even 'alive' is kind of surprising."
Chiron let out a long-suffering sigh. "How did this even happen?"
"Honestly, you can blame this idiot's mother." Mordred snorted.
Chiron, for his benefit, didn't agree with her.
Out loud, that is.
He didn't want Athena upset with him, despite how true her statement was.
"Um, Mr. Brunner, what's the deal with the zombie anyways?" Percy raised his hand like he was in class.
"Chiron." The Centaur corrected him for what felt like the hundredth time. "And this is…was…is the Oracle of Delphi. Blessed by Fate and Destiny to deliver prophecies that always come true. However, something happened this past century. Usually, the Oracle 'dies,' and the 'Oracle' is then passed on to a new host who becomes the new 'Oracle of Delphi.'"
"So it's like a title?" Arachne tilted her head.
"More or less." Chiron nodded curtly. "As you can see, the Oracle isn't dying as she should."
"She's cursed." Mr. D added in. "Apollo's been upset ever since. He doesn't know who did it."
"Wasn't it Uncle Hades?" Arachne responded in confusion.
Even Mr. D did a double take as she blurted that out.
"...What?" She seemed even more confused as Chiron and Mr. D were staring at her now. "Who else can get away with cursin something with 'undeath' but Uncle Hades 'round these parts? If anyone else did, he'd be the one offended, wouldn't he? You would just have to tell Uncle about it, and he'd have fixed it cause death is his thing."
That, and the fact that her spear didn't immediately turn the zombie into dust, meant that the 'curse' on it had to be pretty powerful. At least a god on the level of Hades to keep it still 'intact' and all that.
Mr. D raised his hand as if to argue, but suddenly, he had a sort of realization that she wasn't wrong.
Everyone knew that Hades treated his job with meticulous care.
Compared to other pantheons, Hades was notorious for not allowing any kind of 'resurrections,' or rather, they were so few that they could be counted on one hand.
"Huh." Mr. D just settled on that while taking a drink.
Truthfully, he never really gave it any thought.
At the end of the day, he just didn't care.
"Approach….."
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned towards the impaled Oracle on the rock.
"Approach…approach…approach…"
"Looks like she's broken; better put her out of her misery." Mr. D stated.
"A will do it." Arachne nodded to herself. "A good zombie is a dead zombie."
"Stop causing problems." Mordred smacked her head again as the younger girl yelped with a pout.
"Quiet!" Chiron raised his voice. "Oracle, speak; we're listening." He knew this was too important to interfere with; even trying to 'save' her might disturb the prophecy given.
"...you shall go west and face the god who has turned –"
The Oracle rasped, her body twitched on the spear.
"You shall find what was stolen and see it safely returned."
"You shall be betrayed by the one who calls you a friend."
"And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end."
The twitching zombie went limp on the spear.
"So…what does that mean?" Percy asked.
Arachne shrugged. "Can a have ma spear back, please?"
They ignored her.
"So here's an important question." Mr. D spoke up. "Was the prophecy intended for the little spider here or the little water brat?"
Chiron's eyes widened as he hadn't even considered that until now.
"...I'm going to have to consult Lord Apollo." He winced. "And he's not going to be happy that his Oracle is now…"
"We can hide the evidence." Arachne offered. "No one here is a snitch."
"I'll get my shovel." Mr. D nodded along.
Chiron's eye twitched. "Just…go back to camp, please." He gestured for the two kids to go. "We'll talk about things later."
Arachne took that as a win and decided to skedaddle before anything like 'punishments' was mentioned.
[Line Break]
"How does it work?" Arachne asked.
Percy shrugged. "Iunno. But it's great, isn't it?"
"Kid, this is literally the best thing I've seen since coming to this place." Even Mordred looked enthralled.
They had come to the dining pavilion for a snack, but they had been distracted by the thing in front of them.
They were all staring at the drink machine that seemed to produce any liquid you could think of, mundane of course.
However, that unfortunately also didn't include alcohol.
"If you're going to get in trouble for something, you may as well do it while stealing this thing and bringing it back home." Mordred told her sister.
"What are you doing?"
The familiar voice had the trio turned around to see Annabeth walking over along with Luke, whom they had 'met' the day earlier.
"...do you need help using that?" Luke offered. "You just need to say what you want, and it'll dispense it."
"But how does it work?" Arachne asked.
"Um…good stuff?" Luke blinked, not quite sure on how to answer that.
"Blue Coke." Percy put a cup in front of the machine and pressed the button, and it began to dispense exactly what he asked for. "Holy crap, this is awesome."
It wasn't their first time using it; despite Luke's 'help,' they had already figured it out. But they were still just enthralled by it.
"Moooo~"
"Mr. Blueberry, where did ya go run off to!" Arachne hugged her big fish as he reappeared. "Do ya want something to drink?"
"Mooooo."
"Sorry, Mr. Blueberry, it doesn't work on alcohol." Arachne said sadly.
"C-can you really understand him?" Annabeth asked quietly.
"Ye?" Arachne tilted her head. "He's ma familiar; we got a link."
"I…I'm not quite sure what that means." Annabeth was still feeling awkward; it felt like her sister lived in a whole different world than her.
Knowing so many different things that she had never even heard a whisper of before now.
Even now, she looked at the other blonde girl with a mix of trepidation and respect. The small girl barely looked older than her, yet she could do what she did earlier at the lake.
All that power, and apparently, she wasn't even a demigod!
It was just…illogical to her.
"Well, you can try to get it to dispense some beer or something. It's sort of a game that new campers play to see if they can find some loophole." Luke shrugged. "No one's gotten lucky yet, though."
Arachne's eyes lit up.
"Usually, I think I should say something as the adult, but fuck it. Go at it, brat." Mordred gave her tacit approval.
Nobody ever accused her of being a good role model.
"Moooooo~" The big fish seemed to agree.
Arachne interlocked her fingers, stretching her arms. "A got this."
She raised a finger, and it glowed slightly as she began to write runes onto the device.
Slowly, a crowd began to form up around them.
"Someone's trying to break the machine again?"
Luke whispered to one of his cabin members. "Yeah, she's trying to get it to give alcohol."
The whispers picked up as a dozen or two kids all gathered around.
"What's with the glowing squiggles?"
"I think she's using magic?"
"I've never seen a Hecate kid do something like that before. Isn't magic more like mist stuff and chanting over a pile of dead animals?"
Arachne focused, tuning it all out as she continued. She knew as soon as she started that this thing was much more complicated in how it worked than first suspected.
It was definitely 'divinely created,' even casually at that, so using Runecraft to try and jailbreak it was rather difficult, all things considered.
Eventually, she stopped in her tracks; with a flourish of her finger, she seemingly finished.
However, nothing happened for a beat or two, but no one spoke.
Then, the machine started to tremble. A slight shake turned into a tremor, and then it began to violently rock and vibrate in place. It glowed an ethereal light, and the little spider's eyes widened as a burst of energy erupted off it and sent her flying into the nearby wall.
There were plenty of gasps or shocked exclamations, but Arachne was barely phased; instead, her eyes were still locked on the drink machine that seemingly stopped trembling after the little display.
"Arachne –" Percy was going to ask her if she was okay, but she held up her hand.
There was a strange grinding in the machine, then it was as if something exploded, and suddenly, a geyser shot out of the machine's spout.
It began to spray everywhere.
"It's beer!" One of the campers yelled out enthusiastically as he licked a drop off his hand.
And like that, all hell broke loose as everyone grabbed any containers they could to fill them up.
Sure, there was a rather large puddle forming in the pavilion, and the machine seemingly couldn't shut off anymore, but no one cared about those small and unimportant details.
Oddly, Mordred only looked at her stupid little sister with pride.
Annabeth stared blankly as the beer soaked her hair and her shoes while most of the campers around her scrambled to fill up whatever they could get their hands on.
Percy, who didn't really care about drinking, was just having fun in the excitement of what was happening.
Arachne stood up, looking proudly at her fellow demigods filling up a literal barrel, and she nodded to herself.
For the first time since coming here, she felt kinship with her fellow demigods as a whole.
Oddly, something else caught her attention when she too would be enjoying a literal endless supply of beer.
A crow swooped down from the air, as if trying to swipe at her. She snatched it from the air before it could actually try and 'harm' her, but as soon as she had it in her grasp, it transformed into a letter.
Mordred and Percy seemed to notice, as did Annabeth, who likewise wasn't as caught up in the chaos.
"What's that?" Percy asked.
"Don't know, it's magical though." Arachne gave it a once-over, making sure there was nothing dangerous about that.
"I recognize that; I've seen some of the children of Magic use something similar before." Annabeth chimed in.
Mordred, who had a mug full, was casually peering over her shoulder as Arachne opened the letter, reading over it.
Mordred did a spit take, nearly falling over as she began laughing.
It was because her stupid little sister was being 'challenged' to a 'magic duel.'
[Line Break]
A/N
Arachne unintentionally or intentionally causes a bit of chaos by existing.
If you want to read 4 chapters ahead of this omake, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone
I also have a boosty if you can't use the above under the same name