#Implied to be after tsats

[freyapoststhings]

hc that kids of Apollo with healing powers(Will specifically) can suck one's health/energy too. (More under the cut)

Based on fanart I saw, Apollo's kids can channel their power into their hands. It only works with the demigod's hands, though. (Mini drabble/fic below! No warnings!)

Will discovered it(at least he's the first known person with it) when he was really stressed one day and had to heal some minor wounds(stuff that didn't really need magic to heal).

He was so annoyed that when he touched the patient, they immediately passed out. Will, of course, panicked and started checking vitals, but everything was fine.

The kid woke up a couple minutes later, still with his injuries, mind you. He was fine, but he suddenly felt extremely exhausted.

Will told him that everything was fine with him, no major injuries to be found. Chiron tried to figure out what happened, but all he could determine was that it was something that hadn't happened before.

He recommended calling Apollo to ask about it. So, the next week, when they came to visit, Apollo was immediately bombarded with questions.

He eventually calmed everyone down, before asking what the Hades happened.

Kayla cut Will off and burst into talking animatedly about how cool and powerful her brother was, with Austin nodding along.

Will raised his hands and they both went quiet. This was a trick that Micheal taught Will, back before the war. It was a trick he would use in the infirmary to make it easy to treat patients.

Apollo, who was quite impressed with the little trick, waited patiently for his son to speak.

"Last week, I was treating a patient, and suddenly he passed outright after I touched him. When he woke up, he said he had felt super tired all of a sudden. Do you happen to know what this could be?"

Apollo grinned, snapping his fingers as soon as Will stopped talking.

"Were you extremely tired or feeling a very strong emotion at the time?" Apollo explained, raising an eyebrow at his now flustered son, two young teenagers on either side of him.

"Well....I mean, I was a little tired, I guess? And he only had small cuts and bruises! Nothing a little ambrosia couldn't fix!" Will's tone started sheepish, but slowly annoyance seeped into his voice.

Kayla and Austin shared a look, and then gave their brother a sympathetic glance.

Apollo watched the blonde, who was still rambling about how often patients come in with minor and ordinary scratches and marks.

Apollo held up a tan hand, all three of the other's present hushing up quickly. Will's eyes contained bits of sheepishness, but still had an underlying glance of anger.

Kayla and Austin looked similar to one another, both filled with a mix of curiosity and sympathy.

"Well, it seems like you inherited a trait of mine." Apollo giggled slightly, before sighing and continuing his trail.

"You see, this power you experienced comes with the healing powers. It is extremely rare, especially since most children of mine don't have as much experience healing as you do. That is why you have it."

Apollo took another breath, and continued.

"You're power doesn't have a name, but basically, if you are feeling especially negative, your powers will do a sort of switch."

Before the three could question, Apollo continued.

"What I'm trying to say is, you basically sucked his energy to replenish yours."

Apollo finished, glancing at the surprised faces of the ones he holds dear with amusement.

"So I.....took his energy?!" Will exclaimed. At this point, Kayla and Austin basically had stars in their eyes. Apollo was worried they might be permanent.

"WILL THAT'S SO COOL!!!!" Kayla yelled, crawling over to shake her brother by the shoulders. Austin and Apollo just laughed.

"KAYLAAAAA PLEA-SE PUT ME DOWN." Will exclaimed. Kayla, now out of breath, finally let her very dizzy brother free. Now half in her brother's lap, she tucked her head into his shoulder in an attempt to catch her breath.(Not a ship!!! This is sibling affection!)

Austin smiled, before crawling over to his siblings. They grinned at his brothers' pleading face, before resting leaning against Will's back. Will made one last-ditch effort and looked at his dad for help.

"Dad please! I have work in a few minutes!" Will whispered, still attempting not to wake up his now sleeping siblings.

"I'll take over for a bit, alright?" Apollo smiled gently, before summoning a blanket and slapping it over the three teens. He kissed each child on the crown of their head, before getting up fully.

"Sleep well, my little crows. I love you." Apollo spoke softly, making it harder for Will to stay awake. His exhaustion caught up to him quickly.

By the time the door shut, the demigods were fast asleep, laying against each other on the cabin floor.

He was asked as he left the cabin where his kids were.

"Oh, they're just getting some well-deserved rest."

---

Okay! That took far longer than I thought it would lol. I'm thinking of posting this on my ao3 as a short one shot. Let me know what y'all want! Also, I'll try to find the fanart that inspired this! Hope y'all enjoyed this!

[love-has-a-way-ofgrowingbackward]

they tricked us into thinking this was a book about quests and bob and nyx when it was actually about trauma and people who live with it. that's what the book was written for and that's what most of the book is about

[aroaceleovaldez]

so in The Titan’s Curse it was the first time we had seen CHB during the winter, and in total there were approximately 13 or so campers present (including Percy, Thalia, and Nico, not including the Hunters) and that was considered slightly below average, due to a loss of campers to Kronos’ army.

In The Last Olympian, camp has about 60 or so campers total (before battle), give or take a few. The majority of these kids are likely summer only campers, based on TTC.

in The Lost Hero, we see CHB again outside of the summer (fall/winter) and this time there’s maybe 100 kids, give or take a bit, supposedly due to an influx after the war. And supposedly that’s only the year-round campers, which implies that there are even more campers.

But what i don’t understand is, in The Hidden Oracle, it’s fall/winter again and we’re back down to about 20 campers. Where did all those other campers go? We know some campers went to college, but those are only the oldest kids, which was a small portion of camp. Were there high casualty rates we didn’t see in Octavian’s/the Giant war that are just left implied between series? And then there’s a sudden boom again of new campers in Tower of Nero??? And then AGAIN in TSATS suddenly camp is small enough that it’s completely empty save for Nico and Will when everybody goes home for the off-season (cause apparently everybody spontaneously stopped being year-rounders)? Can we have a consistent population in Camp Half-Blood please.

[screech-bling]

☀️ TSATS SPOILERS ☀️

⭐️ ED & S/H CONTENT WARNING ⭐️

we don’t talk enough abt nico’s relationship with food

when i first started reading this passage, i thought “okay, sure, he has disordered habits. he was starving for days and he’s having issues with PTSD. that kind of trauma and stress would have an effect on your appetite.”

but my entire outlook changed after mr. d said “there is no need to punish yourself with hunger just because it’s what you’re used to.” to which nico simply grumbles in response to.

this seems to imply that nico is PURPOSEFULLY starving himself. trauma and stress are definitely huge contributions to WHY he’s doing it, but the idea that the starvation is self-imposed is… literally self harm.

showing representation that not only seems to not be directly linked to weight, but also portrays disordered habits in a BOY!?!?

shout out to rick and mark for that one. felt seen <3

(ignore that they’re pdf screenshots and not my usual annotated book screenshots, i’m out of town rn)

(EDIT: okay i’m realizing mr d. could just mean this in a ‘hard fact’ way, like ‘ur hurting urself dumbass’, however the use of ‘punish yourself’ awoke something in me and i will now be headcanoning nico as an0rexic/maybe arfid bcz i said so)

[diakaashi]

I need to talk about TSATS somewhere and specially about Will, and it will be here.

I hope that boy got some therapy planned because I've knew it for a while he needed it, but after reading, i AM SURE. Until he went to camp he didn't stop at one place because of his mother's job, besides her, nobody truly for him to rely on. Then he goes to camp where basically he is a war doctor and has to witness atrocities everywhere, can we just talk about that for a minute?? How he was looking if I am not mistaken, for his brother when he had to be pulled out to heal the others, how many more maybe died before he could do something, how just the situation of having someone's life in his hands at thay age does to someone?

I can't even express how it angers me people don't really seem to notice what the Apollo kids TRULY go through. I may be rambling, but all he has ever learned to do is heal and take care of others, mask his emotions so everyone can rely on him, we see it ALL THE WAY IN THE SUN AND THE STAR, he is literally melting and worrying about Nico.

How he handles HIS EMOTIONS TOO??? yeah? Or better, the lack of it. Better said how he seems to be so unaware at times of what he is feeling, and maybe that's why he gets so confused to understand Nico's relationship with darkness, when he himself doesn't seem to deal with what has happend to him? Always pushing on what he can do next to help and next and next and so go on...

That's why maybe the whole Octavian thing messed him up that Bad! NOT TO mention the whole Hay Fever thing and how that could imply to a whole other box of stuff in the future or so... I may be rambling, but the master point is that Will needs Therapy just as much as Nico does! dammed he be, the poor boy.

I love him so much, and it hurt me to see how hurt he was during TSATS ... I love u will, let me hug u

[lilislegacy]

I think Percy and Annabeth's first time was a wee bit after the end of BoO...Maybe around the time of their one year anniversary? I mean Rick makes quite a few hints that they are intimate with each other sexually (as implied in BoO, ToN, CoTG and TSaTS). I feel like they've been through so much together and they know, love and respect each other so well/much that which leads them to have sex at some point between BoO and CoTG. If you've read 'Demigods and Magicians' too, Percy blatantly says that he likes kissing Annabeth, which may be uncle Rick's child friendly way of saying they like making out. We see you Rick!!! ALSO I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE WRATH OF THE TRIPLE GODDESS!!!!!!22REFGY9UDtrg3fqwedqsazHO

yeah, i’m totally with you that it happens little bit after BoO. rick give us a lot of hints that more happens between them behind the scenes than he can say. you’re also so right about them having a lot of love and respect between them. their feelings for each other run so deep, but so does the admiration they hold for one another. in percy’s eyes, no one comes close to comparing to annabeth. and in annabeth’s eyes, no one comes close to comparing to percy.

i am also so excited for the wrath of the triple goddess!! i was looking at the summary and cover art for it a couple days ago and it got me so freaking excited!!

[ordon-pumpkin]

I finally read The Sun and The Star…. And uh…

Listen I LOVE Solangelo a lot. So it kinda sucks that I didn’t like the book overall. It wasn’t all bad. There were some truly amazing moments that I loved and I enjoyed a lot of the fluff and angst of their journey and relationship, don’t get me wrong.

But there are several things that make me dislike it as a whole.

The most glaring is that I feel like as a book that comes after Trials of Apollo it missed the mark completely. This book feels like it’s a fanfic written by someone who never finished the previous series. It’s strange. The lessons learned in ToA were heavy, impactful, and incredible. There are several things in TSATS that just do not make sense compared to ToA and how that series actually ended. Will implies (unless I missed something) a situation where Apollo never returned after his most recent battle which is just blatantly not true. Plus, Jason somehow went from someone who helped a god learn a valuable lesson, a hero who made a noble sacrifice, a death that had deep meaning to being written as “just another friend I (Nico) couldn’t save.” It seems like both Jason’s true impact and Apollo’s growth are thrown out the window for no real reason.

Which feels like two big slaps in the face to someone who loved the previous series.

This could have been fixed with a couple of short scenes or simply not implying things that contradicted ToA. It could have dove a little deeper into what had happened before. It just didn’t. Instead it went out of it’s way to feel disconnected. I have no idea why. It just makes the book feel like it doesn’t belong with the others.

I have a lot of issues with this book. Which makes me sad, because all of the potential in the world was there. Mostly it just felt really off. There are things I loved. Moments I really appreciated. They are just really overshadowed by the lack of cohesion from the past books to the point where it’s the first book of the mainline Greek based Riordanverse books that I don’t feel like I want to read again. I kinda want to pretend it just didn’t happen, which is a shame for the good parts of the book.

Oof.

[thesungod]

The way they had to character assassinate Percy and Annabeth though? ''oopsie we did a mistake and forgot Bob'' like? And yeah the Calypso thing was already bad in itself but Bob literally gave his own life for Percy and Annabeth. And I thought Percy's fatal flaw was loyalty lmao? That anon who said it seems like Nico's fatal flaw is loyalty has a point. At least Nico never forgot about people, heck, he was the one who helped Bob first by giving him a place in the Underworld after his memory was wiped out, and that is pretty much why Bob decided to help Percy and Annabeth in HoH, and that is pretty much why Percy and Annabeth survived. Literally Nico's out there trying to help everyone in need even when the Argo gang was arguing about whether or not they should have saved Nico from his jar. I mean? I get that you have to do something to further your intended plot, but you also have to make it make sense within the narrative, otherwise, it just comes off badly written and sloppy.

Also, I have not finished the book but where are the Little Bob and Damasen?

And with Apollo thing... I mean, what was the point of 5 books Apollo series if you were gonna erase pretty much every development that we've seen? Lowkey was going to say 'Luke was right' if i am being honest.

It’s sooooo funny to me how Bob was like

and Annabeth and Percy apparently decided they were built different.

what really gets me is that the solution to make Nico and Will have a nice trip to Tartar Sauce and not make anyone ooc (Percy and Annabeth, Apollo) was to make it a secret quest.

Other people don’t know they are going until it’s too late. Boom. Done. I’ll grant that maybe it was logistically impossible not to let Apollo know because he’s the sole narrator of ToA, but they could have at least spared Percabeth.

Re: Nico & Loyalty, it was always implied (implied. not plastered across the entire book and written on walls) that he was an impressively loyal person to the people he loved, especially fellow outcasts. Actually, mostly fellow outcasts. He was even stubbornly and devotedly dedicated to his father despite Hades being a um, *bad* father for most of the series.

That’s why I never see him becoming this walking meme that is loved by everyone, tbh. I’m not saying he has to be unhappy, but I was very okay with him always being kind of a weirdo and only having Will and a few true friends while being somewhat (not terribly. just somewhat) feared/treated with awe by anyone else. It’s the vibe he was giving in ToA and I loved it😭

Book Jon Snow vibes :(

The Apollo thing is just… plot convenience. There was clearly no time for him and that’s okay ig. I won’t retcon the entirety of ToA just because he was napping throughout tsats.

[throughtartaruswithyou]

tsats review (spoilers)

ok so glad to see i wasn't alone in having mixed feelings about this book.

i love my solangelo moments and i'm glad rick had a queer co-author to help write those scenes. I'm glad we got to see nico have a somewhat happy ending and allowed him to work through his trauma. that was very much needed and im glad that happened. I also loved how nico and will's relationship became more balanced throughout the book. I liked that will needed nico at some points instead of it always being the other way around. The progression of this was natrual and well done imo.

HOWEVER two things can be true at once. there were some parts i disliked.

i hated nico knowing what montero was. that was an awful addition. if anything will would've known? i would've hated it significantly less if will made that refrence. especially becuase will introduced him to starwars?? how does nico know lil nas x but will doesnt??? there was some other minor dialect inconsinsences that i didn't LOVE but like whatever.

My main issue was how they seemed to set up so many plot ideas but it just because a huge nothing at the end. First one was nico "learning to live without his darkness". to me this implied that he may have lost access to certain areas of his power? maybe this one was a stretch but i felt like it wouldve increased the stakes of the book a bit more. it kind of felt like nothing really HAPPENED. no one lost anything or gained anything. bob just walked away at the end (litterally). I also noticed will getting paralleled to persephone and gorgyra's river. both of which where "stuck in tartarus" at some level would've loved that too but maybe more in a metaphorical sense?

i suppose rick usually writes books in this way (nothing permenently impactful happens) but idk. just felt unfinished in that area. for what it's worth i recently re-read HOO and i did not get the unfinished vibe.

Oh yeah and the plot holes. bianca chose elysium, apollo never did anything to help will after apollo promised to be more watchful, hypnos didn't put people to sleep during the battle of ny ect ect. other people have better posts but those are the ones i noticed.

ANYWAYS i would rate it a 3.5/5. worth the read for solangelo fans but wont be worth it if you aren't invensted in their realationship. reads better as a parable for building a healthy realationship.

[newathens]

i think tsats might have implied it? the light therapy ball he says he's been using since he was a kid is usually used to treat it.

i personally assumed he was using that BECAUSE he is a son of apollo not because he has SAD. this is a fantasy series after all

[crossdressingdeath]

Once again wondering what exactly Nico and Bob's dynamic is. Like... we know they're friends, but I'm so curious as to what all that entails for them, if that makes sense? Because Bob jumps into Tartarus with no sign of hesitation for Percy based solely on Nico saying Percy was a friend, despite—as far as the TSatS excerpt shows—the two of them spending a fair amount of time bonding over Percy completely ignoring them when they weren't immediately useful, and that is a huge thing to do for someone you have met all of once no matter how many times your buddy tells you they're a friend. In fact even Bob buying that Percy is his friend based just on Nico's word doesn't make a lot of sense, again assuming the bit in TSatS where Nico and Bob bonded over how poorly Percy treated them stays. No matter how much you trust someone, I feel like in this case the logical conclusion to come to is that they're in denial rather than that they're right. It feels like a huge jump for Bob to just... believe that.

But you know, one potential way around this that I'd actually really like to see is that maybe Bob jumped into Tartarus not because he actually thinks Percy is a friend to him or even to Nico, but because he knows Nico sees Percy as a dear friend despite Percy's treatment of him and would be devastated if he died. Which would imply a much closer relationship than just casual friendship between Nico and Bob, since going all the way to Tartarus for someone you've met once and who doesn't seem to give any sort of a shit about you is a huge thing to do on anyone's behalf, much less the behalf of someone who isn't actually present and would have no way of knowing that you could've done anything at all if you choose to do nothing. ...Of course Bob taking Nico's word that Percy is his friend also suggests a much closer relationship than casual friendship, since that's a lot to take on faith with zero evidence to back it up. Like, we know the two of them are friends, but they must be really good friends for Bob to jump into Tartarus for Nico's sake just in general, even without going into how he's jumping into Tartarus for Nico via jumping into Tartarus for Percy, who claimed to be Bob's friend and then completely abandoned him. Basically please can Rick and Mark really dig into how close Nico and Bob must be for Bob to be willing to go so far for someone he barely knows and who has never done anything for him and continue fighting for him and Annabeth even after learning that it was Percy who stole his memories to begin with... just for Nico's sake.

[love-has-a-way-ofgrowingbackward]

feeling deeply touch starved rn yall.

[aroaceleovaldez]

honestly the whole thing in TSATS of randomly changing Nico’s name from just “Nico” to “Niccolo” was so lame and they didn’t even actually do anything with it, they just mention it once. Probably just to go “Look at how Italian he is!” It would have had so much more pay-off if instead of deciding that random canon and throwing it in, they had instead revealed that Will’s name isn’t actually “William” but “Wilhelm,” because that has SO much more opportunity and is actually hilarious.

Like, it ties into his powers (sonic whistle), it fits with the demigod thematic names actually more than William (makes his name a sound + sun/healing joke, which are all of his main powers), it creates the HILARIOUS implication that Apollo named him after the sound effect (and implies that Will had the sonic powers as a newborn, enough so that Apollo went “...im about to be hilarious”), and could offer some explanation as to why Will insists he has no musical/sound abilities and almost never uses his sonic whistle power (embarrassed to admit he’s named after the Wilhelm scream and so avoids sound-related powers so people don’t make the connection).

Like, imagine how much funnier it would have been rather than some one-off Nico mentally going “oh yeah my name is Niccolo. Somehow this has never come up ever and never will again.” we got “Nico... there’s something I’ve been lying about.... my name isn’t William. It’s Wilhelm. Like the scream. [HEAD IN HANDS]” CAN YOU IMAGINE

[aroaceleovaldez]

Speaking of their depiction of Will's anxiety- the Stymphalian birds were specifically chosen for him, because in the myths they can only be taken down by archery. But they're saying here that Will had a traumatic experience at the hands of monsters who have historically been defeated by archers. And then he didn't dedicate himself to archery at all? For the 5+ years he's been at camp? Reverse superhero origin story where instead of vowing to fight crime as the result of a loved one's death they just never leave the house ever again

Yeah! Or music/sound (which his satyr is specifically noted to be skilled at - Woodrow teaches the music class at CHB in The Hidden Oracle), which Will also doesn't do anything with besides his sonic whistle or healing hymns (which apparently are actually just his mom's songs and not hymns) at all until that gets retconned in TSATS. Like, we know he has a sonic whistle and healing hymns, but it's kind of a specific thing that he's not as musically or archery inclined as his siblings. So why half-retcon half of that, make these birds that can specifically only be defeated by sound and archery a major part of his backstory, and then... we never get any payoff for it? He faces them again, but it doesn't go any better than it did the first time? There's no building of his character there.

Also, Stymphalian birds are actually sacred to Artemis. Yknow. Apollo's twin.

I get that TSATS was trying to cameo a lot of monsters we've seen before, but making Stymphalian birds specifically part of Will's backstory feels kind of weird and doesn't make a ton of sense? Because when we see them in SoM it's implied they were specifically sent to CHB, so why would they try to maim the random kid? Especially a son of the sibling of the goddess they're sacred to?

The only explanation I would accept is that the Stymphalian birds that attacked Will in New York were actually the ones from CHB in Sea of Monsters after they flew away, and Will just got really unlucky. But timeline-wise that actually doesn't work, cause SoM and TTC are the same year, and Nico and Will are the same age, so Will should be 10 or 11 in SoM/TTC (depending on if you accept Nico is 13 or 14 in HoO). And TSATS tells us Will arrived to CHB at age eight, which would mean he's been at CHB longer than Percy has and so the birds couldn't be the same ones from SoM. (Yes I'm still mad about the absolutely broken timeline there.) Also if they're dissuaded by noise, there's no way they're going to land in the middle of New York City of all places.

There's just other monsters they could have picked that would have made more sense. Or even mortal animals! We know from previous books that there's a thing about mortal animals sometimes having vendettas against the children of gods associated with their species for curse reasons or etc! Apollo actually has a lot of those! And it can become enough of a problem even to young demigods that it can require them to come to camp early before monsters can begin tracking them (ex.: Annabeth with spiders - monsters seemed to only become a problem after she tried coming back home the first time). Why not have it be Will being attacked consistently by normal mortal crows, because he's a son of Apollo? Or snakes - in the first book Percy even mentions fighting off two snakes when he was a baby because they were sent to kill him. I mean, Will's from Texas! We can absolutely scrounge up some snakes for him to fight. And it would fit more with acknowledging how he's from Texas specifically, just like how much the book tries to emphasize that Nico is from Venice.

It feels like one of many dropped plot points that make me say I wish TSATS had been worked on longer so that these types of things could have been ironed out and maybe turned into something consistent.

[aroaceleovaldez]

I really dislike the inherent main plots of TSATS and Chalice of the Gods as they’re being explained to us currently, mostly just cause I feel like they take away from already established lore of the series and other plot points.

There is no way TSATS can go that doesn’t make either Tartarus feel cheap and/or the entire book just feel like Percabeth In Mark Of Athena: 2 Electric Boogaloo. Unless the twist is that they don’t go to Tartarus it is physically impossible. Because either they go to Tartarus and breeze through it, which makes Tartarus as a setting feel cheap and ruins all prior instances of it being used as a landscape of suffering, or they suffer Lots and Lots and it just feels like we’re rehashing the same exact plot over again purely for the sake of treating solangelo the same as percabeth, which doesn’t work because they’re vastly different character dynamics and putting them in the same situation has nowhere near the same emotional weights. Also it makes Nico’s original foray into Tartarus feel null because it makes it feel like his trauma doesn’t have any actual meaning, because why would he jump right back into it? Even with Nico’s character being extremely self-sacrificial, we’re at a point where we’re being told he’s improving on that and this is possibly the one circumstance he would think twice about. AND it makes Tartarus feel overused - Nico surviving Tartarus once? Okay, makes sense, he’s the son of Hades, and it’s cool that he’s the first mortal to ever survive it. Percabeth too? Getting iffy (especially since we see their trip in detail and that inherently means it’s lost a lot of potential oomph, because when you’re going for horrifying a lot of the time less is more) but okay, sure, Nico probably gave Percy some Tartarus Tips after being rescued and they had a literal dues ex machina or two helping them out, and they fell in accidentally so it’s not like how Nico waltzed in there. Third time? And it being Nico AGAIN and Will Solace (who as far as we know has little to no quest experience and most of his experience is being a battlefield medic) and then purposefully going there? Nope. It’s just a poor set-up. Plus “the major gay couple goes on vacation to superhell” is a... questionable plot set-up to begin with, especially when it’s been heavily implied it will be traumatizing for them, and we have already been told explicitly that references are being made to things like Call Me By Your Name so there is a self-awareness about the themes there (also that alone raises questions about how we’re going to be taking the tone of things - again, there’s two ways it can go and both would be extremely difficult to get right). If Mark Oshiro were not co-authoring this I’d be a little horrified. I’m very glad Mark Oshiro is co-authoring this. I don’t believe it can’t be done tastefully, and yeah it’s a situation ripe for symbolism, but it is definitely the kind of subject that would be difficult for a non-queer author to handle appropriately.

As for Chalice of the Gods, we know two things: A.) It takes place prior to TOA, and B.) The chalice Percy has to retrieve has the power to make anyone who drinks from it immortal. ..... so basically, without the book even being out, we are told “If Percy had waited like 20 minutes, all of TOA would be null.” Admittedly, this does give justification for Percy specifically to be doing this quest outside of “college” reasons, and in my opinion, “The gods asked Percy specifically because they have verified he adamantly does NOT want to be immortal” is hilarious. However, adding yet another universe mechanic to the repertoire that nullifies death is annoying as hell, because death as a consequence in the series has been completely ruined since HoO. The more avoiding death options there are, the more every death scene feels completely pointless and avoidable.