THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.

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Good stuff! Well, boss, you come to your senses and want to fly somewhere, just give a whistle.
Ole Blackjack and his buddies, we’ll stampede anybody forya !
I told him I’d keep it in mind. Then a group of younger campers came into the stables to start their riding
lessons, and I decided it was time to leave. I had a bad feeling I wasn’t going to see Blackjack for a long
time.
***
That night after dinner, Quintus had us suit up in combat armor like we were getting ready for capture
the flag, but the mood among the campers was a lot more serious. Sometime during the day the crates in
the arena had disappeared, and I had a feeling whatever was in them had been emptied into the woods.
“Right,” Quintus said, standing on the head dining table. “Gather ’round.”
He was dressed in black leather and bronze. In the torchlight, his gray hair made him look like a ghost.
Mrs. O’Leary bounded happily around him, foraging for dinner scraps.
“You will be in teams of two,” Quintus announced. When everybody started talking and trying to grab
their friends, he yelled: “Which have already been chosen!”
“AWWWWW!” everybody complained.
“Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied
to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the
laurels. You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course…you will have to slay the
monster to get it, and stay alive.”
The crowd started murmuring excitedly. The task sounded pretty straightforward. Hey, we’d all slain
monsters before. That’s what we trained for.
“I will now announce your partners,” Quintus said. “There will be no trading. No switching. No
complaining.”
“Aroooof!”Mrs. O’Leary buried her face in a plate of pizza.
Quintus produced a big scroll and started reading off names.Beckendorf would be with Silena
Beauregard, whichBeckendorf looked pretty happy about. The Stoll brothers, Travis and Connor, would
be together. No surprise. They did everything together. Clarisse was with Lee Fletcher from the Apollo
cabin—melee and ranged combat combined, they would be a tough combo to beat. Quintus kept rattling
off the names until he said, “Percy Jackson with Annabeth Chase.”
“Nice.” I grinned at Annabeth.
“Your armor is crooked” was her only comment, and she redid my straps for me.
“Grover Underwood,” Quintus said, “with Tyson.”
Grover just about jumped out of his goat fur. “What? B-but—”
“No, no,” Tyson whimpered.“Must be a mistake. Goat boy—”