Hey everyone! Happy five year anniversary for The Apprentice of Thanatos! Wow, that’s a long time! 😅 We never thought we would be writing anything for this long, so thank you all so much for sticking around! 🥰
As a bit of a treat for the five year anniversary, we’re going to share the timeline of our story (up to where we have posted), as well as some upcoming snippets.
Attack of the Killer Garage Sale
Danny meets Nico and Bianca as they travel to Westover Hall (PROLOGUE)
Danny meets Thanatos (CHAPTER 1)
Danny goes to the Underworld (CHAPTER 2-5)
First Training session (CHAPTER 6-7)
Second Training session (CHAPTER 9)
Spring Break (CHAPTER 11-21)
The Ultimate Enemy (CHAPTER 21-29)
Includes Aftermath and The Butterfly Effect
Psychopomping for Beginners (Chapter 30)
Shadow-Travel 101 (Chapter 31)
Kindred Spirits (CHAPTER 32-34)
Ghost Zone Shenanigans (Chapters 36-38)
The Snippets (which are subject to change once the chapters are eventually posted. Also, in an attempt to avoid too many spoilers, we will not be explaining these, so have fun theorizing!)
Grover and Annabeth talking:
As Danny walked back towards the Big House, Annabeth turned to face Grover. “Well?” She asked quietly. “What do you think, goat boy?”
Grover shuddered, his gaze never leaving Danny’s form. “Definitely an Underworld being, and definitely powerful. How did he even enter the camp?”
“Powerful?” Annabeth questioned. “Like, Nico-powerful?”
“No,” Grover answered, before hesitating. “Well, I mean, he kinda smells like Nico, but…”
When his gaze met Annabeth’s, she was surprised by the terror in his eyes.
“Way different. Way more…” He trailed off, as if he couldn’t find the words.
Annabeth felt an inkling of dread begin to grow in the pit of her stomach. “But… he is a demigod, right? Is he… Nico’s brother?”
“… no, I don’t think so.” Grover decided, and when he spoke again his voice held a hint of disbelief. “Nico smells of the dead. That guy? He is dead.”
Danny meeting Percy, Percy POV:
Percy watched as two campers walked a third one up the hill. Though, they were really more dragging him by that point. He recognized the camper on the right as Katie Gardner as he hurried up to the group.
“Hey, are you guys okay?” He asked.
“Yeah,” Katie responded. “Danny here’s just not feeling too good. He had a bad reaction to the flowers we were planting.”
Percy turned to the kid in the middle. He had short black hair similar to Percy’s own, though his eyes were more blue than Percy’s sea-green. He wore a green tank top with a picture of a cartoon ghost on the front, gray jeans, and black-and-green striped arm warmers. And he looked miserable.
“Hey, so you’re Danny, right?” Percy smiled kindly. (thinks about how he should try and be nice to Danny, like Annabeth said.) “Annabeth was telling me about you earlier.”
Danny nodded and opened his mouth, but instead of words coming out, he spewed what Percy could only assume was his partially digested lunch.
All over Percy’s shoes.
Annabeth in the Ghost Zone:
Annabeth cried out in alarm, her arms flailing in the sudden weightlessness of the green expanse that was the Ghost Zone. Then her eyes widened, and she pinched her nose shut, clamping her other hand over her mouth as she looked around in shock.
“Oh, uhh, you can breathe here,” Danny told her. “I dunno how you can, but uhh… you can. You aren’t the first human to have come through here.”
Instead of being relieved by that statement, Annabeth glared distrustfully at Danny. He quickly raised his hands in surrender and backed away a bit to give her space.
Annabeth survived without breathing for almost a whole minute, her face deepening in shades of purple until she finally breathed in a desperate gasp of air. She began to cough harshly as she struggled to catch her breath. Danny floated forward and tried to pat her on the back, but another glare from the half-blood had the halfa backing away again almost immediately.
Valerie at Camp Half-Blood:
“You’re handling this very well, all things considered, Miss Gray,” Chiron said as they passed the strawberry fields.
Valerie chuckled nervously as she kept an eye on the satyrs near the humans. “Well, when you live where I do, you get used to the weird things.”
The centaur nodded sagely. “I’ve heard much the same from another camper.”
“I’d imagine so,” Valerie said idly, staring at the ground. If the Greek myths really were real (and this wasn’t just some sort of mass ghostly hallucination), then it would make sense that some of the other campers would have seen some weird things.
“WATCH OUT!”
Valerie looked up and quickly rolled out of the way of an orange projectile. She came out of her roll with her fists raised, but she lowered them when she saw that the ‘projectile’ was just a basketball that Chiron held casually in his hands. Valerie’s face burned; it was just a basketball, not something that could attack her.
“Sorry about that,” a girl about Valerie’s age called out as she ran over. “Danny got distracted and overshot the ball.”
“That’s alright, Aurora,” Chiron said as he passed the ball to the girl. “It happens to the best of us.”
“Yeah,” Aurora laughed. Then she turned to Valerie and held out her hand. “You’re a new camper, right? I’m Aurora.”
Valerie looked at the offered hand for a brief moment before shaking it. “Valerie.”
“Well, Valerie, would you like to join me and my friends for a game of basketball?” Aurora asked. “We could use a fourth player. And I think Danny could use the help. Poor guy’s getting his butt handed to him on a silver platter, but he’s putting up a valiant effort.”
Valerie couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Maybe later. I just got here and I need to… uhh… y’know…”
Aurora nodded as though she understood. “I get it. You need some time to yourself.”
Danny seeing something he shouldn’t (we have to be vague with this one but we really wanted to share it lol):
The statue was twice Danny’s size, and looked as if it was carved from glassy obsidian, with small veins of some white ore—maybe iron—trailing over its surface. The figure wore ancient clothing and stood in a passive, relaxed stance, with its left hand resting on the dagger strapped to its waist, and its right hand outstretched, as if to help someone up.
The figure looked familiar. It was male, with a youthful face and short hair that curled loosely on top of its head. The statue’s eyes glittered solid green and glowed faintly, as if radioactive gems had been set into the dark rock. It also had two black wings sprouting from its back, the outstretched feathers making the statue seem much bigger and imposing.
Danny felt an icy… feeling wash over him, as if he had been dunked into a river. Who… who is this? He wondered. He started cautiously towards the statue, a feeling of unease in his stomach growing with each step. Almost in a trance, he reached out with his right hand, as if to take the statue’s own.
“Danny!” A voice called from outside the temple, knocking Danny out of his stupor.
Danny turned back to the temple entrance. “I’ll be right there!” He called. He glanced back at the statue, and paused as his eyes landed on the statue’s right arm. A word was engraved into the statue’s forearm, revealing the white—no, it wasn’t an ore. Marble, perhaps?—beneath the surface of the obsidian. The word contrasted sharply against the darkness of the statue and the shadows of the room, its brightness searing the letters into Danny’s mind:
Θάνατος.
Thanatos.
“Danny!”
A large blue hand wrapped around Danny’s waist and pulled him backwards out of the temple. Shaken from… whatever that had been, Danny looked up to see Pandora scowling down at him.
“I told you not to go in there.” She scolded, but Danny heard a faint tremor in her voice. “You… you’re not supposed to see that yet.”
And that’s it for now! We hope you enjoyed the little sneak peeks into the future of this story. And we apologize that we haven’t written more, but life has just been hectic for us ever since we started this story. Let us explain a bit.
We started this story as a form of rehabilitation for Anxiescape, to help them learn how to speak and write again after their brain surgery (I, Anxiescape, have written a bit more about this on my personal Tumblr blog if you’d like to know more). So arguably, this story is doctor-approved, lol. Anyway, we’ve done our best to update as often as we can, but between work, doctors’ appointments, and general life stuff, it’s been hard. We really hoped we’d have more written before our five-year anniversary. 😭 Still, we’re glad to have made it this far, and we’re not giving up on this story anytime soon. It may take us longer than we’d like (especially with everything going on in the world nowadays), but we will finish this story, darn it! So stay tuned! Percy will show up soon, we promise. 🙏 (Even though saying this feels like some sort of inside joke at this point. 😅)
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you again soon!
