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Hello everyone! Here is my chapter by chapter summary of the chalice of the gods, the 6th Percy jackson book. PS: only read after completing Heroes of Olympus and Percy Jackson.

By Farhan Haroon 

Book title: The Chalice of the Gods

Book Author: Rick Riordan

Genre: Mythological Fiction

Chapter 1

Percy Jackson gets sent to the counsellor’s office on his first day in Alternative High School. He finds out that the counsellor is a nereid named Eudora, and she explains that because Zeus is still mad at him, he made it so Percy, and only Percy needs three letters of recommendation from three different gods by doing three other quests.

Percy asks if he can just talk to his dad about this, and immediately, Eudora gets a memo from Poseidon. She then proceeds to flush him and take him to his dad’s palace.

Chapter 2

Percy arrives at his dad’s palace (the god Poseidon). His dad confirms everything Eudora said and says that other gods have to ask him for the quest, and he can’t give Percy a letter to do that due to possible parental bias. Poseidon also mentioned that he had already done his bit by adding Percy’s name to the godly quest board and flushing him back.

Chapter 3

After school, he heads home, living with his mom and stepdad. His friends Annabeth and Grover came over that night for dinner. Percy spends some time with his family and his friends. They have a nice dinner together, and Percy explains the situation to them but tries to convince them to let him complete the quest on his own. They say they will stand by him no matter what and that they probably have weeks before a god comes with a quest.

Chapter 4

The guest arrived the next day. On the subway, Percy is minding his own

After meeting up with Annabeth and Grover at Himbo Juice, a waiter delivers their smoothies, one of which(the golden eagle) freaks Ganymede out, which gives Annabeth and Grover enough context to guess his identity, and Ganymede proceeds to explain the situation. It turns out that a god has stolen the Chalice of the Gods, a cup that can turn any mortal into a god with a sip and the only cup worthy of Zeus.

Chapter 5

The gang discovers that if Zeus calls for a feast and finds out that the chalice is missing, he’ll become furious and punish Ganymede with all his godly might.

As Zeus is unpredictable, time is of the essence, and they must hurry.

Ganymede suspects his enemies, such as Hera, but he thinks it would be beneath her. 

However, his primary suspects are the two former cupbearers of the gods: Hebe, goddess of youth, and Iris, goddess of the rainbow.

As Percy and the others have met Iris before, they outrule her as a suspect. 

As Ganymede explains that Hebe is the more jealous one overall, they decide to check with Hebe first, and to their surprise, Grover knows where to go.

Chapter 6

Grover takes them to a store in Times Square that appears to either be massive or unused, and they then notice the name: Hebe Jeebies. After recognizing her lair, Grover explains that he always has to drop in if he’s nearby due to the intoxicating scent of licorice. Due to that, Annabeth assumes it’s a candy store, but Grover says it’s, yet can’t explain it himself, so they go in to check it out. They find a sprawling maze with rows of old arcade games, carnival games, and other entertainment methods. As they look closer, they find candy stalls, massive ball pits, and an enormous crowd of families. Due to the overwhelming aura of the place, they understand the name, as they get the heebie-jeebies due to its sheer size and aura. They also get the impression that it’s similar to the Lotus Hotel and Casino, a hotel where time slows down and where it’s nearly impossible to leave due to its magical powers. Grover quickly shows them that they’re wrong by pointing out a family leaving the establishment, and they start to look around for Hebe. After exploring a bit, they figure out it’s a nostalgia trap, and they find an employee soon after. They find out that she’s just a kid, and she tells them that Hebe is at the karaoke bar, past the diving cliff and henhouse. After crossing the diving cliff, Percy feels more prepared because he has access to water. Then they encounter the hens: the sacred animal of Hebe, who is also very aggressive. They proceed to run from the hens and reach the karaoke bar, where they meet Hebe, while some boomers sing some songs.

Chapter 7

Hebe starts admiring the boomers and their generation, who refuse to become older and still feel young. Hebe then asks if Percy wants a favour and if he regrets refusing immortality.

Fortunately, Annabeth intervened before he could respond with sarcasm and explained that her children now have a cabin at camp because of that. Still, Hebe remains skeptical about if he made the right choice because he refused eternal youth and asks if he does want to grow old and if he understands the consequences of it. Grover interrupts after Percy says that getting older is a part of life to distract the goddess and then notices some boomers getting younger, and Hebe reveals that she does that for anyone feeling very nostalgic at Hebe Jeebies. She then reveals that she has to be the youngest in the room, and as she prefers to stay a teen, she makes Sparky remain in the lobby. She guesses that they want the secret of youth, and that is why they are here, however after dismissing this, Grover not so subtly attempts to interrogate her about the missing chalice, and Hebe at first is pleased by his dilemma but then understands the implications of the interrogation and gets offended by their accusation, saying that maybe they’ll learn some manners if they grow up again, then exploding into a storm of rainbow glitter that blasts them out of their seats.

Chapter 8

The gang gets up feeling terrible, with everything hurting. They’re alive but quickly realize that something is wrong. They see everyone looking much younger than they usually are, and they then realize that Hebe turned them into 8-year-olds. Percy suggests they should know if it goes away once they leave the building, so they try. Still, before they leave, they see a baby chicken eying them with a murderous gleam in its eyes and threatening to tear the flesh from their bones. Grover starts occasionally butting in the chest to practice social dominance in the herd due to his instincts. After leaving, nothing happens, so they go back in and meet Sparky and try to explain the situation. She thinks that they have an age-based complaint, announcing it out loud with a bullhorn, and the crowd starts jeering, hooting and cheering, and Sparky screams at the top of her lungs: “Unleash the predators! Let the chase begin!”. Some bets are placed, and Percy tries to explain they just want to talk to Hebe, and Sparky tells him he might if they survive the race. Suddenly, someone screams, and some items fall and get tossed. Then, the chickens from the coop start ravaging the arcade, tearing wallpaper and carpet, breaking games, eating food, attacking people, etc. However, none of the people seem to mind, and when the chickens start heading towards Percy, he pulls out riptide, only to find out that the sword appears to have a childproof cap. Annabeth then comes up with the genius plan to run away. 

Chapter 9

The chickens are small but extremely fast, aggressive, and assertive, leaving a massive trail of destruction behind them, tearing through the arcade-like nothing. They start to get tired due to their 8-year-old bodies, so Annabeth leads them into the play structure. She tells them to grab a high café table, and they drag it into the tube, blocking one of the entrances, which buys them time. Annabeth and Grover explain that Hebe’s temples had hens and chicks in the old days, while Hercules’s had roosters, and the birds only met on Hebe’s holy day because Hebe married Hercules when he became a god. When Percy asks how he knows this, Grover explains that Hebe sponsors daycare for satyrs, and they sing songs about the hens every morning. Percy asks Grover if he can use his position on the Council of Cloven Elders to make the chickens back off but fails, and Annabeth starts getting a plan into shape. She decides they must return to the henhouse and grab a chick. Grover and Percy are initially against the idea but choose to trust Annabeth. They go up the structure, and at a fork, Grover goes left to distract the flock so Percy and Annabeth can grab a chick. They rendezvous at the karaoke bar, and Grover insults the hens to get their attention. Annabeth warns Percy not to harm the chickens no matter what and heads over to the coop. Once they reach there, they see that the remote rolled the fence down halfway so the hens can jump over, but the chicks can’t. Annabeth puts her hand in the coup, and the chick from before, whom Percy calls Li’l Killer, bts her finger and draws blood, so Annabeth grabs it and grabs it with her hand, then pressing against her chest. Grover comes out of nowhere and yells incoming, so they rush towards the karaoke bar and slide the massive doors together. The hens make a cacophony of sounds and start to break the panels. Annabeth releases Li’l Killer, and Annabeth explains that since the karaoke bar is the inner sanctum of the temple, they can beg for forgiveness and sanctuary like people used to do on Hebe’s holy day; she tells Grover to barricade the door, and she and Percy look for the right song to apologize, and if Hebe refuses, they better pray that Plan Chick works. Otherwise, they’re dead. 

Chapter 10

Percy doesn’t understand much of the plan but doesn’t trust Plan Chick or Plan Percy Sings. They start to look for songs on the machine as Grover piles up furniture in front of the door. Percy thinks of the song where the singer sings,” I didn’t mean to hurt you and make you cry,” and Annabeth asks him if he seriously just called John Lennon “that one dude” because the song is “Jealous Guy” by John Lennon. They check if they have it; sure enough, there it is. So they start playing it, and Percy starts to sing. His mom used to play it all the time, even though it made her cry, which is why Percy remembers it so well. Since he’s older now, he thinks it could remind her of Poseidon, or she could have been playing it as a suggestion for his first stepdad, Gabe Ugliano. The song starts slow; then, as he starts to sing, which makes the chickens redouble their efforts to get in the room, and when he gets to the chorus, he shouts, “This one’s for you, Hebe!”. Li’l Killer then rushes over to the corner booth to hide and gives Percy a look that makes him feel that Li’l Killer is saying that he could sign better than that, and he’s two days old. Annabeth also starts getting into the mood for the song, and by the time the second chorus shows up, Hebe appears in the room, shutting down the karaoke machine and making all the chickens(including Li’l Killer) back off. As they apologize repeatedly, Hebe glares at Percy, telling him if the song was an apology, it should be to John Lennon. Annabeth and Grover request that she return them to their original ages and grant them sanctuary from the chickens. At first, Hebe is reluctant, but after some attempted flattery, Percy messes up again, and Annabeth tries to cover it up. However, she keeps looking at the booth with Li’l Killer and tries to give Percy some context clues to figure out the plan, and Percy starts to notice visible changes in Hebe. Annabeth continues to ask for her forgiveness while being slightly manipulative in her speech, and Hebe starts to get younger and younger, going from a teenager to a toddler and finally to a baby.

Percy finally understands Plan Chick: Since Hebe has to be the youngest in the room, she has to turn into an infant to be younger than Li’l Killer. After picking up Hebe, After explaining that since the chickens wouldn’t like her trying to complain about her young age, Annabeth starts to negotiate, saying that she’ll release Li’l Killer if she gives them forgiveness, their old age back and some info about the Chalice. She then explains that she should gurgle for yes and poop herself for no. Hebe quickly gurgles, and Grover asks Li’l Killer to go back to the coup, and they crawl through one of the beak holes made by the hens. Li’l Killer tells everyone about the ceasefire as the chickens return to the coup. Hebe grows back into a high schooler, and they repeat their requests. So the goddess ages them back and says she’ll say what she knows.

Chapter 11

She says they have to go to the farmers market in front of the Lincoln Center on Saturday, where they’ll find Iris selling all sorts of things, and that they need to interrogate her about the chalice. Percy says that Iris doesn’t seem that spiteful, and Hebe asks if she does, to which Percy wisely says nothing. They ask Hebe for permission to leave and not to tell anyone about the missing chalice. After leaving, they head to their respective homes, and shockingly, Percy procrastinates on his homework and spends some time reflecting on how he’s doing a much less critical quest than what he usually does. Still, it’s just as deadly as them when his mom shows up and joins him on the fire escape. They sat in silence for a while, just watching the city life of the neighbourhood. Eventually, Percy asks his mom how he acted when he was little, and his mom asks why, prompting Percy to tell his mom about the adventure he had today, with no sugar coating. His mom comforts him and tells him he’s grown into a fine young man and is always moving forward. She also tells him it’s okay to doubt yourself and that he needs to do the dishes. So that’s what he does. But instead of going to sleep, he stays up and finishes his homework, then has a good night’s rest.

Chapter 12

After three days of school and his first swim meet (in which he does pretty well), Ganymede meets him at lunchtime on Friday and refills his soda with Olympian beverage Number 5. He goes around doing this for everyone and returns to Percy for more information, who brings him up to speed. Ganymede then asks about his plan to go to the farmers’ market and interrogate Iris. Ganymede leaves after telling Percy not to disappoint him and leaves Percy for his lunch. He sits in bed talking to Annabeth with Iris messages instead of phones to avoid attention from monsters. Annabeth reveals that she has a plan. She got the idea to get a child of Iris to introduce them, and the only one nearby is down in Soho, and she is coming to help them at the market. Then, after wrapping up their conversation by telling him to do his homework, as her roommate comes in, she ends the iris message.

Chapter 13

Grover ends up happy that Blanche, Iris’s daughter, is coming because he thinks she’s cool. When Blanche comes up to them, she has a complete black-and-white outfit and hair and doesn’t seem very impressed by Uptown. She starts taking pictures of dying and dead things on the street and in the city. She is a very famous photographer, and because of the trick she did at the last campfire, Grover wants her to do his portrait as a gift for his girlfriend, Juniper. At the last campfire, Blanche told a ghost story about a dead demigod who cursed the camp, making anyone who walked over his grave lose all their colour and slowly and painfully die. But Sadly, when they burned his body to break the curse, the place he was burned became his grave. The place where we got burned was the campfire area, and when she shines her flashlight on everyone, they see that their colour is gone, so there is mass panic. During the chaos, Blanche takes pictures of everyone, and Chiron (the centaur and camp counsellor) explains that it’s just a prank done by Blanche since some children of Iris can suck all colour in an area into their bodies and that it will come back in a bit. According to Grover, that made her an artistic genius. Blanche then leads the group to Iris’s stall, where she introduces them to her mom. After that, Blanche asks for a favour, and Iris seems rather eager to please, but she just asks her to listen and be ok with what the gang says. Then, after Blanche leaves the stall, the goddess lets them speak.

Chapter 14

They tell Iris about everything that’s happened, and when she hears about the chalice, she grimaces, and when she hears about Hebe Jeebies, she sighs. After being asked if she took it, Iris explained that she would never want to return to being the cupbearer because of the thankless job and many other reasons. She also explains that she feels nothing but sympathy for Ganymede and would never steal the chalice. Annabeth flatters the goddess and asks if she knows anything about who stole it, and she has an idea. However, she needs some time to investigate, and the subsequent feast is in 15 days. In exchange for the information, she wants them to cleanse her old herald’s staff (a kerykeion) in Elison, the purest river in creation, where horned serpents bathe to purify themselves. However, they cannot harm any creature during their quest to get the info. After they leave, Annabeth tells Percy to ask Eudora where the river is on Monday.

Chapter 15

On Monday, Percy heads to Eudora’s office, explaining the whole quest and how it’s going. He discovers he could have applied for dual credit as multiple gods were involved, but it’s too late now. Annoyed, Percy gets to the point and asks her if she could tell Percy where the river is, but she’s a little reluctant to part with that information because she doesn’t want to make the river spirit mad and get banned from his yoga class., and flushes him by “accident” there instead. It turns out that the Ellison River is located in Yonkers under the name “Saw Mill River,” and Percy has to take the subway back to Uptown.

Chapter 16

The gang goes to the river the next day with the staff. After criticizing the state of the river, they head upstream to find some cleaner parts, and they use their flashlight combined with the moss to do light graffiti. After a march, they reach the cleaner part, where they see hundreds of snakes and devise a plan to distract them so they can clean the staff. The plan is to have Frover distract the snakes with songs that he’ll play on his pipes while running away, which will lure the snacks away from the river. They also choose the weakest part of the current for Percy to jump into with the staff. Grover goes off with the snakes, and Percy plunges into the river.

Chapter 17

He has a conversion with the spirit of the river to try and convince him to let him clean the staff, but Elisson is so sarcastic and bitter that they get into a fight, which Percy wins by cleaning the whole river and releasing all its water pressure.

Chapter 18

He gets the staff and works things out with Ellison. After giving him herbal tea and a promise to get him a whale yoga class at Poseidon’s palace, he heads off to save Grover, who is getting desperate.

Chapter 19

He then lures the snakes away from Grover, but they corner him. At that point, he finds out that the staff can make him fly to any person he wants, and useses it to escape.

Chapter 20

They take the staff to Iris, who gladly takes back the info. Since she is so scared of the god having it, she just says that Gary has it and that he’s at Washington Square Park. She also demands 5 dollars for some concentrated nectar, which can find the chalice by floating towards it.

Chapter 21

When Grover shows up to Percy’s swim meet, Percy tells him to stop mentioning Blanche around Juniper because he’s giving her too much attention instead of Juniper and to ask her what she wants for her Bloomday.

Chapter 22

At Percy’s home, Annabeth comes over for dinner and makes some delicious cupcakes. During dinner, Percy’s parents reveal that his mom is pregnant. Percy is happy for his parents and is excited to have a baby sister. After dinner, he just spends some time with Annabeth and looks forward to the few months when he can spend some time with the baby.

Chapter 23

On Friday, Eudora brings Percy to her office, and he brings her up to speed again. However, even she is terrified of Gary and tries to convince him to try to apply to another college. When Percy pushes her to reveal Gary’s identity, she leaves the conversation. Then, at lunch, Ganymede asks for an update, but he doesn’t know of any enemies he has named Gary. Then, when he receives the news about the feast in 9 days, he makes all the drinks spill out in despair. Then he goes to refill them after telling Percy not to disappoint him. Percy tried to find out Gary was with books but had no luck. So after school, he went home and tried to sleep.

Chapter 24

After the weekend, Annabeth wakes him up at 4:30 AM, brings out the vial of nectar, and tells him she talked with Juniper about it to figure out how it works. 

The “radioactive honey” (as Percy calls it) is so fragrant that a single whiff can put a demigod into a coma. Juniper knows this because the top-secret Dryadic Coven has a stash of it. It can heal natural spirits about to die, with considerable risk attached. 

To prevent them from going comatose the moment they open the vial, Annabeth brings out some tissues and some menthol rub to plug their noses. Annabeth also tells Percy that he gave Grover some good advice and that Juniper and he worked everything out.

Annabeth worries about waking up his parents, but Percy tells her it’s okay. At that point, Percy reflects on how his parents support him no matter what and accept him, which makes him want to do the right thing every day. They have a short conversation about the upcoming baby and decide to get ready because Annabeth says Percy will take 30 minutes to prepare due to his slow speed and 45 to get to the park. So Percy heads to the bathroom, laughing it off, and it takes 31 minutes. They leave the apartment at 5:15 and rush off towards the train station, towards either Gary or another Monday at school.

Chapter 25

Grover brings along some mochi donuts for breakfast, and once they rendezvous, they take a break under the big white archway in the park to enjoy them. While eating, the gang takes a look at the park. The sun sends light beams through the buildings and streets around the central plaza, a giant grey stone circle. No water was coming from the fountain in the center like it usually does in the summer, and there were almost no people there. They consume most of the donuts, plug their noses with the tissues and menthol, and open up the nectar vial. Annabeth pours three drops, and they float in the air, heading in three different directions, so they split up and follow one droplet each: Annabeth heads to the chess tables, Grovers through the trees, and Percy’s towards the play area. As Percy passes a mortal, he notices they didn’t go unconscious, so he assumes it doesn’t affect mortals. He starts to notice a lack of life around him, and when he reaches the end of the playground, he sees nothing moving. The droplet heads to the top of the structure, combusting spontaneously. As he looks at his friends, he sees them frozen in time, too, with their droplets gone, but when Percy calls out to them, his voice just leaves him. Suddenly, as Percy compares this to Kronos’s power, a voice says it’s similar. Percy tries to turn around and grab his sword, but it feels like he’s going through Jell-O. Finally, he sees his opponent: a significantly older man the size of a first grade, with a back as curved as a fishing hook, hanging skin a few inches long, in nothing but a loincloth. His face was covered in capillaries, milky eyes, and a toothless mouth. Percy asks what he meant by “it’s similar” and says that his power is similar to how Kronos stretches time. He then reveals himself to be Gary, otherwise known as Geras, and as a hint as to what he’s the god of, he says that you get the word geriatric from his name. With the info, Percy realizes he’s the god of old age, but he doesn’t understand why he took the chalice, to which Geras is disappointed and says that he maybe should have started with Annabeth.

Percy then realizes that Geras separated them with the nectar droplets, but when he asks if he was trying to pick them off one by one, Geras says that he just wanted to give Percy a chance since he hoped he would have understood why. Before Geras kills him, Percy tries to think and tells Geras that he stole it because it can make mortals immortal, which stops them from aging, which he hates. He wanted to humiliate Ganymede because instead of living an everyday life, he became immortal to be the perfect example. Also, Percy tells Geras that he thinks he will understand because he has turned down immortality. Geras is impressed and tells Percy that he respects him. However, as Percy still wants to return the chalice, he will kill him when Percy asks for a deal due to their common ground on the mortals should stay mortals issue. So, Geras offers him the chance to wrestle him, which only Hercules has done before. If Percy wins, he gets the Chalice, but if he loses, he dies.

Chapter 26

Percy takes a long while to think about it, and he finally realizes why even some gods are scared of him because he chooses to look old and owns it, which reminds them of how old they are, which they try to hide with young bodies. Percy says that if he loses, only he will die immediately and that Geras will leave his friends until their time has come. He then asks what he means by defeating him since a god can’t be killed. Geras tells him that if he can get even one of his knees to the ground, he wins. However, Geras wins when he smashes Percy’s face on the cement. Finally, Percy asks him to let his friends go. Percy explains the situation before they attack Geras, but they get most of the information from the scene. Annabeth explains that the only way Hercules beat him was through brute force. Percy starts to feel like he’s on the wrong side but quickly dismisses these thoughts. So Percy says yes, and they confirm the terms of the wrestling match, but before it starts, Grover offers two donuts for the Chalice, and Geras almost accepts but refuses. Immediately after Percy asks when they begin, Gary gets on his back and wraps his legs around Percy’s ribs in an iron grip, and he pushes Percy to the ground, at which point he says they can start whenever Percy likes.

Chapter 27

Percy is losing the fight. Whenever he tries to fight back, he uses all his strength and runs out of breath. When he tries to run, Geras traps him in a side headlock, and Annabeth and Grover start to make distracting comments to give Percy a chance. Percy keeps on trying to get Geras off him. Still, nothing is working, so Percy keeps trying to think of a trick to beat him, but he gets delirious from the pain. When he tries to use his powers, he makes a maintenance hole cover shoot into the air with a mini geyser on the other side of the park. Geras then picks him up and almost kills him, but Annabeth yelling his name gives him just enough concentration to grab the pole and swing on it instead of crashing into it. However, Geras tells them that if they interfere another time, he will kill them all. Then, Percy diverts his attention towards him, so Geras comes at him full speed and slams him into a tetherball pole; Geras shoves him into the pole from behind so much that it bends, and he clamps all the nerve endings in his shoulders to make the pain worse, so Percy almost gives up, and thinks about what Annabeth might do with the rest of her life, and starts thinking about the peaceful life he might have in the future when he’s old if he survives. Hence, he starts fighting back harder, then thinks back to a conversation he had with his stepdad, where he said that getting old isn’t fun, but it’s better than the other option, dying, and Percy thinks about embracing old age instead, so he says that he loves him.

Chapter 28

Gary is confused, and Percy thinks Geras isn’t a bad guy. He thinks about life in the future and hugs Geras. Gary asks him why, and Percy tells him that if he’s going to be wrestling him his whole life, he’s okay with that, and he just wants to tell him that. He also says that if he thinks his life should end now, then they can go back to the fight. Gary gets emotional and says that old age is never embraced and that it’s patient, too. It doesn’t rush, so he doesn’t want to end Percy’s life at 17 because it’s not his time. He asks Percy if he would sip from the chalice, and he says no because he wants to live a whole life, even the bad parts, and he doesn’t want to end up like Ganymede. So he gives it to Percy and poofs away. After some congratulations from Annabeth and Grover, a Hula-Hoop, a symbol of Ganymede, falls out of the sky. According to Annabeth, the hoop has been a toy for kids for thousands of years, symbolizing Ganymede’s eternal youth. Annabeth then sees a piece of paper on it, which says that Zeus isn’t waiting for Sunday for the feast. He’s hosting his mom for a mini-family reunion, and they’re having brunch.

Chapter 29

Percy is confused about why they’re having brunch during breakfast hours, but he grabs the chalice, and Grover tells him his plan for getting to the brunch. They take a taxi to the Empire State Building, and Percy borrows Annabeth’s invisibility hat, which makes him invisible or seem unimportant based on the power of the god. Then, Grover tells Percy to go to the side entrance of the kitchen and to say to a cloud nymph named Naomi, who’s dating Maron, another Cloven council elder, to sneak him inside. To get Naomi at the door, he has to do the shave and a haircut knock. They arrive at the building, and Percy puts on the cap. Grover distracts the guard with a song while Percy sneaks behind the desk and presses the special button. Then, he goes into the elevator and presses the 600th floor. Once the doors re-open, he runs across Olympus to the main palace, leaping over gaps and praying he can get there in time.

Chapter 30

He is exhausted when he gets across the bridge but continues until he reaches the palace. Using the plant-based directions Grover gave him, he finds the side entrance and the knock, and Naomi appears. He tells her he’s a friend of Grover’s, and she takes him inside. About 20 spirits are cooking various brunch dishes inside, and the kitchen is the size of a high school gym. Naomi tells him where the doors are to the main dining area. 

When Percy opens the door, he sees multiple gods he recognizes, like Hera, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, and finally, Rhea. He then spots Ganymede, but he’s too nervous to see him; when he does and tries to enter the kitchen, Zeus makes him stay. At this point, Percy realizes that since Ganymede can’t come to him, he has to go to Ganymede and give the chalice to him.

Chapter 31

Percy convinces a dryad named Barbara to let him hide in her cart in exchange for a meet and greet with Annabeth. However, if they are caught, she will pin everything on him. As the cart is moving, Percy hears Zeus continue his story. Still, as the cart is about to reach Ganymede, Zeus tells Barbara to stop driving it, so Percy lifts the tablecloth covering the bottom of the cart to see what’s going on and sees Ganymede’s feet, then wonders if he can crawl over to him, and sees Rhea’s lion. As he does this, Athena puts her head under the table to see Rhea’s lion but sees Percy and has a mental conversation with him, and she does give him up. Instead, she manipulates Zeus into letting the cart and Ganymede return to the kitchen to get some unique pastries and cream. Once they get there, Percy hands it over, and in return, Ganymede gives him a lovely piece of paper on which he will write whatever he wants and add his signature at the bottom. Percy thanked Barbara and promised to arrange the meet and greet. 

As he leaves, Naomi gives him a demi bag for the road, and he slowly returns to New York.

Chapter 32

The demi bag ends up being a white bag with an insulting depiction of a demigod above the words “Demi Bag.” Once Percy is in the elevator, he removes Annabeth’s hat and finds Grover once he’s back in the mortal world. He shares the demi bag, and they talk emotionally about their heart-wrenching day. Percy gives Grover the hat and heads off to another day of school. When he arrives, he gets a surprise: his dad calls the school and explains he will be late. He finds out that it was Poseidon who congratulated him on his success and also on his commitment to his promises and his empathy. Percy has to go to class, so he puts in a good word for Ellison’s whale yoga classes and gives the phone to the secretary. She continues to talk to him as Percy walks to his class, and he feels pretty good.

Chapter 33

As he walked down the hallway, Eudora opened the door to the counsellor’s office, and he went in and updated her on what had happened in the morning. Then she asked if he was tempted to drink from the chalice, to which he said no. She also seemed impressed by the quality of the paper he got and told him to add a quick mention of her help in the letter. Finally, she let him take a Jolly Rancher, and he returned to class.

Chapter 34

Once he gets home, he has dinner with his family and Annabeth. During the dinner, they share stories about their day and funny stories, and Percy tells them about what happened in Olympus and at the park. Percy’s mom is proud of him for embracing old age and innovation. Also, Percy’s mom’s book got its first review about how the title supported paganism. At the end of the dinner, they all write a very nice recommendation letter for him, albeit with a few jokes and laughs.

Chapter 35

At night, Percy tells Annabeth the whole story without sugarcoating on an Iris message and talks more about Olympus. She’s happy to do the meet and greet, and she’s happy with her mom’s reaction to Percy being there because she understands how serious she is with him. Percy and her also share an emotional moment when they talk about growing old together, but soon they talk more about the two other letters he needs. They end the call, and Percy finally gets some rest.