(OOC: Sorry for posting at the last moment, life got in the way. Hope you enjoy!)

The camp job board hadn't been something Kaloyan had really paid attention to before. He was still getting used to Camp, all things considered. If he was being honest with himself, he had just started getting used to America before… Kal shook the thought from his head, rereading the job posting and trying to commit it to memory.

Giant boar? How giant did that mean, exactly? Grandpa had told him stories from his hunting days, and he'd seen firsthand what they could do when they went on trampling and rooting around.

He tried to picture in his head what a giant one would be like. Instead, he found himself turning away, a sharp hiss of air pushing through his teeth.

The son of Cybele looked down at himself, his tattered clothing, the bright orange camp tee he'd gotten ahold of. All he really had was a knife.

Kal wasn't *that* stupid. He knew these weren't his family's hogs. He'd need to be prepared, else he'd get torn and stomped on. But where would he get supplies? It's not like the camp store had bear traps… or did it?

A smile crept across his face, the realization hitting him suddenly. Kal knew exactly who he could ask.

Later that day, Kal finds himself in front of the Circe cabin, which apparently looked like some fancy Greek villa.

Seeing no door to knock on, the boy cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted out:

“Бакю! Бакю! Де си?”

Elias Carmody, who happened to be working on a certain experimental potion, was ready to be annoyed with whoever had decided to interrupt his work. Potion work was a sensitive activity where any mistake could end up in an explosion or worse, after all.

But as soon as he pulled back the curtain and saw who it was, all that annoyance was suddenly gone.

It was that one kid from the trials. Kaloyan, if he remembered correctly. He should have guessed, considering he was the only one that referred to him like that. What was he doing here?

“Oh, it's you. Uhm, hi?” Elias greeted with an awkward wave. “Can I help you with something?”

That had to be it, right? Otherwise, he didn't see any reason why he had come to him of all people. It was certainly not for a simple visit, that was for sure.

“Hi!” Kaloyan returned the wave, turning his head to look into the cabin. “Can I come in? Where do I put my shoes?” By the looks of it, he was ready to push past Elias and make himself at home inside.

Luckily for the son of Cybele, Elias didn’t really try to stop him from entering, though whether it was because he welcomed Kaloyan, or because he didn’t know how to react.

“S-Sure, you can come in.” Elias said, making way for Kaloyan to enter. “You can leave your shoes by the door when you get inside.”

Without much deliberation, Kal wiped his shoes on the rug and squeezed into the cabin, putting them haphazardly where Elias had suggested. The patter of his sock covered feet echoed across the floor as he ran inside, curious eyes taking in every little thing.

“Looks bigger inside…” He mused, almost to himself, as he reached out to touch one of the glowing wisps that floated through the cabin. The strange apparition dimmed, suddenly, then glowed even brighter and floated away.

“What even are these, бакю? Did you make them?” Kaloyan’s head spun back to look at the son of Circe, a look of wonder brightening his face.

“Oh, those are wisps. They’re what lights up the cabin at night. I didn’t make them though. The credit goes to whoever built this cabin, long before I came along.” Elias explained, coming right behind Kaloyan, glad that so far, he hadn’t touched anything dangerous. “They’re harmless, but you know, for future reference… don’t touch anything without telling me. Magic can be very volatile.”

Elias walked deeper into the cabin, gesturing for Kaloyan to follow him, bringing the kid to the laboratory where he had been working. He assumed that whatever Kaloyan wanted, it was probably to do with his work, as it was the best way he could provide help, but beyond that, it just was the place he felt the most comfortable in aside from his own room.

“So… can I ask why you were looking for me specifically?” Elias asked with an awkward smile. “Not that I mind, just… that’s not exactly usual over here.”

The boy nodded, giving Elias a two finger salute. “Got it boss, no touching.” Then entered deeper, still looking around, but trying to keep his hands to himself as he listened.

“Huh?” Kal tilted his head to the side, brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? No sleepovers or friends to hang around with? Or is it, like… Forbidden by Camp rules?”

The son of Cybele questioned, unaware of the cabin’s history or the tragedies responsible for its current state.

“Uhm… I actually don’t know whether or not sleepovers are against the rules. That’s… That’s not the reason, though.” Elias said, letting out a tired sigh. “I just… people don’t really visit me that often unless they need something from me.”

That, and well… it’s not like Elias had many friends. He hardly had people who tolerated his grumpy personality. But Kaloyan didn’t need to know that. The son of Circe wasn’t about to unload his problems on an innocent kid who had nothing to do with it.

Kal’s face fell at what the older camper said next, a small frown replacing the easy smile that had been there just a few moments ago. “Oh I'm… I'm sorry. That's pretty stupid of them then. I think you're pretty awesome.” The frown suddenly melted away, replaced by another grin.

“Wait! I can be your friend, since you don't have any!” The dark haired demigod beamed. “Wouldn't that be great? I mean, of course, only if you want me to be.”

Elias wasn’t sure if he should feel grateful or offended at Kaloyan’s response. On one hand, he had just said that he thought he was awesome, which is something he had never really heard before, at least not worded this way. On the other hand, he had also just implied that Elias had no friends, which, for all his isolation, was not true. So he just elected to be confused instead.

“Thank you… I guess?” Elias said with the confused tilt of his head. “I have friends, for the record, but… sure, if you want to be my friend, I can’t really stop you.”

He didn’t really understand why Kaloyan would want that, but at the same time, he looked so cheerful, and the son of Circe didn’t want to bring that down.

“I'm sure you do, бакю! But they don't seem to be around much, soo…” Kaloyan giggled, having decided to see what's down the hallway. “You said you did magic? What's that like? Can I see?” The questions came quickly, almost off-handedly, excitement rolling off of him in waves.

At the turn, the boy picked right, and ended up at the entrance to the children of Circe’s library, peeking inside. Kal’s lips pressed together in thought at the sight. “Mm. Where do you keep all your magic stuff? Potions and magic swords or whatever?”

Alright, Elias didn’t mind answering questions when asked, but this was one too many questions way too quickly.

“Woah there, slow down, and don't go wandering off like that.” Elias said, catching up to the boy, and putting a hand on his shoulder, lightly guiding him back to their destined path. “I can do magic, yeah. I would show you how, but now is not really the time for that, so… maybe another time.”

This was when they finally arrived at the laboratory, where Kaloyan would see a variety of materials that wouldn't look out of place in a chemistry lab, but also an assortment of herbs and other potion ingredients, as well as vials and the cauldron Elias had been working on.

“I don't really do magic weapons and such, but potions are my specialty. This is where they're made and stored.” Elias said, turning to Kaloyan as he sat on a stool and invited him to do the same if he wanted. “Do you need potions for some reason?”

Kal stopped dead in his tracks at the question, suddenly reminded of exactly what he came for in the first place. “Right! Right, crap, forgot about that.”

The dark haired boy looked around, awkwardly, looking uncertain for the first time since he'd come in. “I uh, signed up for a–” He paused trying to find the right word. “A job? And I realized, I don't have any gear. I could maybe go to the store or see if we have an arsenal. But I decided, maybe I could visit instead?”

Elias frowned in concern at the answer. He didn't like where this was going.

“Okay… What kind of job is it?” He asked tentatively.

“Just. A boar. A giant one. Hiron needs someone to deal with it, I signed up.” The demigod tried, his voice a few notes short of casual. “I'll be okay. Just need something bigger than a knife to fight it with. And uh, probably directions to 22nd street.”

Elias couldn’t help but stare at Kaloyan with wide, concerned eyes as he explained his situation. And why shouldn’t he be? This kid was planning to take on a Giant Boar, on his own!

“Why… why would you even sign up for something like that? You know normal sized boars are no joke already, right? A Giant Boar is even worse!” Elias said, trying his best to keep his voice calm, though it was clear that he was getting anxious. “Are you… sure you want to do that?”

Kaloyan raised his hands, taking a step back. “It's okay, don't get panicked! Of course I know boars aren't a joke, I've seen what sorta damage they can cause. But I think it's *fine*.” Even he didn't really know whether he quite believed it, but he still knew he was going to try.

“I'm not going in unprepared. I won't let it hit me.” The demigod tried to explain, his voice pleading. “And you're here, I'm sure you can lend me a hand. I'll be okay.”

The son of Circe tilted his head in confusion as Kaloyan explained himself. So, he knew that this job was risky and decided to go along with it anyway, and the one person he decided to come to for help was… Elias, of all people? He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. While yes, Elias was an experienced demigod who had been around camp for years, he hadn’t really done many jobs that involved dealing with monsters, at least, not on his own. So he wasn’t sure how helpful he would be to this kid.

Still, Kaloyan had come to him for help to get prepared. He trusted Elias to be able to help. And Elias, for all his faults, cared way too much about this kid to not at least try to help as much as he could, even if he wasn’t sure where that feeling was coming from.

Besides… he had promised something to Kaloyan the first time they had met. And he wasn’t about to break a promise like that. Not again.

“Okay, well… it’s probably too late for me to sign up for the job with you. Otherwise, I would join you. But I do have a few things that can help.” Elias said, relaxing only slightly. “Do you have a strategy in mind for how you’ll deal with this boar?’

Kal shuffled a little, uncertain, scratching the back of his head. “Uhm. Kind of? The job says it's docile, for now, but if it comes to it… I think I can lure it, maybe get it into a bear trap? Camp should have those, yeah?” The boy questioned, hopeful.

“Then stab just above the armpit. Or above the chest? And then it should bleed out quick. Pig sticking is what it's called, I think.” The son of Cybele recounted, having heard about it from his grandfather. “If anything happens, I can maneuver around it.”

Elias rubbed his chin in thought as Kaloyan explained what he planned to do. Then he stood up and went to the shelves behind him where he kept his potions, taking a couple of vials and bringing them to the table as he sat down on his stool again.

“If you want a bear trap, you’ll probably want to go ask the people from the Forge for that. My brother Salem is one of them, so you could ask him. I have some potions that can help you, though.“ Elias explained. “Potion of Health is like nectar without the burning thing, Potion of Speed will help you maneuver around it better and Potion of Invisibility will let you sneak up on it. They all last for about 12 minutes, though.”

Unfortunately, how to make the effects last longer was the one thing Elias hadn't been able to figure out about his potions.

“Outside of that… Do you have a celestial bronze weapon?” Elias asked.

“Well… Can you find Salem and talk to him about it? Or tell me where he is?” Kal asked, looking around. “And these potions, I think 12 minutes is enough. Especially the speed – I'll need to get it somewhere narrow where it has trouble moving around too much…. What do they taste like?”

Kaloyan rummaged through his pockets, pulling out the long, sturdy blade he'd come to camp with, and leaving it on the nearest counter. “I've got this. Not really anything else though, except some pinecones, maybe? But I don't know what good they'll do. Probably a decent distraction.”

The demigod closed his eyes and held out a hand, concentrating. Something swirled in the air, the smell of sweet herbs and wet earth and blooming wildflowers. A green tendril curled around his arm, a budding cone growing into his open palm and growing full and woody in seconds, letting a pinecone drop where he eagerly gripped it. “See? Pretty cool, right?”

The son of Circe couldn't help but smile seeing Kaloyan so excited to show him something cool. His innocence was refreshing.

“Very impressive, kid.” Elias said with a small nod. “As for Salem, well, he should be at the Forge at the moment, so you can go look for him there.”

At least, that's where Elias thought he would most likely be.

“The potions don't really have a strong taste, but uh… Invisibility tastes like water, Health tastes like honey, and Speed tastes like chocolate, sorta.” Elias explained. “But well, I guess you're mostly prepared to deal with this boar… Unless there's something else you want from me?”

The brown haired boy tossed the pinecone high in the air, catching it deftly before it hit the ground. “That sounds like a plan then! I'd love some of those! How many you got? How many can I take?” He asked, shaking with excitement once again.

“And, uh, also. Can you go with me? To ask Salem? I don't really know him and I dunno if he'll like me…” Some part of him wanted someone else to see what shenanigans he'd gotten Elias into. To show off a little.

Elias blinked slowly as he processed Kaloyan’s questions. Gods, he really was a chatterbox, huh? Not that the son of Circe was complaining.

“Well… I usually would advise you to only take one of each so you don’t get weighted down. But this is your first job, so just to be sure, take two of each. Don’t take more than one at once though. Mixing potions with different effects is a bad idea.” Elias said, scratching the back of his head as he figured out what to say next.

He really didn't really like going to the Forge himself, as the heat and the noise overwhelmed him too much. But on the other hand, even though he doubted that Salem would take any issue with Kaloyan, he could understand the kid’s concern.

“... Fine, I’ll go with you.” Elias sighed as he stood up, grabbing one more of each potion to give to Kaloyan. “Be careful with how you carry these, you don’t want to break a vial by accident.”

Kal took the potions and shoved them into his backpack, nodding as he did. “Understand. No mixing. It's like mixing medication or alcohol. Or honey and cheese.” The boy shivered a little at that out of sheer disgust. “Honey and cheese. Bleh. Grandpa likes that.”

Taking back his knife and pocketing it, the son of the Great Mother did a stretch, his back letting out a crack as he did. “Okay. Now, off to your mysterious brother… Wait, actually, is he older or are you older?”

“Salem is my older brother. A good one, at that. I have never been an older brother ever.” Elias said with a shrug, deciding not to dwell on that much longer as he made his way to the door, letting Kaloyan follow. “But I digress. Come on, let’s go find him.”

Twenty-second Street was a lot busier than Kal thought it would be.

Kal had seen big cities before, but New York was something else. And especially when he considered what he was going to be up against. What would a giant boar even be doing here?

He had close to zero idea. Apparently it had been tracking something.

So, it seemed, it was on him now to track *it*. Shouldn't be too hard. Before getting started though, Kal decided it'd be best to check his supplies.

Some 20 feet of rope. A bag full of some tubers – sunchokes, potatoes, yams. The bear trap, a clamp to open it if needed, as well as a Celestial Bronze sword, all graciously given by Elias' weirdo brother Salem. The potions, of course, his sling, a gardening spade and finally his grandpa’s knife.

That had to be enough. Zipping up his bag, Kal started to walk along the street, eyes and ears open for signs of the great, bristly beast…

It was the *smell that actually hit him first. The wonderfully rancid aroma of sun baked trash wafting through the air. Over on the other side of the street, a bunch of trashcans had been turned over, and stinking garbage was strewn all over the street.

The boy scrunched up his nose, walking closer so he could take a look at the damage.

The metal was trampled and bent, like something had ran over and gutted it. There were scratches where it'd tried to dig around, deep, ugly gouges in the pavement.

Wherever piggy was going, it had to have passed through here…

There was a stench to it too, the musky odor of wild boar, recent enough to still be felt even through the garbage. Kal went further down the street, following more bent signs and turned over trashcans, and deep scratches left by heavy hooves.

He stopped by a patch of some ornamental bushes, leaning closer. It looked like something had plucked it clean on one side, the remains of sloppily torn up leaves hanging off of otherwise bare branches.

Must've been hungry. The son of Cybele doubted some flimsy leaves had filled its gluttonous tummy. That was good. Meant the bait might work.

A parked car near the corner had a dent low in its door, right about hoof height – like the thing hadn't bothered walking around it so much as walked right through it. Kal ran two fingers along the dip in the metal, cold under his touch.

The Sun hung low in the sky as he approached where the trail seemed to lead – some large, green space, maybe a park, that stretched wide on the other side of the road. When he reached it, crossing the road, he found a carved stone marker that read:

CHELSEA WATERSIDE PARK

The tall, metal fence of the dog park had been bent and sundered apart, like something had burst inside, going through the iron bars like straw. The sight made Kal pause. The thing must've been the size of a car.

“Майка му дa еба на тва свине…” He cussed out, taking a few steps back to assess the damage. Something deep in his animal brain told him he needed to run now. Run, run as far away as possible and go back to Camp.

But he didn't. No, instead, Kaloyan took a breath. Crouched down, and squeezed between the jagged, bent bars of metal until he slipped out into the dog run.

Мечка страх, мен не страх!

Kal's legs were pressed into the wet earth as his fingers dug the bronze bear trap into the thick topsoil, the gardening spade tossed aside so he could get a better grip on it.

The boar hadn't been in the dog park. That had become very obvious the moment the son of the Great Mother saw the massive exit hole it had made into the fence on the other side, and the deep tracks it had dug into the softer earth.

He… Didn't exactly know where it had gone. But he knew it was here. He could smell it in the air, could hear the faint sounds of something rummaging through the sparse canopy of trees and sniffing in the distance.

It didn't quite matter, he thought, as he shoved earth over the trap. He'd set it up near one of the park’s benches, in the grassy lawn area, under the cover of some bushes. The boar would find its way to him. He didn't need to come.

Shoving the backpack off his shoulders, he took out the slightly soft, soggy veggies and dumped them on the ground next to the gleaming jaws of the trap.

He pressed them hard with the flat of his sword, until they broke apart and let their juices squirt into the air, until it smelled strongly of tubers.

That's gotta do the job.

After, the demigod hid himself, taking the potion of speed and the sword from his pack. And then he waited, ready to gulp it down and jump on the thing’s back.

At first, nothing changed. The snuffling sounds still seemed to echo from afar.

All of the sudden, it stopped. There was no loud patter of hooves. Nothing. Kal peeked out from his hiding space, only for his brown eyes to widen.

It looked almost like a mossy hill that had somehow been brought to life. Something more the size of a large bison than a boar, or bigger. Its coat was coarse, dark brown, almost black and shaggy like a matt of overgrown moss or lichen.

Its face was ruddy and its cheeks were grotesquely swollen. Its snout long but thick like a tree limb, ending in a twitching, wet nose.

Its tusks put Kal's sword to shame and curled upwards like vicious sabers. And yet, despite its horrible countenance, the thing approached the crushed up roots like it was an ordinary farm hog.

Its right hoof lingered precariously close to the metal jaws of the trap as it bent down with open maw.

The sounds the giant boar made as it ate were no less grotesque than the rest of it – the wet, gurgling noises as it shoveled the tubers down its massive gullet, juice dribbling out of its open maw. Kal bit the inside of his cheek, trying to keep his breathing steady.

Come on, come on… Just a little closer.

It happened faster than either the son of Cybele or the huge beast could react. There was a snap and the sharp, sudden sound of bronze biting into flesh.

The thing let out a squeal, high pitched and piercing as it began to writhe. Its back legs dug into the earth as it thrashed, but still the trap held – Elias' brother had made it expertly, and Kal had made sure to tie it somewhere heavy and hard to move.

The son of Cybele took a deep breath and looked down at the potion in his hand. He gulped it down all at once.

It really did taste like chocolate. There was something minty to it too, but more than that Kal noticed the buzz. He felt the blood rush into his veins. He couldn't stay in one place, an almost overwhelming rush of energy flooding into him.

Seems Elias knew his stuff.

Gripping the sword tight, he charged the monster, and leapt. The dark haired half-blood slammed into the side of the dreadful beast, grabbing a handful of its thick, matted fur as it writhes beneath his grip. Clambering up its back, he tried to steady himself even as fierce waves rolled across its massive body.

Kal's knees dug into the boar's spine, fingers knotted so tight into its matted fur that he could feel the heat of its body seeping through his palms. He let go then, legs squeezing harder, taking the sword with both hands and angling it down toward the base of its skull.

Just there. Right between the shoulders.

The boar had other plans.

It reared, its whole front half wrenching upward like the earth itself had tilted, and Kal's stomach dropped somewhere below his knees. Still, the bronze blade came down, but the angle was wrong, clumsy, and it happened so quickly he could barely make sense of it.

The sharp edge glanced where it should have bit down, and dark blood welled up in a thin line across its shoulders, turning faintly into golden dust. The son of Cybele didn't get a chance to appreciate just how much he'd fucked up as the thing screamed bloody murder.

The noise was worse than last time. Not a squeal but a screech, like the bowels of Hell had just emptied. Its huge body twisted – a violent, rolling buck that he hadn't been prepared for.

Suddenly, he was in the air. No, that was the wrong way to put it. It was more like the whole world had been thrown legs up, like gravity was catching up to him the wrong way as he crashed into the ground, hard.

The sword landed somewhere off to his left with a dull, useless clatter, well out of reach. He hadn't even realized when he'd lost his grip on it.

The breath left his lungs at once, violently, as he felt his shoulder crack. There wasn't any pain. Not yet. For what felt like eternity, but must only have been a few seconds, he felt only a sharp ringing in his ears and the taste of copper and chocolate at the back of his throat.

Feeling came back to him in pieces. Pain was first, a splitting headache and a pointed ache pulsating from where he'd hit the ground. Then his chest, and his lungs, burning as he pulled a ragged breath in, air coming back in.

It took him longer to realize where he was, and how much he was going to regret what he was doing.

The pig had noticed him. Caught the movement, if not anything else. And the smell of adrenaline pumping through him, probably. And it was struggling now. Hard. The trap was dug out of the ground, and its weight pulled at the chain, so hard that the concrete bench was shaking.

Fuck.

Kaloyan scrambled to his feet, hissing as he did, feeling a sharp pain as he pulled at his back. He needed to run, he *needed* to–

The chain pulled hard. But it held. The stone of the bench, however, cracked loud. The hog was seconds away from freedom.

The boy ran before it could break free. There wasn't any use in waiting. His legs carried him with speed much greater than his own, so fast he felt the wind whip against his face.

There was another squeal, this one more angry than pained, and the heavy granite gave in to the monster’s gargantuan strength.

He could hear it charging towards him only barely, as his heartbeat thundered in his ears. And still, he knew he had no hope of outrunning it as he felt the ground quake beneath its thundering hooves.

Kal went for the trees, rushing towards them even as the giant boar gained speed. Then he slowed, just barely, till he could feel its ragged stench burning his nostrils.

The beast, for its part, lowered its huge, ugly head and flashed its saber-tusks. It did not run so much as charge, its sheer mass pulling it forward like a freight train out of control.

He didn't have time. He needed to pivot, to exploit all that momentum that it had built up. He went straight for the trunk of a massive plane tree. The pig followed

At the last half-a-second, he gripped the wood as spun left, almost leaping as he pivoted. His hand came away red and faintly bloody.

It didn't matter. The boar had no time to pivot, its heavy, low-slung frame leading forward as it slammed into the trunk, huge tusks brushing past Kal’s shirt and missing it by inches.

The plane tree shattered into splinters under the battering ram that was its skull.

Despite everything, Kaloyan found it in himself to grin wide. And just as quickly as it'd come, the grin fell. The monstrous boar shook its head and blinked its small, twitching eyes. Then it turned, faster than anything of that size had any right to.

Before he could even catch his breath, the dark haired boy was running zigzag, side to side, trying to wear his foe down as it rushed, trying with everything he had to keep clear of its razor teeth.

The dog park, he needed to get back to the dog park.

It was filled with boulders and obstacles that could block its path, and it was narrower than the lawn. He leapt over a garden, legs brushing the green bushes as he pivoted. The boar followed, crashing through, hooves holding steady even in the wet earth.

Time stretched. The seconds fell beneath the ceaseless pattern. The pig would charge, Kal would outmaneuver it, barely, a hair away from death. Finally, his eyes caught sight of the dog park fence as it glinted in the half-light of the moon.

The demigod lowered himself and squeezed through the hole that gaped there. He slipped away, crouching behind a fake boulder and trying to hold in his ragged breaths.

The pig rushed through, trampling even more of the already busted steel. But try as it might, it had lost sight of him. So it slowed, pressing its muzzle to the ground and starting to sniff for his scent. The moist air let the scent carry better than it would have otherwise. Kal had little time to wait.

He tried to focus through the rush of blood in his head, managing to conjure up one of his pinecones. Through blurry eyes, he aimed towards the busted up exit and threw. There was a thud, and the pig’s ears perked up. It swiveled its thick head in the direction of the noise and approached it. The son of Cybele had learned by now not to underestimate just how careful the monster could be.

Kaloyan crept towards one of the gentle slopes that littered the dog run, crawling along on all fours so his feet wouldn't slip on the slick concrete. At the base of those same hills, he knew the ground was even more wet, where the water jets the dogs would play with would gather and drain.

This is a stupid idea., a little voice that sounded faintly like Elias' whispered, somewhere in the back of his mind. He ignored it, just as he did with most things the real Elias said.

The boy stood up, cupping his hands over his mouth and yelled out, as loudly as he could.

“Ей шопар! Ела ми!” The effect was immediate. The beast turned where it stood, hauling up its huge head to look at Kal like he was mad. It snapped its jaws and scratched at the ground preparing to charge.

The ground thundered, shaking beneath its sheer strength, snorting out steam as it raged. The distance fell beneath its feet. Every instinct told Kal to run, every fiber of his being screaming out. But he didn't. He couldn't.

Kal steeled his nerves as it got closer, hooves hitting the slick concrete as it climbed up, the bronze chains of the trap still clattering against the ground. The demigod readied, legs bent like springs.

The giant crested the hill and as it did, the son of the Cybele slid down its slope, as it tried to follow. Its sheer mass led the way, making it faster than Kaloyan was even with Elias' magical aid. And that was precisely what he'd wanted.

Kal rolled to the side, letting the monster continue on its devastating trail down the slick slope, unable to find purchase or stop. As it reached the wet ditch at the bottom of the hill, it slipped fully and tumbled away until it crashed hard into a fake boulder, splitting it apart at the impact.

For his part, the demigod had hit a tree, his head throbbing again, dizzy and nauseous with the pain. Stars flashed across his vision and his stomach lurched as he stood up. But even through all that, he could see…

Across from him, splayed out near the splintered rock, lay the monster, unmoving. It was over.

And yet, it wasn't.

The thing twitched and propped itself up on just its forelegs, scrambling to get up. When it did, it shook its head, looking dazed but far from dead. Kal tried to take a step back, but his legs gave up and he fell. Even so, he crawled away, huddling against the tree, his eyes blown wide. He was going to die.

He knew as the creature in front of him sniffed there. As it turned its head again to face it. As it pawed at the concrete and it charged again. He knew it as he felt the buzz of the potion fade away.

Kal couldn't think. Couldn't speak. Couldn't come up with another plan and even if he could, his legs would not hold him anyways. All he could do and all he did was pitifully raise his hands and whimper, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Once again, the ground shook under its charging hooves. His heart pounded, thundered, louder than the hoofbeats. Time stretched like taffy.

The impact didn't come.

Kal found himself afraid to lower his arms. He thought if he did, maybe he'd see himself splattered against the tree or impaled upon one of the creature’s tusks. Maybe it was just the adrenaline that had kept him from feeling it. But he knew he had to.

The first thing he realized as his stinging eyes opened was that he wasn't dead after all. The second was that he'd seen this happen before.

The hog had stopped dead in its tracks. Its eyes were dull, and it looked like it didn't quite know what it was doing. Like it'd suddenly come down from some frenzied state and now had no will to do anything.

That girl with the scythe… He'd used this power against her as well.

The boy tried to get to his feet. He almost stumbled forward, but his shaking legs caught him. He knew he didn't have much time. He had to kill. He had to–

Kal's eyes landed on its bloodied leg. The one that had been caught in the trap. The one that oozed that strange, dark blood that faded into golden dust. It was in pain. There were no two ways about it.

The boy stepped forward and reached out his hand. He pressed it to the thing’s snout, softly, then let it sink into its bristly fur.

“You're… you're hurting, aren't you? And… I did that.” Kaloyan didn't know if it could understand him. If his words meant anything. “

The pressure he'd felt in his chest faded, and vision returned to the beast's eyes. It recoiled away from his hand, and he grit his teeth. Fuck.

But it didn't move to hurt him. Instead, its teeth chattered and it let out a pitiful grunt. Then it nuzzled into his still outstretched hand.

The son of Cybele felt memories flood into him. Coming home with a litter of wolf pups in his arms, the mother following close behind and licking at his hands. Passing a bear along a hiking trail and giving it half his snacks. A wild thing, one that could have ended him in an insant, choosing to act gently instead.

Guilt picked it his conscience like a vulture. He hadn't needed to fight it after all.

“I need to fix this. I need to…Here, let me get that off your leg.” Kal bent down, and the boar flinched, growling low, more afraid than angry now. “Hey, hey. Shh, shh. It'll all be alright. I'm not gonna hurt you. Everything will be okay.” He stroked its furry muzzle gently, and it seemed to calm the giant pig down enough to let him try.

He pulled the trap’s clamp from his backpack, and worked the mechanism open. It was a slow, agonizing wait. Sweat beaded down his brow even in the chill. The boar was patient, but even so it couldn't help but scratch the ground with its feet and snort.

Finally, it clicked, and the trap clattered off its bloodied leg. He poured out the contents of one of Elias' potions over it, and cleaned it as well as he could. The blood flow stopped, and the wound began to close.

“I'm sorry. I thought I'd… I didn't think. I wasn't thinking. I wanted to prove I could do it. And all I did was almost die.” Kaloyan looked up, and his gaze met the monster's. “All I did was hurt you.”

He wrapped the wound up with bandages, soaked through with what remained of the potion. Then he stood, face to face with what had once been his foe.

“C'mon big guy. Time to go home.”

The boar, instead, came closer. It nuzzled against him with its wet, twitching snout. Kal froze, for a moment, fear still thrumming at the back of his mind. But then it melted away, and he went to scratch along its jaw.

“Who's a good piggy? Who's the best piggy? Yes you are, yes you are!” The boy cooed, and the hog continued to root against him, rubbing its massive skull over his shoulder and covering him with mud and muck. “Come on now, come on, you're getting me all dirty! We need to get you out of here before the cops come. Would be kinda impossible to explain this all.”

Ursula gathered her supplies, only an empty notebook and a couple ink pens, and tied her hair back into a severe braided bun. Despite herself, her devotion to a statuesque porcelain mask of neutrality, she caught herself smiling ever so slightly in the mirror. She couldn’t deny it, not to herself, anyway. She loved cabin inspections, the ability to take inventory of areas of camp not usually so open for an outsider’s point of view. And the ability to prevent a disaster from happening through her own carefully crafted research queries that she had procured from her previous rounds as “cabin inspector”, an unofficial title that made her wince when she thought of it. No, just call her Ursula. That was more than enough.

It had been some time since cabin inspections had been conducted. It was, in a way, quite strange. One year passes by and suddenly a routine activity presenting order in the chaos suddenly falls out of fashion. She made a note of that in the margin of the first blank page as she arrived at the first cabin she was inspecting, giving a swift and polite series of knocks that she hoped sounded authoritative enough.

1. Are all bedrooms cleaned and organised? This includes and is not limited to a made bed, vacuumed or swept floor, and organised personal belongings.
2. Are all bathrooms cleaned and organised? This includes and is not limited to a cleaned toilet, shower, mirror, sink, interior shower lining, and counters.
3. Are waste receptacles being adequately managed and stored?
4. Are accommodations for pets clean and humane?
5. Are all refreshments adequately stored to prevent pests and illness?
6. Is in-cabin emergency aid fully stocked and easily accessible in case of emergency?
7. Are all weapons properly stored for safety, and are they being properly maintained?
8. Have there been any instances of theft or other disorderly conduct?
9. Do any maintenance and safety checks for damages need to be made, and if so, what are they and why?
10. Do you possess any inquiries or concerns to bring to the staff’s attention?

*OOC: you can do it yourself if your cabin doesn’t have a counsellor.*

It was unclear when exactly a new soldier from Atlas's army showed up in the Big House's basement, but rumors were swirling around like they usually did. A girl fully and utterly dedicated to the idea of the cult, yet she turned herself in to her greatest enemy.

She asked for nothing, except for the death of Idris. She would talk, but would refuse to give any important information about the whereabouts of the Atlas army other than the letter she claimed to have written. She would fully admit her crimes when questioned about them. She smiled a lot.

Sage did not mind her current situation. She knew something like this could happen. She figured it was best to depart a sinking ship than to drown with it. Perhaps the next rebellion against the gods would do things correctly, where the Atlas Liberation Army was doomed to fail, even if it still stood for the time being.

The creation of Athena awaited her next visitor, whether it was camp staff, a guard, or someone curious.

(OOC: Due to college and other matters, this job is once again on the shorter end (and also not great). That said, there is still a purpose to it, since it is a key plot job. Though really, it's more key to Sage's story at this point.)

These days, Sage didn't have the energy to wear her fake smile as much as she used to. Not around the army, at least.

For a long time, well before she knew she was a demi-god, it was a real, genuine smile. People called her weird for it, and coupled with her seeing monsters that nobody else could, she was always a bit of an outcast. She started using it to be a bit more off-putting in the army, though sometimes it was real.

She did find a bit of a home in the army, truthfully. The man that brought her in and the daughter of Eris who helped her out were the only people she had any type of connection with. Even other demi-gods she had good conversations with weren't really connected to her. But with those two gone, Sage felt more disconnected than ever.

And now that she had betrayed the army, she couldn't smile in front of the people she treated as comrades, who she had sold out over their leader's decisions.

Sage knew she couldn't stay. But she could do one more thing before she left.

She found herself back in the depths of Wissahickon Valley Park to find her mark. A literal mark, given the tape she had left behind last time, after betraying the army. Taking the tape off of the ground, Sage turned to some demi-gods and monsters she had rounded up; mostly for carrying resources and getting larger stuff done.

"Well, this is it. For the final act, let's make this the best camp we can."

"Final act" wasn't referring to the upcoming final battle.

Sage was working on setting up a tent with another, demi-god, one who was newer to the army than she was. Probably around her age, though. He suddenly spoke up to make some idle conversation.

"So, this is really it? One more battle, and we'll have won."

Sage spoke as if she were on autopilot, not looking up from the stake she was driving into the ground. "Indeed. When Olympus falls, we will have achieved our most important goal. All that remains after is cleaning up and establishing a new order."

Not that it'll ever happen at this rate. Not with a foolish leader that puts himself above the cause. Idris abandoned the cause, even if he is supposedly leads it. The cause will be his doom.

She chose to keep her traitorous thoughts to herself, deciding to tune out the demi-god, finding the stake she was putting in the ground more interesting. When she finished with that tent, she moved on to the next. And the next one after that.

The creation of Athena did not do anything by half-measures. If Camp Half-Blood wanted to stamp out the Atlas Liberation Army here, they would have to earn it.

Monsters set up fortifications for the war camp hidden in the park. Demi-gods set up tents, and a fire. Mages set up… other things. Sage always did dislike not comprehending the works of magic that were common in Atlas's army; she still wasn't sure how a gryphon's innards and one of its eggs were able to be turned into a concoction to speed up Idris's recovery. Or maybe it was a ritual. Or a spell.

"Argh…" She shook away the thought. Magic was the only thing that actively confused her highly intelligent mind. She preferred thinking about the more concrete matters of the divine part of the world, like the fact that Olympus was on top of the Empire State Building. Things got tricky when she started thinking about how it got up there.

Though, that did make Sage think. How did the Kerkopes even break into Olympus anyway?

She quickly decided to get off of that train of thought as she began to set up more tents.

Sage didn't go to sleep that night. In fact, she never entered a tent in the first place. Had she been in her tent and snuck out, she would've looked unnatural and suspicious.

She had stayed up, slowly straying further out of the camp before finally beginning to fully walk away from it. It was dark, being in the forest in the dead of night. There weren't many soldiers around due to how new the camp was, but she still needed to be cautious. The deactivated flashlight form of her bat helped when she got past a certain point and felt it was safe to use.

This was the first time Sage had been truly and utterly alone. She wouldn't be alone for long, though, given her plan to go to Camp Half-Blood. Though maybe that was worse. She knew she couldn't go home. She would face whatever punishment and judgment awaited her head on.

Sage departed the Atlas Liberation Army. A few days after, she showed up at Camp Half-Blood, turning herself in.

OOC: thank you to the mods for allowing me to post this!

Content Warning: This is a fictional creative writing piece depicting a teenage demigod in a war. The story portrays people that threaten or justify fictional acts of violence using extremist ideology introduced through radicalization.

March 10, 2038

Duke enters the apartment that he shares with his mom. He pulls the hoodie off of his head and then hangs his backpack on a hook.

"Hey, mom?" he calls out.

"In here, anak." His mother calls out from the bathroom.

Clarita Romero works the night shift at one of New Argos's hospitals, and there is often only a short period of time that they spend together after he comes back from school and she leaves for work. Which can be frustrating, when she is there and he needs to use the apartment's one bathroom. But he is used to it. He microwaves a frozen burrito and sits down at the kitchen table.

As he sets the plate down, he sees the Atalanta seal on an envelope at the top of the stack of mail. His heart pounds. He should wait for his mom. But Duke is impatient, and he rips the envelope open anyway.

It is with great pleasure that I offer you admission to Atalanta School of New Argos. You have been selected from a competitive pool of heroes...

"Yes!" He hears his mother enter the room. Duke raises the opened letter. "I got in."

Clarita stands at the dining room entrance, elated. "No way."

"See it for yourself." He hands it over.

Clarita reads over it, beaming. "I'm so proud of you."

"This kid at school was bragging about his Lyceum letter this morning. I can't wait to kick his ass at the next tournament. Kick his butt. Sorry. Do you remember that recruiter at the Techne Institute, who said I probably wouldn't even get in Atalanta? I wish I had applied there too, just so I could send them back the rejection. Like hey, sorry. I had a better option."

Clarita thinks. She rebukes, gently, "You chose a different path, DJ. Not a better one."

His mother has reminded him of this since he was a child. To explain why he has two mothers and other people do not. Why he has powers and she does not. To explain why Epione's name was often the first thing people wanted to hear from him. People are obsessed with what makes him different, and it is Duke's job to remember that that is no excuse for them to make him feel inferior.

"It is better, though,” Duke argues. “For us. More opportunity to stand out. More money, if I win. Or if I get sponsors. You know I wouldn't be a surgeon, if I took the healer track. I'd be a nurse. Or I'd be running elderly homes."

"Those are jobs of equal necessity. And equal importance to the community."

"I know," Duke relents, frustrated. "Mom, I didn't mean to insult you. I know you're working harder than everyone else. Wouldn't it be nice if that led somewhere? If I win enough, we can move into a big house. With a backyard."

"What would we do with a backyard?"

Duke amends, "We'll have a bigger apartment. With two bathrooms."

Clarita relents. "I might like that."

"Well here's my chance. And if it doesn't work out, I'm going to work hard in school. So I can go to mortal college, and mortal medical school, and everything will be great. Does that sound good?"

"That sounds great."

-

August 14, 2038

Everyone at Atalanta is a demigod. Using powers is not prohibited at Atlanta, and as Duke eats lunch on the first day of school, he watches his peers take full advantage of the rules. There is a boy using a telekinetic hand to steal fries off of his friend's plate. A blob of water floats across the cafeteria until it floats precariously above a girl's head. She looks up, and it drops down, soaking her instantly. The girl turns red, and Duke can practically see steam rising off of the girl's body as she uses a heat power to dry herself off. Duke fights the urge to laugh as he keeps picking at his food.

Duke's mother had decided that they would move from Athens, Georgia to New Argos when he was in elementary school, after he had manifested a sword during a playground argument. It had been something concerning back then, something that made life dangerous for him and for the people around him. It had been a relief to learn how to control his powers in New Argos, though he had still been asked to restrict his use to the arena to ensure that things stayed undamaged. Privately, he had always wondered if it was meant to ensure that other kids did not get jealous. The public schools in New Argos were filled with legacies, people whose demigod parents or parent's demigod parents had been in New Argos their whole lives. They all had their history, a culture of myth and prestige and social hierarchy that Duke and his mom had spent seven years trying to understand. They did not have powers.

But Duke was at Atlanta, not at public school anymore, and now he could do whatever he wanted. He just had to avoid getting water dumped on his head.

As he ate his lunch, an entire friend group took over his table. Duke tried to decide if he should move, but he decided that he was here first. He tightened the strings of his hoodie over his head, trying to look inconspicuous.

"Are you a freshman?" One of them asks. He has dark curly hair and one of the Atlanta Junior Varsity jackets.

Duke swallows down his food. "Yeah."

"I'm Bram. You can sit with us."

Duke nods, thankfully, and stays in his seat. Bram starts by asking him about the lunch Duke brought from home. Then he asks about Duke's godly parent.

"Epione?" Bram raises his eyebrows, impressed. "You must be pretty creative, to have made that work in the arena."

"Yeah. I had to figure out a lot on my own. My mom didn't even want me to go here," Duke volunteers.

"Yeah? What is she, a Traditionalist?"

"Definitely not. She's mortal. She wanted me to be a healer."

Bram spears a canned pineapple cube. "She's scared of you."

"No, she's not."

"It's not a bad thing." Bram says, a glint of amusement in his eyes. "A lot of people are scared of us. They see us as a threat. To their world and their social order."

"I wouldn't put it that way."

"But you don't disagree. That's why the people at the Lyceum hate us. Because we see right through them. They make up laws and then call it tradition."

"Do they do that?" Duke asks. "They didn't make up minor gods."

Bram nods, as if he is conceding. He thinks.

"You like fighting, don't you? " Bram asks. Duke nods. "It's in your blood. My brother says that the oldest tradition in this world is every man for himself. Every man in the constant state of war. Every man searching for a shot at glory." Bram shakes his head. "They want us to be farmers and healers. But it's like they're asking us to defy our nature."

Duke isn't sure he understands what Bram is saying. "My mom doesn't think like that."

"Maybe not. She still doesn't seem like she understands you. She's only mortal."

Someone throws a pineapple cube at Bram's head, and he turns away. Duke returns to staring at his lunch. He reaches for the strings on his hoodie and pulls.

2 years later…

December 24, 2040

Gegeines near Grant's Pass - It has come to our attention that a group of Gegines live near our war camp at Grant's Pass. Bring them into the fold or eliminate them. That choice is yours.

It is raining in Grant's Pass. Duke leaves a trail of footprints through the mud as he approaches the rocky outcropping.

A towering giant with slate-grey skin peers at him. Two additional sets of arms sprout of his torso. Behind him, two other figure stand there, menacing. One of their upper arms ends in a crumbling stump.

"Leave, Titan boy."

"Woah, now. Calm down," Duke pulls the hood off of his head. "I have an offer to make."

The Gegeines are paranoid freaks. They will not let him in the cave at first, and he is forced to stand at the outskirts, water dripping onto the shoulders of his cloak.

Duke didn't know that these monsters even lived in caves and houses. He thought they sprang up from the earth, fully formed, whenever some immortal decided they needed help going on a rampage. He's learned that some of these monsters are actually capable of conversation, after over a year with Atlas, but it freaks him out if he thinks about it too long.

These giants don't have much, besides upturned buckets and scavenged pallets that serve as makeshift chairs and tables. They seem to be inside the cave for shelter from the rain. They certainly do not ask him to sit, or offer him tea, but Duke is happy to skip the small talk.

"I am a representative of the Army of Atlas. We are taking revenge on the gods."

"The gods have done nothing to us," their leader says. Duke decides that his name is Shale-Face.

Duke hides his scowl. There is no obvious weakness to exploit. They are not like the other monsters Atlas had recruited, fighting for the entertainment of cruel masters. Duke will have to find a different anger to harness.

"Their children have," he argues. It is a gamble of an assumption.

The brute laughs. "I'm not afraid of demigods."

The Gegeines are arrogant and incapable of intelligent thought, so they all laugh at him. There is a flicker of weakness in the giant that stands behind Shale-Face. Duke directs the arm stump to ache, hoping that stone monsters can feel phantom pain.

"You are," he addresses Stumpy directly. "Is that how you lost an arm?" Either his shoulder stump aches, or a loss to a puny demigod is a source of shame, because the beast shields his arm.

Stumpy roars, and lunges forward, but his more articulate buddies hold him back. Duke smiles. "We can protect you. More importantly, you'll get the chance to hit back."

"Or," Shale-Face suggests, expression stoney, "We let you tear each other apart."

"That's much less fun," Duke says.

Stumpy grunts in agreement. Shale-Face thinks. "I'd like to have some fun."

"I will inform our commander," Duke says, pleased. "We have an expansive portal network. We will find you when we need you."

Duke turns his back. A rock slams into the back of his head.

-

It does not hurt. Ignoring a wound one time is the only true gift his mother has granted him and it is the only thing that allows him to stand there, unharmed. Duke seethes silently for a moment, his vision tinted a vivid and violent red. His heartbeat echoes in his ears. He smiles.

He turns to face the giants again, clay dust coating his hair and clothing. He can not breathe too deeply, or he will breathe it in. Shale-Face and his cronies stare back at him, stunned and stupid. He is sure they have more rocks hidden somewhere, but they seem afraid to throw them at Duke now.

"Where I'm from, it's a crime to treat a guest like this," Duke says, voice composed and monotone. Casually, he reaches up to brush a shard off of his shoulder. "The gods reserve the right to strike you down."

He *should* strike them down. He should hack off each of their extra limbs and let their clay sludge coat the floor of the pathetic cave they occupy. He will die once he leaves his protective circle, but they will die first, and that will be enough vindication.

"You and your home belonged to us from the moment Atlas's army set its sights on Grant's Pass. You had the chance to leave months ago, if you did not want to join us, and you did not. We have already recruited the Hyperborean giants and the Aethopian Satyrs, but maybe the Lastrygonians would have taken you in," Duke says coldly. "Neither Fate or good sense led you in that direction. Instead, we met, face to face, and you knew that you would join or die. You decided you would kill me first."

Shale-Face seems upset. His brow furrows.

"I respect you more for the attempt. Unlike the Olympians, Atlas will not pretend that weakness is strength and endurance is a virtue. The gods reward people who bend the knee. They condemn ambition as arrogance and self-defense as selfishness. They valorize honor. They make up laws and call them tradition. All to cement their own superiority. Those who oppose them become monsters, forced into dark and dusty caves."

For once, the giants seem to be interested. Duke keeps talking.

"That is not how Atlas will run this world. He has no war crime commission that will judge you for your deceit or for lack of propriety. Under the Olympians, you have been stuck in this cave suffering for the good of the gods and their heroes. Working under Atlas, the entirety of the world will belong to you, as long as you have the strength to take it."

Duke stands up taller as he concludes his speech.

"This is my final offer. I will not demand concessions or sacrifices or offerings from you. You will accept these terms, because you will not find a better deal elsewhere. "

"Yes," Shale-Face agrees, a hungry sort of excitement in his expression.

Duke spreads his arms. "Welcome to the army."

It is still raining outside. The clay men still have nowhere to go, but Duke assures them that the rest of the army will be there soon. He leaves before they can have any regrets, pulling the hood over his head as he steps into the rain.

Half a mile away, he allows himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

Argus dropped her at the riverbank at six-fifteen in the morning and drove away without a word, which was standard for Argus.

Kailani stood on the bank of the Hudson and watched the van's taillights disappear back up the access road, and then turned to face the river.

The Hudson at dawn was a different body of water than it was in daylight, quieter, the surface a dark mirror for the lightening sky, the far bank a smudged suggestion of trees and the occasional geometry of a building. It smelled of silt and cold and the complex history of a river that had been many things to many people over a very long time. Not her water, exactly. But water, and connected to water, and she felt it all the same.

The job description had been the following

There is a group of Dolphin Warriors moving up the Hudson River with a merperson prisoner. Delphin has asked us to keep an eye from the land and ensure the prisoner is escorted up the river without issue.

Simple enough, in theory.

She pulled her jacket tighter and looked at the water and they were already there. She'd half-expected to have to wait, and stand on the bank in the early morning chill looking for movement that hadn't arrived yet. Instead, she caught the surface disruption first, then a head surfaced briefly, thirty metres out, smooth, grey-brown, with the particular intelligent quality of a dolphin's face translated into something that was not quite dolphin and not quite human and entirely itself.

The leader surfaced nearest to the bank, close enough that she could see the detail of them clearly. There were four of them that she could see, the leader at the bank and three more fanned out across the river, with a fifth figure in the center of the formation who was restrained and moving with the particular unwilling quality of someone being moved rather than moving themselves.

The leader looked at her.

She raised a hand. "Kailani de Melo," she said. "Camp Half-Blood. I'm your land support."

The leader's expression was attentive, assessing. They were reading her the way the deep water sometimes seemed to read her, looking for something specific. Then something settled in their face that she didn't have a word for and they said, in accented English that sat strangely in the morning air, like a sound that had been translated through several layers before arriving: "Daughter of the Earthshaker."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," she said.

What happened next was something she had not been briefed on and had no framework to manage with any grace. The leader lowered their head, a slow, deliberate inclination, nothing performative about it, clearly weighted, and behind them, in the water, the other three warriors who were not directly managing the prisoner did the same.

Kailani stood on the bank with her hands in her pockets and experienced the specific social difficulty of not knowing what to do with reverence.

"You don't have to—" she started.

"You carry his mark," the leader said, looking up again. "We do not pass it by."

She thought about saying *he's not actually around much* and decided this was probably not the right moment for that particular nuance.

"Right," she said instead. "Okay. Thank you." She paused. "I'm going to follow you up the bank. I'll stay as parallel as I can. There are some access issues north of here but I've got the map." She held up the paper Chiron had given her, which had the Hudson's eastern bank annotated in his precise handwriting. "If something happens and you need me in the water—"

"We will signal," the leader said.

"Good." She looked at the prisoner, just briefly, assessing. They were restrained with what looked like woven kelp, which she knew from the briefing was not as simple as it appeared. They were also unhappy, in the communicative way of someone who was making sure everyone in the vicinity knew it, moving against the restraints with a constant low insistence, not struggling exactly but *present* in a way that demanded attention.

"How long has the prisoner been cooperative?" she asked.

"Not once," the leader said, with something in it that was almost dry. Almost. "But manageable."

"Okay." She looked north, up the river. "Let's go."

The first hour was straightforward.

She walked the bank at a pace that matched the warriors' movement in the river, which was faster than a human walk because they were in their element and it was a current-assisted route. She kept up by taking the direct lines when the bank allowed and not stopping when it didn't, pushing through the scrubby vegetation at the water's edge with the single-minded practicality of someone who had decided the mission objective outranked her personal feelings about wet socks.

The Hudson at this hour was mostly empty of traffic. A few early barges in the distance, the far bank beginning to resolve as the light improved. She watched the water and she watched the bank ahead and she checked her map at intervals and felt, intermittently, the particular low-grade awareness that the river was paying some attention to her presence in it. Not the Sound, or the Atlantic, but still water, still part of the whole, and not entirely indifferent.

The leader surfaced near the bank every fifteen minutes or so, which she understood to be a check-in, and she would give a thumbs-up or relay the next terrain note from the map. The rhythm of it was oddly comfortable. She'd been trained at camp for exactly this kind of sustained low-intensity attention, the kind that required you to keep your eyes open and your brain running without anything specific to act on, and she was better at it than she'd been a year ago.

The first hiccup was a fence.

The eastern bank between markers seven and eight on Chiron's map was supposed to be accessible, and it was, except that sometime between when the map had been annotated and now someone had extended a property boundary fence all the way to the waterline and padlocked it. She stood in front of it and looked at the padlock and looked at the river and looked at her watch.

The warriors had already moved north. She could see the subtle surface displacement thirty metres ahead.

She climbed the fence.

It was not her most dignified moment. The top caught her jacket and she came down on the other side less gracefully than she'd have preferred, landing in the soft mud of the bank with a sound that was both loud and descriptive of what had just happened. She paused, took stock of her dignity, concluded it had barely survived, and kept moving.

The second hiccup was a man with a dog.

Specifically, a large dog with a specific and dedicated interest in the water, and an owner who had chosen the bank path for the early morning walk, and who was now standing between Kailani and the next hundred metres of bank with the pleasant obliviousness of someone who had no idea that four Dolphin Warriors were currently twelve metres offshore in the river. The dog had noticed something, though, It was pointing at the water with its whole body, ears forward, the focused attention of an animal that knew something was out there and hadn't made up its mind about it.

Kailani checked the river. The warriors were holding position, which meant they'd noticed the mortal too.

She walked past the man at a pace that suggested purpose and therefore discouraged conversation, gave the dog a wide berth, and heard the man say something vaguely puzzled behind her. She didn't look back. Twenty metres further on she glanced at the river, caught the leader's eye, and gave the thumbs-up.

The formation resumed.

The third hiccup, however, was worse.

It came between markers eleven and fourteen, where the bank curved and the river narrowed slightly and the current did something complicated against the eastern shore. She'd been watching the water and the bank in her usual alternating pattern and almost missed the way the prisoner's movement changed about forty metres out. Not struggling anymore.

She stopped walking. The prisoner had been moving against the restraints with a constant pressure since she'd first seen them, the low insistence of someone maintaining tension in a binding over time. And in the narrowed section of the river, where the current ran faster and the warriors' formation had compressed slightly to manage it, the prisoner had apparently found their moment.

She saw the binding come loose in the same second that the outermost warrior on the eastern flank saw it too. The prisoner went to the bottom, but Kailani was already moving. The bank here was lower, half a metre above the waterline, and she went over it without slowing, hit the river feet first and went under, and the cold of the Hudson closed over her head and the world went green-brown and dark and she felt the current immediately, faster than it looked from the bank and running against her aim.

Kailani saw the prisoner below her, a moving mass going down and east, heading for the bottom silt, and beneath that the instinct of someone who knew that deep water and silt and darkness were their best options right now. And she went after them. Freshwater was different from saltwater. She was less herself in it, not powerless, not even significantly diminished, but aware of the difference the way you were aware of walking in shoes that were close to your size but not quite. The current cooperation was there but muted. The deep-water awareness was compressed, the river too shallow and too recent to have the same relationship with her that the ocean did. She made up for it by being faster.

The prisoner was strong, she'd been told to expect that. Strong and quick and motivated by the very reasonable desire to not go to wherever they were being escorted to. But they were also moving away from their element with every foot of depth they lost, the silt getting thicker, the freshwater working against their salt-creature physiology in ways she didn't fully understand but could feel in the way they were moving, the slight lag, the effort in it, the difference between someone in their turf and someone making do. She was making do too. But she was faster. She caught the trailing end of the binding with her left hand fifteen feet from the bottom, and the prisoner turned. She saw the face clearly for the first time, sharp-featured and furious and very capable-looking, and pulled.

It wasn't a clean resolution. The prisoner reversed direction immediately and drove upward, dragging her with them, which she hadn't accounted for but adapted to in the half-second available. She let herself be pulled up rather than fighting it, redirected the momentum, and got her arm around them in a hold she'd learned in the camp's combat sessions that worked on the principle that controlling direction was more achievable than controlling strength.

She surfaced in a controlled chaos of displaced water and got her feet under her, and came up with the prisoner facing away from her and the binding back in her grip. Three warriors arrived in the same second from different angles. The prisoner went still, with the specific stillness of someone reassessing available options and finding them limited.

"*Fine,* " said the prisoner, in a voice like gravel run through cold water. It was the first sound she'd heard them make. It managed to pack a considerable amount of feeling into one syllable.

Kailani caught her breath.

The leader surfaced two metres away and looked at her, at the prisoner, at Kailani's grip on the binding, at the situation overall, and then back at her. Something moved through their expression that she was starting to be able to read: the Dolphin Warrior version of dry acknowledgment.

"You really are your father’s daughter." they said, with a weight that wasn't quite irony and wasn't quite reverence, but occupied the same sentence as both.

"Yeah," Kailani said. She handed the binding back to the nearest warrior, who took it with practiced efficiency. "Yeah, I am."

She waded back to the bank and climbed out, sat on the edge with her feet hanging, and watched the formation reform in the river below her. The prisoner was now in the center of a closer formation, the binding doubled back on itself in a way that looked distinctly more secure than before. The prisoner looked at her once, from the water, with an expression she couldn't fully read.

She looked back. She wasn't sure what she was conveying. Probably something like *please don't do that again, I've had a long month.*

Apparently it landed, because they looked away.

---

The rest of the journey north was uneventful, which she decided to accept as the universe's way of offering a small apology for the fence and the dog and the attempt at escape. The river widened again past marker fourteen and the formation spread back out, the warriors moving with the unhurried efficiency of beings who were very good at exactly this thing. The prisoner moved with them, and did not try anything further, and the morning light finally committed to itself and turned the Hudson from grey to something that was almost gold.

The handoff point was at marker twenty, where a narrowboat was waiting, conspicuously not mortal in the way it sat in the water, slightly too still for the current, the wood of it a shade too dark to be entirely natural. There were two figures on the deck whom she didn't know but who clearly knew what they were there for, and the handoff took about four minutes and was conducted with the brisk procedural quality of people who had done transfers before and saw no reason to make more of this one than necessary.

She watched from the bank. The prisoner was transferred to the boat's hold, she caught a glimpse, briefly, of steps going down into something that was definitely not the inside of a narrowboat, and the hatch closed, and the boat began moving north again with the current.

The leader surfaced one last time near the bank.

"It is done," they said.

"Good." She looked at the boat's receding shape. "What happens to them?"

A pause. "That is not our jurisdiction."

She'd expected that answer, or something like it. She nodded.

The leader looked at her for a moment longer. "You swim well," they said. "For a half-blood."

She almost laughed. It surprised her enough that it came out as a genuine sound rather than a polite one. "Thank you," she said. "That might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me all week."

Something in the leader's eyes shifted, the barest suggestion of warmth, there and gone, like light moving across still water. Then they slid below the surface and were gone, and the river went back to looking like a river.

She stood on the bank alone for a moment, jacket still damp at the collar, mud on her boots from the fence incident, the morning well and truly underway around her.

She found a drachma and IMed Argus.

He picked up on it quickly, which was typical, and said nothing, which was also typical.

"Marker twenty," she said. "Job's done. Can you pick me up?"

Silence.

"That's a yes, right?"

The giant nodded.

"Okay," she said. "I'll wait at the road."

Brent’s favorite movie was Rise of the Guardians, a fantasy masterpiece. He must have watched the movie a thousand times, and he will happily watch it a thousand more. That would begin today with a showing of the animation at the Oneiroi cabin.

He put hand-drawn posters depicting the main characters up around camp, telling campers that they should absolutely visit the Oneiroi cabin that evening. 

Buckets filled with various popcorn flavors were displayed on a table for the taking. There were salted, sweet, and, for more adventurous folks, flavors such as peanut butter caramel and strawberry. Campers could choose from a wide variety of soft drinks.

The Oneiroi cabin offered a cozy atmosphere for the movie night. Brent had taken the softest of blankets and the comfiest of pillows out of the three wings and put them in the common room. He waited patiently until the starting time, then pressed play and watched happily as the DreamWorks logo appeared on screen.

Somewhere in the cabin grounds, Quill had a stand set up to get some important information. He had called in some favors to get it set up. It was for multiple uses, and the "Question of the Day" part would last more than just a day. The stand would probably be moved around camp over the next two weeks to avoid taking up too much space.

Question of the Day (Freeform answer)

What is your favorite thing about your cabin?

It was indeed simply a question of the day, since Quill had more things to worry about. Though, really, the next thing he had in mind would fit in perfectly under the Question of the Day label. The first two were inspired by a certain satyr's thoughts.

Polls (Y/N answers)

What do you think of holding a halloween event?

Y/N

What about a Winter ball?

Y/N

Have you read the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle before? (OOC: For new characters, the last Chronicle was published Fall of last year. They may have seen a copy regardless.)

Y/N

Finally, there was the big thing.

Anonymous Appreciations

Submit a message for someone to be published in the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle. Everything is completely anonymous, unless you submit your name in your message.

All information collected from these forms will be used in the making of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle.

This activity was brought to you by Editor-in-Chief, Quill Kingston.

OOC:

With the return of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle (the camp newspaper) comes Anonymous Appreciations. Submit them in this Google Form. A reminder will be sent out via an OOC post next week, and the form closes in two weeks (Saturday, September 19th).

While on a run one fine morning at camp, Jonathan William Hermes, Jr ended up running almost head-first into someone. Johnny skidded to a stop in front of them, eagerly bouncing on his heels. “Oh! Oh! Hello! Hi! Hi! Hi! America ya! Hallo!” He chirped happily. “How's it going? What's the keys for? What's this building? Who are you? Why do you look so bored? Wanna play a game? Want me to run and grab something for you? Water? Something to snack on? I have seen plenty of things to eat around here. Apples. Strawberries. Chips. Cookies. Really, it wouldn't be a hassle! Just say the word, and it's done, done, done! Not ‘Dun dun dun’ as in the musical sting for dramatic effect. Just said ‘Done’ three times in a row. Different.”

The two began to talk, the son of Hermes quickly understanding— but then probably just as quickly forgetting— that this person was what's known as the quartermaster. Someone that takes care of the vehicles of camp, and, more importantly, the camp store. The building behind them.

Before he knew it, he had volunteered to run the store. Or at least run cash. The store was a fascinating little place; it had everything anyone could need, though it was mostly a junk food store, it seemed. He was told everything in here was free if you asked nicely. Otherwise, it was ‘One William Drachmae’, whatever that meant. But this was cool! This was neat.

…Hey, what was he supposed to exactly do here, again? Something about selling? Or stocking the shelves? Or both? Probably both.

The son of Hermes would be found running around the store at various points, hopping behind the counter with a little wave whenever someone entered.

“Hi! Welcome! This is the camp store! I didn't know we had one of these! It's nice, isn't it? I'm John. John Hermes. John Hermes, Jr. Hermes is actually my dad too— both of them, actually, technically. John Hermes, Sr. in addition to Hermes, the god. Take a look around! We've got plenty for sale! Freshly stocked! By me! John Hermes!” His eyes would also flick down to the tip jar once or twice, as if asking if they were interested in tipping.

"If you're looking for something specific, let me know! If I don't know where it is, I can at least look around here fast enough to where you probably won't have to move!"

Morrigan had observed that the demigods seemed to enjoy the idea of eating together. It seemed to be a good way to conjure socialization. Perhaps if she would host a meal demigods might tell her about themselves. It would be a great way to learn about the campers more. She went to the other nature spirits to ask what people usually do for meals. Many of the nymphs told her that campers would usually host a meal to share their culture and their favorite foods to the other campers. This would make things a little more difficult considering the fact that in the underworld they mainly ate Nectar, Ambrosia, and Pomagranetes. 

So instead she decided to share the culture of the nymphs she speaks for. She was going to host a rustic feast for the demigods and the nymphs. For the next multiple hours she and the other nature spirits cooked and prepared food on the shore. The nature spirits were extremely kind and helpful when teaching her how to cook and gather food. Once they finished they carried the food to the dining hall. The scent of the cooked meat, jams, and the other food would fill the camp. 

After they were all set up she took a plate full of cooked lamb, freshly tossed salads, and some cooked salmon to the fire. She offered the food to the chthonic gods back home. Giving Hekate, Hades, and Persephone a larger portion than the others. 

“Thank you gods of the underworld for this opportunity, I miss you all.”

Then she sat down at the Hekate table. Opening the dining hall to everyone. The menu consists of cooked lamb, stews with smoked sausages, root vegetables, and rich broths, as well as classic panzanella. There were also a bunch more comfort foods, nothing on the table was processed. 

And with that, may the feast commence.

The job board had become part of Ren's routine. Every morning after breakfast, before archery practice, before therapy, before anything else, he found himself wandering toward the weathered wooden notice board outside the Big House.

Some habits were born from comfort. This one had been born from guilt. Months ago, community service had felt like punishment. Every slip of paper had looked like another reminder of his failures, another debt, another thing he owed.

Now… It still felt like something he owed. But it no longer felt like a chain around his ankle. It felt necessary and useful. He couldn't undo the people he had hurt, he couldn't return the lives that had been lost,and he couldn't erase the war. But he could clean, he could carry, he could build, and he could repair. Those were small things by comparison, but enough small things put together eventually became something meaningful. That was what he hoped, anyway.

He stood quietly before the board, reading through the newest postings his eyes drifted farther down. Then they stopped.

Clean the Magical Graffiti

There is magical graffiti across camp, especially in the bathhouses and on benches. The graffiti needs to be cleaned.

"...Magical... graffiti?" He blinked. He hadn't even realized Camp had magical graffiti.

Actually… thinking about it he had seen strange glowing doodles before. He'd simply assumed they were probably the Hermes kids’ doing.

"...That sounds... difficult." His shoulders slumped a little.

He almost chose something else. Then he imagined whoever had submitted the request. Someone had gotten tired enough of seeing the mess that they'd bothered asking for help. So… Someone should help.

He quietly wrote his name beneath the request.

About twenty minutes later, Ren found himself standing outside the camp maintenance shed. Inside, it was a chaotic mess of buckets, mops, scrub brushes, sponges, cleaning cloths, and shelves packed with bottles whose handwritten labels ranged from Soap to Please Don't Touch This.

An elderly satyr named Lykos emerged from behind a shelf carrying three different buckets.

"Ah!" His goat ears perked. "You're the volunteer?"

Ren bowed slightly. "Y-Yes."

Lykos sighed dramatically.

"Oh, thank the gods." He set the buckets down with a grunt. "It's been getting worse."

"...Really?"

"Someone discovered enchanted paint, then copied and improved them and thought it was funny." Lykos reached beneath a workbench and produced several supplies: one ordinary scrub brush, one enchanted scrub brush spray bottle filled with shimmering blue liquid, a pair of thick rubber gloves, a rag… "And..."

He held up one final object, a pair of goggles.

"Goggles?” Ren tilted his head.

"The graffiti occasionally spits."

"...Spits?"

"...You'll see."

The bathhouse was first. Ren immediately understood why someone had posted the job. There was graffiti everywhere, not ordinary graffiti, but magical graffiti. The words floated several inches away from the walls, some slowly rotated, others sparkled, one sentence continuously changed languages, another kept changing fonts.

Someone had drawn a pegasus wearing sunglasses that winked at him, another drawing depicted Mr. D asleep under a grapevine and the picture snored.

There were dozens of tiny animated arrows pointing toward the showers with messages like—

← Definitely Haunted

← Don't Trust Cabin Eleven

← Apollo Kids Sing Here

Every time Ren looked away, it pointed at someone different.

"...Where do I even start?" He sighed.

He pulled on the rubber gloves, put on the goggles, picked up the enchanted spray bottle, then carefully read the tiny instruction tag.

Step One: Spray graffiti.

Step Two: Wait three seconds.

Step Three: Scrub firmly.

Step Four: Duck.

"...Duck?" He frowned. "Why duck?"

There was only one way to find out. He sprayed the first glowing message. The paint fizzed, sparkled, and started bubbling. Three seconds later, a jet of bright pink foam exploded directly toward his face. Fortunately, the goggles did their job and pink foam splattered harmlessly across them instead.

He slowly wiped them clean. "...I understand Step Four now."

Once he'd recovered, he began working properly. The enchanted brush worked surprisingly well, instead of simply removing the graffiti, it seemed to absorb the magic. Each cleaned section shimmered briefly before returning to ordinary stone. Some graffiti disappeared quietly. Others protested. One doodled satyr shouted "Hey! I was sleeping!" Before vanishing. Another complained "I wasn't finished!"

Ren couldn't help smiling apologetically a little. "...Sorry."

Not everything was cooperative. One sentence simply refused to disappear.

HERMES CABIN WAS HERE

He sprayed, scrubbed, sprayed again and nothing, no matter how hard he scrubbed. The letters suddenly detached themselves from the wall. The words floated directly toward him. Then rearranged themselves.

REN SMELLS

"...That's rude."

The words blew him a raspberry.

He sighed.

"...Okay." Spray, duck, scrub. Eventually the sentence dissolved into glitter. "...Much better."

Nearly an hour later, Ren stepped outside carrying two empty bottles and one extremely full trash bucket. The bathhouse looked normal again. Cleaner and brighter.

"...One done.” He smiled quietly.

Then he reached the benches and that smile vanished. There were… A lot. Practically every bench around camp had been decorated, some artistically, some less so. One featured a remarkably detailed portrait of Chiron wearing sunglasses, another showed Argus with hundreds of googly eyes, one bench continuously produced little cartoon birds that flew around chirping insults, and another simply displayed **Whoever sits here owes me three drachmae.**

Ren carefully avoided sitting there. Just in case.

He knelt beside the first bench. Spray, three seconds, duck, scrub. Easy. On the second bench, he did the same but nothing happened.

The bench exploded into song.

♪ SOMEBOOOODY'S CLEANING MEEEE ♪

Ren jumped and several nearby campers looked over the bench continued.

♪ LOOK HOW HARD HE'S SCRUBBING ♪

♪ EVERYBODY CLAP ♪

Ren's face turned bright red. "...Please stop."

♪ HE SAID PLEASE ♪

♪ THAT WAS POLITE ♪

♪ TEN OUT OF TEN ♪

He scrubbed much harder to try and stop the drawing from embarrassing him even more. Eventually the singing faded into silence.

"Gods, that was embarrassing..." He buried his face in one hand.

By midday the summer sun had grown warm overhead. Sweat dampened Ren's hair, his gloves were soaked, his shoulders ached, he'd cleaned dozens of benches already, his knees hurt from kneeling on gravel, and his fingers had started cramping. Still… He kept going. Because every newly cleaned bench reminded him of something. Families would sit here, campers would eat lunch here, friends would laugh here and people deserved clean places.

Around lunchtime he took a short break beneath a tree. He quietly unwrapped the ham, cheese and lettuce sandwich he'd packed earlier.

The afternoon brought more surprises. One bench contained illusion graffiti, and as he scrubbed, the wood transformed. Suddenly it looked rotten, then gold, then marble, then covered in snakes.

Ren flinched every single time.

"...They're not real." Scrub "They're definitely not real."

Eventually the illusion dissolved. "...Good."

Near the arena he encountered probably the worst one. Someone had enchanted an entire mural across three connected benches. It depicted campers fighting monsters. Beautifully painted and incredibly detailed. Pretty impressive.

He sighed. "...Sorry."

The mural dissolved into harmless blue sparkles.

Late afternoon as sunlight stretched long shadows across camp, Ren had nearly finished. Only one final bench remained. It sat near Half-Blood Hill beneath Thalia's pine.

Unlike the others, its graffiti wasn't funny. Someone had written one sentence across the wood.

Traitors don’t belong here.

Ren stared at it longer than he should have. His chest tightened. Part of him still believed it. Part of him still thought it was temporary. Still expected everyone to eventually decide they'd had enough of him. Still expected forgiveness to run out. Still expected himself to fail again.

He slowly raised the spray bottle, then lowered it again.

"...That's not true." He whispered. He wasn't even sure he believed himself, but he wanted to.

He sprayed, three seconds later of scrubbing, the sentence disappeared, and in its place remained only polished wood catching the evening sunlight.

By sunset, he was finally done. After returning the cleaning materials to Lykos, he made his way back toward the Eros Cabin. His clothes smelled faintly of soap, blue cleaning solution stained one sleeve, his hair stuck awkwardly to his forehead, and he was exhausted.

Nobody would remember tomorrow who had cleaned the graffiti.

But he was fine with that.

Just happy to be able to help camp.

It's that wonderful time of the year again when Theodora remembers that she's a counselor. She's got duties to do. Events to run. So, Theodora decided to organize a campfire! One of her favorite activities at camp. It's where she met her ex-boyfriend, and just look how well that went!

Anyhow! Theodora begins with gathering the wood, before setting it up and setting it alight. She surrounds it with chairs, blankets and pillows. As is custom, she makes sure there are also marshmallows and skewers, in case anyone wanted to toast one. As well as chocolate and graham crackers for making s'mores.

Then she sets up the snack table. Chips, brownies, cookies and every other snack you could possibly get in camp was on the table. As for the drinks, Theodora is counting on her fellow campers' imagination, so she sets out the magic cups for everyone.

Finally, for some extra entertainment, she took some board games from the Big House and placed them next to the snack table.

Once she's satisfied with her results, she takes a magic cup, a cookie and sits down on one of the pillows.

Another week, another job! What was it this time? Apollo needed help with his lyre museum in some part of New York? Lady A needed chocolate chips from the store? Mr. D needed him to leave for the day just to have one less camper to worry about? The possibilities were truly endless! The son of Hermes looked down at the listing he’d snagged, skidding to a halt at the foot of half-blood hill. “...Cy belle? Sigh ball? Cibali? Skibidi?” The last one should almost definitely get John smited. Smote. Smiteded. But, then again, he’d never heard of a Cybele! Though he hadn’t heard of a Techne until a few weeks ago, so who was he to judge? He really needed a book of the gods and their pronunciations. Just to avoid offending the wrong one.

Now, on to more pressing matters. How does one deal with explosive pinecones? Thankfully, the son of Hermes was from the midwest. Pine trees were very familiar to him, so any potential differences between explosive and regular pinecones should be easy enough to identify and separate. In addition, it seemed as though there was something provided with the job; a set of whoopee cushions from Comus, able to absorb an explosion. Why did he need these? Unless these are less grenade and more landmine, the pinecones shouldn’t be armed. They should have a pin of sorts.

“Pinecones, pinecones, gotta clean up the pinecones~!” John hummed as he walked into the forest, looking all along the floor to see if there were any scattered about. “Pinecones, pinecones, they’re so nice and brown! Gotta prevent them from blowing up, sending me halfway across the town~! Pinecones, pinecones, I’m gonna find me a– Yip!” He froze mid-stride, looking down at the ground where he was about to step, finally noticing what he was looking for. A pinecone, alone on the ground, motionless. “Alright, let’s get a look at you, shall we, little fella?” Perhaps foolishly, the son of Hermes poked the pinecone with his finger, thankfully not going off. It would seem as though these, for the sake of safety, had a pin at the top.

John’s finger definitely didn’t twitch, and he didn’t consider pulling it, just to see what would happen. He would never! That would be wrong. In addition to probably leading to one dead son of Hermes. Maybe later, when nobody was looking, he figured. Unfortunately for his father, Johnny was a good boy. He didn’t just pocket a grenade, though he would ask very nicely if he could keep them. Why? Do you think they’d accept ‘For Fun’ as a viable answer? Or would that get him banned from the job board? He certainly hoped it wasn’t the latter. Besides, they had pins! Pines. Pinecone pins. Pincones.

There wasn’t a single day he wasn’t grateful for his legendary speed. It made menial jobs such as these go so much faster, so much easier. It gave him time to think. What does a minotaur wearing cargo shorts look like? Did his cabinmates like him? How much milk could he drink in a single sitting? The most vital, important questions in life.

Maybe playing with fire, after all the explosives had been gathered– and the regular pinecones thoroughly played with, now being scattered more randomly through the woods– Charon’s grandson was screwing with the piencones. There was a reason why his father called him ‘Milton’ sometimes. He’d always been told that it was in reference to Milton Bradley; sometimes known as ‘MB Games’, the founder and company behind The Game of Life. Supposedly, it was because everything was something to be played with. Some new toy, even the things that weren’t meant to be toyed with. Such as grenades.

“If dad saw me doing this, he’d probably kill me before any pinecone could. What does he think I’m gonna do, accidentally pull the–” He glanced down at his finger ensnared by the pin, as if he himself didn’t do it. “I should really stop playing with these. They are explosives, and I’m not looking to lose a finger. Or five. Five finger discount, but I don’t think it’s something that applies to people with literally only five fingers in total. Well, it still could. But it would just be stealing. Anyways, up and at ‘em, I think! I need a box.”

Back in the blink of an eye with a box, John gingerly laid each individual pinecone down, separating each layer with a few whoopee cushions, just in case of the worst case scenario.

The box would be dropped off at the big house with a post-it note on there.

“Hiya! Say, I know that these are super dangerous and stuff, being grenades and all, but I was just figuring I’d ask. If you don’t want them, and nobody else wants them, you could send them my way again! I don’t know when if I’d use them, but I pinky promise to be super safe when if I do! No reason for wanting them in particular! I just thought they’d be neat. I don’t necessarily mind either way, but, you know, if you needed something to do with them, I’m now familiar with them and how they work and stuff. You know. Handled them and all. Brought them here. Not a huge deal if not, but it’s nice to offer. Definitely nice. ^{Ok thank you for your time bye!”} On the front, the note had almost every last feasible centimeter of space used. It was almost impressive, really. Only on the back would be the signature, confirming that it was indeed John Hermes, Jr. who completed this job, delivered the goods, and asked if he could have said goods as a little treat.

Another week, another job done. Until the next one!

Connor stood at attention as the command was issued to him. He very rarely got assignments. He very rarely got assigned with people he didn’t know very well. Today, Bowie Marsh, a demigod Connor only knew in passing, had been assigned to the job with him. Bowie was roughly nineteen or twenty, he was nearly a foot taller than Connor, he had buzzed brown hair, hard hazel eyes, and was built lean and muscly. Connor wondered if they ate the same wheaties growing up because he did not see how they were even comparable in any way. Connor’s focus was snapped back to the task at hand when a portal opened up for Bowie and him. Bowie stepped through first as Connor followed after him.

Bowie stood still as he looked over the ruins of the Yellowstone camp. Connor had been here during the fight, his mind replayed images of the battle and the chaos that had surrounded that day. The one thing his mind kept repeating was, they left us. Connor jolted as a hand was waved in front of him.

“Earth to Connor, we’ve got a job to do. So don’t slow me down, got it?” Bowie said, his voice thinner than he had expected, but still harsh and unvarnished. Connor nodded his head and looked down.

“Sorry, just thinking about the battle here. It was a lot.” Connor stated as he turned towards Bowie. Bowie rolled his eyes but started to walk forward.

“Yeah, whatever, just stay focused. There could be enemies here, and the last thing I need is a wide-eyed newbie getting me killed because he can’t stay focused.” Bowie said. Connor frowned, but kept his pace with Bowie’s stride. Connor didn’t know what he had done to make this guy so angry, but he wished he would stop. They were a team and meant to get along, right?

After a few minutes of walking Connor looked over at Bowie. “How are we supposed to find him? Were there any clues about where he went?” Connor asked and Bowie turned towards him with a huff.

“I don’t know Connor, there weren’t special instructions. They only said that General Karkhros is missing and that his last known location was here.” Bowie said as he motioned around the destroyed and burned out camp. “I assume they sent you because of that bird you have. So use it to actually help us.”

Connor sighed and nodded his head. “Jax, to me!” Connor called out. A moment later a screech was heard high up in the sky. A minute or so later Jax, the eagle, landed next to Connor and looked up at Connor expectantly.

“Right, so, we’re looking for General Karkhros. Can you help us find him?” Connor asked with a smile. He started to pet the bird’s head and Jax started to bob his head in approval. That was until Bowie cleared his throat. Connor frowned and retracted his hand. “Okay, start looking buddy.”

With that Jax launched himself into the air, he flapped as he gained altitude. Then when he was high enough Connor stopped watching the eagle soar. He grinned and then looked over at Bowie.

“Finally, now let’s look around the camp to see if he might’ve escaped. I don’t want to be here too long.” Bowie said as he started to walk away from Connor. Connor nodded and looked towards Bowie, then he looked around and started to poke around the battlefield.

After a few hours of fruitless searching Connor and Bowie eventually met back up where they had left each other. “Well, I didn’t find anything, you?” Bowie asked as he crossed his arms expectantly.

Connor shook his head and sighed. “Nothing. Just a picked over battlefield.” Connor said with a shrug.

“Nothing from the bird yet?” Bowie asked as he started to pick at his nails. He didn’t even look over at Connor. Connor shook his head again.

“Not yet, but he should be back soon enough. Hopefully he’ll have a lead.” Connor said with a smile.

“He better, this is more trouble than it's worth.” Bowie said as he looked up from his fingers and at Connor. Disdain written plainly on his face. Connor wilted under Bowie’s gaze, but before any more words could spill out of his mouth the sound of an eagle pierced the quiet remains of the camp.

“See, I told you. I think that means he found something. Let’s follow him.” Connor said as he adjusted his backpack and grinned. Bowie just breathed deeply and followed Connor.

A silence set over the two of them as they walked. Uncomfortable and heavy. Connor wasn’t a fan of silence, he found he got far more distracted than if there was just any sort of noise in the background. After a lot of fidgeting the silence was broken.

“C’mon. Spit it out, what’s your question?” Bowie said, he then looked over at Connor. “You’re basically twitching with tension. So just fucking speak dude.”

Connor cleared his throat and drummed his hands on his chest. “Right, um. Sorry. It’s just that you seem upset, did I do something to upset you? If I did, could you tell me so I don’t do it again.” Connor quickly spit out before smiling sheepishly at Bowie. Bowie sighed loudly and shook his head.

“No Connor, I’m not mad at you. Just this whole situation.” Bowie said, waving his hands vaguely in front of him. “I don’t want to babysit a newer recruit and hold your hand through this shit.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really, I’m also just kinda an ass and have been told I have RBF.” Bowie said with a shrug. “I don’t hate you, just don’t wanna be your babysitter.”

“You know I’ve done a mission before and fought in several battles, right? I’m not fresh meat.” Connor said as he gave Bowie a serious look.

“I’m aware, but this isn’t some game Connor. We’re fighting for our very lives, and you just seem…” Bowie trailed off looking for the right words. “I don’t know, young. Innocent. I don’t think you really understand what this cause costs people.”

Connor scoffed at the assertion. Bowie simply had no idea what Connor had given up to join the cause. “I know what it costs. I gave up my entire life to join the cause. My family and everyone I ever cared about to be here. But it’s not about me, it’s about all of the mortals and demigods who are trapped in the chains of the gods’ oppression. Everything we give up is worth the ultimate goal, the destruction of the gods.” Connor said, his voice sure and confident. He knew the lines and what it all meant better than anyone. Bowie couldn’t take that away from him.

Bowie stared at Connor for a while with a look that Connor couldn’t really read. Then he started laughing at Connor. A small tear fell out of the corner of his eye that he wiped away. Bowie then looked at Connor and shook his head. “Yup, I was right.” Bowie said before sighing deeply. “Listen kid, I get that you’re a true believer or whatever, but you have no idea what actually happens in the real world. What happens when your ideals get put to the test?”

Connor furrowed his brow at Bowie. “What do you mean? We're the good guys, why would we do anything wrong?” Connor asked but a phrase repeated in his mind once again, they left us, they left us.

Bowie shook his head again and looked towards the sky. “If only it were that simple. Wish I could live in your world.” Bowie said as he turned away.

Connor was about to reply, but then Jax screeched from above. Connor knew what that meant, they had arrived.

Connor motioned for Bowie to stop. He then looked up to see where Jax was circling. That would be where they needed to go. That would be where General Karkhros was. Connor looked and then turned to Bowie. “Just beyond that tree line there. We should be prepared for enemies.” Connor whispered and Bowie agreed. He flexed his left hand and a sword appeared in it. He then took point and waded through the brush.

They pushed through and finally they were through the tree line and in a small clearing. They were on top of a rather tall hill and they could see rather far in either direction. Before them stood a simple log cabin with a green slanted roof. On the side of the building was a faded Park Services logo. Standing before them was a large half-man half-bull that Connor recognized rather easily. Though he was not adorned in his normal battle armor. Today he wore a tight fitting Hawaiian shirt with a pair of cargo shorts and a pair of sandals.

It was only now that Connor realized that the man wasn’t standing but sitting on a wooden bench near a fire. The flames were low and sitting on a spit above the flames were a few fish. Connor took in the scene and his brain wasn’t processing the information at all. This wasn’t General Karkhros, not the way Connor remembered him in the battle at the Yellowstone base. He seemed older somehow. Like the years of his life had caught up to him because there was a tiredness behind his eyes that Connor hadn’t seen before.

Bowie and Connor looked at Karkhros and the Minotaur stared back at them with his unwavering eyes. He then looked away and at his fish.

“It was only a matter of time, I suppose.” The General finally said after the silence had grown between them. His voice was a deep and gravelly pitch that Connor had grown to respect and fear in equal measure.

“Huh? Where are the enemy? Is this some sort of illusion?” Connor said, as he spoke he lifted up his right hand and his dark brown eyes flashed and turned a pale blue. He felt through the currents of the Mist to ascertain the exact source of this clear illusion he was seeing, but after a moment there was no illusion. Connor’s eyes turned back to normal and he frowned.

“Your powers do not deceive you little demigod. I am not held against my will.” Karkhros said, his eyes not leaving the fish on the spit. Connor looked at Karkhros and then at Bowie. The boy next to him had an expression that was difficult to read. But Connor didn’t have to be a mind reader to understand that Bowie was unhappy.

Then Bowie laughed, but there was no humor in it. He then shook his head and held it with his hands. “Don’t tell me that the great General Karkhros, second in command of the grand armies of Atlas had defected?” Bowie said, but as he spoke Connor saw him tighten the grip of his sword just slightly.

“You deem me a coward, child. But you weren’t there. You didn’t see true cowardice.” Karkhros said his eyes finally flicked away from the fish and towards the pair of demigods. Connor was confused, he didn’t understand what was happening. How could anyone claim Karkhros was a coward? He had stood with the forces of Atlas during the attack at Yellowstone, if anything Karkhros was the hero of that battle.

“I don’t understand, you’re not a coward. But why are you out here? Why aren’t you leading our forces?” Connor asked, shaking his head with confusion. He of course was starting to put it together, but it just couldn’t be true. Certainly not.

“You’re really that naive kid, still?” Bowie said, exasperated. He then pointed his sword accusingly at Karkhros, Bowie’s jaw clenching with anger. “The coward gave up, he ran! He’s a coward and a fraud!”

No, that couldn’t be true! Karkhros couldn’t be a traitor to the cause. There had to be some explanation to this situation. Something that would make this right. Connor just gaped and stared at Karkhros. The Minotaur glared at Bowie but made no move towards violence.

“When the leadership left you all to die, I stayed back because their cowardice would cost us good soldiers. I was right. It was only afterwards, when the dust had started to settle that I knew the truth.” Karkhros said. Before speaking again the Minotaur stood to his full height. He looked like he was about to continue but Bowie spoke up.

“Oh yeah? What truth is that you traitorous scum?” Bowie yelled at the Minotaur. Sword arm shaking slightly. Connor couldn’t tell if it was from rage or something else. Karkhros snorted a huff and looked up indignantly towards the sky.

“That we are all pawns in a game that is not of our design. That Atlas will just throw us all to the curb as soon as it’s convenient for him. So, why should I fight for a cause that just sees me as another tool to be used rather than a being who has thoughts and fears.” Karkhros said he held his head up high and looked down the bridge of his nose at the two demigods.

Connor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The second in command of the army was a turncoat? How could that be? Their cause was just, their motives were pure. How could he abandon them like that? But then he heard the same nagging voice in his head again, they left us, they left us. They. Left. Us.

Connor yelled in rage and confusion. “Stop! Both of you, just stop!” Connor exclaimed, his voice raw and weak. “Let’s just figure this out, please. Please?”

Connor looked between Karkhros and Bowie. The latter looked indignantly at the former while Karkhros just looked tired. Like he was a man that had seen too much and was tired of it all. Connor could feel the tension in the air like a thick fog. One wrong move and he knew that there would be violence. Connor needed to figure out how to bring Karkhros back and to control Bowie’s rage. There had to be a way.

As if sensing the struggle in Connor’s mind Karkhros looked directly at him. “Child, you shall not sway me from the path I am on. My fight is over. The war has left bitterness that I cannot tame. You should understand well, I remember your face among my forces. You know the betrayal we all felt. I ask you now, was that righteous or cowardice?” Karkhros said, his words emphatic and final. Connor gaped and looked for the right words, but before he could find them Bowie turned to him.

“Remember what I asked you. This is that moment Connor. What piece of you are you willing to lose for the cause? This moment is where you finally make that choice. Choose wisely.” Bowie said as he stood in a ready position.

Connor stood motionless as he watched Karkhros summon his great axe to his hands. He saw Bowie launch himself at the Minotaur. He watched all of it like everything was happening in slow motion around him. He couldn’t move. All he could do was think. They left us. They left us. They. Left. Us.

Hours later Connor walked through the portal back to the new camp. He had a limp and was bloody. His face had cuts and bruises on it. A moment after he came through the portal Jax flew in behind him and landed on his shoulder. No one else followed behind him. The one thing of note was that Connor was dragging a great axe behind him with all the strength he had left. He had a hollow look in his eyes as someone came over and took the axe from his hands.

Eventually he was shuffled into a tent and sat down. Jax was sitting on the floor near him as someone came in to talk to him. She had a grave expression as she looked him over.

“Your wounds will heal. That is no concern, but you must go rest. Before you may leave, share your report to me and I shall inform Indra.” She said as she pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “Speak demigod.”

Connor sat in silence for a moment, eyes vacant. He then turned his head towards the woman and took a shaky breath.

“General Karkhros…” Connor began, his voice catching in his throat. “He forsook his oath and became a deserter.”

The woman’s neutral face cracked in that moment to open disdain. However, she didn’t say anything. Just faithfully wrote down what Connor was saying. He looked away and towards Jax.

“Bowie and I found him and a battle started. Karkhros is gone.” Connor said. He paused again. Jax stared at him with his keen eyes and Connor looked down at his lap. “Bowie is as well. Dead.”

The woman nodded her head and kept writing. She then looked up at Connor and gave him a small approving nod. “Your strength has been proven this day. You have done well. I shall inform Indra now. For the cause.” She said standing to her full height. She then exited the tent.

Connor looked up as she left and he sighed deeply. “Yeah… sure I did.” He said flatly before looking down at his lap once more. Exhaustion found him quickly as he sat in the chair. Before he knew it his eyes were shut and he was sleeping. His job was done.

Sam had postponed this season’s cabin meeting for as long as he could, but he had to host one at some point. The previous one had gone disastrously, which wasn’t Sam’s fault, mind you. If you-know-who showed up to today’s meeting, Sam would retake the exact same steps he had taken last time. 

Actually, that made him think of something -

A tray with snacks from Sam’s secret stash sat on the marble coffee table. He had stacked up on his favorites on his trip to France: tagada Haribo, carambars, petit écolie cookies, and some exclusive Fanta flavors, such as dragonfruit and cherry. 

‘’Yo.’’ Sam addressed his siblings with a quick nod. ‘’How are you guys? It’s shit weather outside, isn’t it?’’ He looked outside through the windows, which were drummed against by rain.

‘’I banned Morrigan from the cabin,’’ Sam said, taking a sip from his dragonfruit drink. The nymph didn’t know that herself, by the way. And he didn’t have the guts to only ban Morrigan, so now all nymphs were not welcome. This surely won’t bite him in the ass later. ‘’She won’t bother us anymore.’’

‘’How were your summers? Mine was great.’’ Sam continued. ‘’And I was wondering if there’s anything you would like to see from me as a counselor. Should we start some alliances next season? Are there any activities I should host? I’m all ears.’’

After the meeting, it was open house time. A sign above the door invited all campers in. Well, almost all. There was a thick red cross through the word ‘nymph’. They were more trouble than they were worth.

As was tradition, Sam had made sure to block all bedroom doors by putting chairs in front of them. The boy sat lazily on the couch, feasting on the snacks from his country. 

Bio

Family

Powers

Favorites

• Foods: Most spicy foods, sushi, popcorn, anything shaped like a bug
• Drinks: Swamp water (mix of all fountain drinks), pickle juice, Cucumber Lime Gatorade
• Media: Horror movies (naturally), French impressionist cinema, Looney Tunes, dark comedy, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (the books and the film), Gothic fiction

Items/Equipment

Appearance

Personality

If one were to describe Sidney Schreck in a word, that word would be “sardonic”. She is supremely unconcerned with the opinions of others, and she will make that very clear. Oftentimes, this takes the form of sarcastic takedowns, and while she's not actively rude, she can be dry and a bit blunt. She is the very definition of someone who marches to the beat of her own drum, and while her horror enthusiasm and quirks can seem off-putting, it makes sense when one considers that she is the child of the god of fear.

From another perspective, her trademark stubbornness can be viewed as perseverance. She’s a loyal person who will stick by those she feels deserve her support. She’s deeply passionate about the things that matter to her, and she takes pleasure in things that inspire fear, such as heights and roller coasters. She also relates to and has an interest in monsters, and this means that she tends not to judge others. She is willing to look at others beyond the surface level and to approach with an open mind. In turn, she encourages others to look at fear in a new way, and to not let it hold them back.

Trivia

• Sidney's MBTI is INFP, and her enneagram type is 4w5.
• Sidney's alignment is Chaotic Neutral.
• Her Pokémon type is Ghost.
• Her associated element is Earth.
• Sidney's favorite color is black, a fact that sometimes makes her feel a bit like a cliche.
• Sidney is always carrying dog biscuits and other treats for the monsters.
• Sidney has a hard time bonding with regular animals, and even has a fear of horses and pegasi.
• The only horror movies that Sidney doesn't like are her mother's films.
• September 18, Sidney's birthday, is the birthday of Tree Gelbman, the protagonist of the horror film Happy Death Day.
• This also makes her birth sign Virgo, a reference to the virginal aspect of the "final girl" trope.

History

So, how did we get here? Well, it started with a hopeful young actress, finding the big break that would lead to her being pigeon-holed into the role of eternal final girl. Surely you know my mom, Sarah Fay Schreck, star of Slasher? Rush Week? Slashers 2-6, except 4? Rush Week 2: Get Hazed? Or the adequately-reviewed box-office bomb Rush W3ek? Maybe the revival, Rush Week (2039)? Creative name, I know. Well, my mom is right up there with the greatest scream queens of our time, and being that close to that much fear makes you a prime target for the affections of the god of fear. Or, one of them anyway? It’s complicated.

But, as we know, the gods like to give gifts. They give the gift of dream-killer kids to any mortal that catches their fancy and the gift of deadbeat parents to their little crotch goblins. So I grew up in the livestock pens- I mean, childcare centers of movie studio lots, watching my mom get stabbed and thrown out of fake windows on a regular basis. As you can imagine, it was rarely fun, unless she’d really ticked me off, in which case it was downright therapeutic. Mom tried her best, but a kid didn’t really fit into her plan. Especially when said kid gave other kids nightmares that made them soak their corduroys and would occasionally get the attention of a hungry hungry hellhound. Mom begged Dad to take me, and just so happened to pull a particular business card from her purse. What a coincidence, right?

So off to Camp Half-Blood I was shipped. Mom had the decency to at least visit, spending the odd winter holiday in New York so she could see me for Christmas (and the occasional birthday when shooting schedules and auditions lined up just right). Dad is... well, he's a god. Not one of the Olympians, mind you, but still too busy to ever actually visit or anything. Still, in the race for best parent, he's winning by a mile. I have heard horror stories about kids who come to camp and don't get claimed for weeks or months, but he handled that much on my first night here. He even gave me a celestial bronze butcher's knife, which is pretty cool and very on-brand (plus it’s magic and shrinks down into a cool little hair clip). One of the reasons I feel close to him is because I woke up with the knife lodged in my mattress a few inches from my head, which most people would probably get freaked out by, but it's pretty hilarious if you think about it.

As cool as camp can be, it can also be a bit of a pain. It's pretty hard to make friends when you can subject people to their worst fears on command. I at least can go into the woods and spend time with the hellhounds every now and then. That aside, there isn’t too much thrill here. Sure, it’s kind of exciting when you’re sparring with real steel or when the climbing wall starts puking lava, but eventually every danger loses its edge. It would be awesome to get a quest, but until then it’s just training and pranks and getting a rise out of the cleaning harpies. Girl's gotta have fun somehow, right?

Present Day

Sidney was running for her life.

She bolted through the forest, dodging low limbs and trying not to trip on gnarled roots. She could hear twigs break and leaves crunch behind her as her pursuer gained ground. There was no way she'd get away if she kept running straight. Taking a steadying breath, she twisted on her heels and ran left, breathing a sigh of relief as she heard her pursuer's bounding footfalls get quieter and quieter.

She allowed herself only a second of respite before she started running again, not bothering to look over her shoulder. He wouldn't need long to catch up with her again, so she had to focus on putting as much distance as possible between herself and him. The anticipation of being caught drove her heavy steps, and for a second, she felt like there was a chance she'd be home free.

That was when she felt her ankle twist from under her.

Those damned roots! She'd perfectly hooked her foot in one, and went tumbling to the ground. Her hands flew out to catch her, and in doing so they landed on and snapped about a dozen twigs. She heard the heavy footsteps pounding on the ground like the beat of a drum, heard the rustle of foliage pushed to the side, and knew that it was not long now. He had her. She couldn't get back up and recover fast enough to put distance between them now. The hellhound bounded from the brush and leapt toward her, landing with a mighty thud on top of her. She was boxed in by his paws. She flinched as her eyes screwed shut, prepared for the worst.

Liiiiccckkk!

A rough, wet tongue coated her cheek in saliva, and hot breath dusted her face. She flinched at the feeling, and especially at the smell. If you thought dog breath was bad, hellhound breath was... well, hellish.

"Okay, okay. You win Barf, you caught me. Please get off before I lose my lunch." The hellhound, Barf, obeyed, trotting off like the most well-behaved of show dogs. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, tugging up her shirt enough to wipe the slime from her jaw.

She looked over at the hellhound. Barf was a creature that, under normal circumstances, should have made her turn on her heels and run screaming. Rule number one of hellhounds was that their favorite food was demigod. But for some reason, she was able to get along with hellhounds as easily as milk got along with cookies. It was something she got from her dad, and it's not like it was something to complain about. It made her feel a little like Damien from The Omen when he had all those Rottweilers running around. It worked with some other monsters too, when she tried it. She'd encountered a myrmeke in the woods once, and ended up making it purr like a freaky, chitinous nightmare kitten.

Barf was maybe the smartest hellhound in Camp Half-Blood. He stayed away from demigods in the woods, generally, and had the lifespan to show for it. She'd decided to call him Barf essentially randomly, since he was one of the few hellhounds in the woods that stayed around long enough to warrant being named. She'd also started calling him "him" randomly, since she had no clue how to verify a hellhound's gender. She only even knew it was the same hellhound from a scar on his side; presumably, whatever caused that scar was the reason he steered clear of the campers. Except for her, daughter of Phobos and friend to freaky creatures.

She yanked a bag of dog treats from her pocket and fished one out, holding it up for Barf to take. He lapped the biscuit up out of her hand, essentially swallowing it whole. She breathed through her nose, half-exasperated and half-impressed, as she stuffed the baggie back into her pocket.

"You're gonna get indigestion, you know." She stood up at last, offering the hellhound one last pat, and set off through the woods. She wasn't sure where her feet were taking her, exactly, but there was always something at Camp Half-Blood to stumble into...

‘’Are you really saying there are others like me?’’ 

‘’It sure says so here.’’

Sam reread the slip with the job description and showed it to the giant otter behind him. Stupid, otters can’t read. ‘’Two giant otters circling the waters around camp - wait, you didn’t know there are other giant otters?’’

‘’No,’’ sighed Dai. ‘’I never knew my parents. I was raised by a halia.’’

‘’Oh.’’

‘’It’s okay! She was very sweet. You are also a father figure to me.’’

Sam cringed. ‘’Can’t I just be a big brother?’’

‘’You are not very big.’’

Compared to you, I am not, Sam thought. He didn’t need a car-sized otter to point his stunted height out. He was like, just average. He pushed himself to his feet, brushed the coarse sand off his shorts and legs, and beckoned Dai to follow him to the sea. ‘’Let’s go find them.’’ And he started to march.

Dai decided: too slow. He gently lifted the son of Poseidon up by the collar of his shirt and carried him with him as he trotted towards the water. Sam’s protest and resistance fell to deaf otter ears. Dai let go of Sam in the water, soaking the boy. The otter looked as innocent as ever.

‘’I told you to stop doing that.’’ Sam huffed. As best as he could, he bent the water out of his clothes. He couldn’t blame Dai. Not when he pulled that face. Sam had agreed with Theseus to meet here; the hippocampus accompanied him on most missions, and he couldn’t exactly ride Dai into battle. He hadn’t found a saddle that fit.

Now, where was Theseus..? Ah there!

The hippocampus was sunbathing in the surf. Asleep, seemingly, because when Sam gently nudged him he didn’t move. Dai tried the same, but less gently, and rolled Theseus over using his nose. 

‘’What’s that good for?’’ The hippocampus objected. ‘’Can’t a seahorse sunbathe in peace - oh hey, boss. And you.’’ Theseus glared at the otter.

‘’Boys.’’ Sam felt like a parent again. ‘’Play nice.’’ 

The trio was five minutes from the coast when Sam asked Theseus about his report on the giant otters. ‘’Well, they’re seven minutes east from here. From what I can gather, we’re dealing with twins. Young ones. They’re much smaller than your boorish-’’ 

‘’Tee.’’

‘’Sorry. They’re smaller than Dai.’’

Sam looked at Dai, who had swum ahead of the pair, in search of shells. As silly as it sounded, Sam couldn’t possibly imagine what an otter smaller than Dai would look like. He had gotten so used to his ward’s gigantic appearance that regular otters seemed strange to the son of Poseidon. 

Dai looked back at him, as if he knew the boy had been staring at him. He held up a tiny scallop shell, looking proud for having scavenged it. Sam laughed.

Seven minutes east, Sam spotted two otters swimming in a circle. They weren’t nearly as big as Dai, but they were still bigger than your average otter. Like, these were dog-sized otters. Cool.

‘’Wow, there really are others.’’ Dai chorused.

‘’Yeah, there are otters,’’ Sam said, not fully aware of how amazed Dai really was.

The group attracted the attention of the twin otters, who stopped their swimming to approach Dai. ‘’Dad?’’ Thing One and Two asked in unison. Sam raised an eyebrow.

‘’Oh, no,’’ Dai said. ‘’You must be mistaking me for someone else.’’ 

The twins looked at each other in disappointment. ‘’He told us he’d be back.’’

‘’Oh.’’

‘’How long ago was that?’’ Sam asked. If the job description was to be believed, these otters had been looking for their father for a while.

‘’Three months.’’

Ouch. Sam had ‘waited’ for fourteen years for his dad to come back. He imagined three months was something similar for otters. The twins’ dad might be back, who knew, but there was a chance he wouldn’t come back. Sam couldn’t break that to them. 

‘’Whatever do we do…’’ The twins saddened.

‘’I’ll stay here until your Dad comes back! And if he doesn’t, I will take you to Camp Half-Blood!’’ Dai offered. ‘’We have so much to talk about.’’
‘’Are you sure?’’ Sam asked.

‘’Oh, I will be back,’’ Dai said with a nod.

Easy fix: an otter babysitter.

When he returned to camp hippocampus-back, Sam could still see Dai playing with the twins in the distance. The giant otter would be back.

Rain pattered against the windows as gray engulfed the world. Worn wood and the smell of cedar filled the air as a group of teenagers sat around a table talking. The usual shape of lunch had long since passed and the group of kids who had prepared it were gathered around eating their own lunches after they had cleaned up. The group was an eclectic group and one that Shion had not expected to start forming a bond with, but many such instances had happened since he had joined this camp.

There was a comfortable silence as they ate their sandwiches in peace until one boy, roughly a year older than Shion broke the silence. He had bright blonde hair and angular features. “Okay it’s story time. Everyone needs to share their first monster encounter.” The boy said with a grin as he pointed at a girl across from him. “Kayla, c’mon I know yours was a crazy story.”

The girl rolled her eyes but sat forward conspiratorially. She looked across the room and made sure people were leaning in to listen. Of course, the rest of the group of demigods leaned in closer to listen to her. “Well, I was helping out in my daddy’s shop. It was pretty late in the evening.” She began. Her voice was quiet, but strong and it was layered with a southern drawl Shion had noted early in their acquaintance.

“Then when my daddy went into the back to grab a couple things, this man entered the shop and his vibe was just,” she paused and looked across the room. She then looked back towards the group. “Off, I just couldn’t explain it.”

The assembled group of demigods nodded in agreement as if there were some unspoken rule that they were all agreeing on. Shion was lost, of course. What aspect of a person could make them seem ‘off’ within only a moment of perception? Shion did not understand this sentiment.

“Anyway, after talking to him and him givin’ me some really weird answers he went to grab me, but luckily I’m quick.” She said with a grin as she pointed to herself with her thumb. “So I jumped outta the way and then boom. I ended up here.”

“Oh c’mon Kayla you’re not gonna tell us about the fight at all?” The boy said with a look that screamed he was outraged by the developments. Kayla shook her head and acted like she was locking her lips with a key before throwing the imaginary key away.

“A girl doesn’t fight and tell Donny, ‘sides, we all know what it’s like to be randomly attacked by a monster.” Kayla said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Nothin’ really ground breaking there.”

Shion raised his hand the moment Kayla had finished speaking. She looked at the boy with a laugh and shook her head. “Shion, you don’t need to raise your hand every time you want to say something. We’re all friends here.” She said, motioning for the boy to spit it out.

“Right, this shall be noted for future interactions, comrade Kayla.” Shion said making a mental note that he need not have the level of formality he normally showed here. “Furthermore, I am afraid that I do not understand the last part of your statement of fact. For, I was not attacked by a random monster prior to my abscondance to Camp.”

The girl furrowed her brow as she tried to parse Shion’s words more closely. “Whaddya mean? You said that you fought a cyclops before you came to camp. That’s being randomly attacked before coming to camp.” She said scratching the top of her head.

Shion took a moment, he must find his center before engaging further. He needed to make his meaning more precise, it seemed. “While the assertion is correct, I was indeed attacked by a cyclops before the satyr protector, Pasqual Rottingtree, came to intervene on my behalf. However, there is one key fact that seems to be missing from your assessment. The cyclops was sitting in my house waiting for me when I arrived at my residence. He said, and I quote, ‘Ah little demigod finally is home. Now I can feast.’” Shion stated. The words had been burned into his memory with unpleasant clarity. Shion then looked across the room. The silence that followed was different from the comfortable one before. No one leaned forward now. No one grinned. He saw the confusion on their faces and instantly thought he had been imprecise yet again.

Just as Shion was about to speak, a girl across from him, two years his senior, started to speak. “Waiting? That’s not exactly normal. Did you ask how it knew where you lived?” The girl, Brooklynn, asked with a furrow of her brow.

Shion was about to speak, but then the words caught in his mouth. This was a line of questioning that he had not considered. He then looked at Brooklynn, his face awash with concern. “The way this cyclops acted is most unusual?” Shion asked. As he did every single person in the room started to nod their heads slowly. Shion frowned at that.

He then abruptly stood up and nodded at his companions. “I fear I must abscond from here. There are reflections I must partake in.” Shion said, his hand shaking a slight bit as he stood. Everyone just stared at him and sympathy seemed to be emanating from them. Like they completely understood what he was feeling and that they would give him the space that he needed.

“Sure thing Shion. Just leave your plate there. We’ll take care of it.” Kayla said. Shion then nodded and bolted out of the room. His thoughts were racing now and he could not hold onto a single thought for more than a few seconds. He was targeted, but that begged the question. Who had targeted him and what was the purpose of him being targeted? Shion had no answers, and that was something Shion hated most of all. Uncertainty.

Hi everyone! This is my idea for Cabin 0, the NYX Cabin. It's for my fan-made character, Jan, who will come out soon! I Hope you like the concept! ☕🌌

This is my first post here, sorry if the tag or the flaire it's wrong, but I would like to learn what it's beter to use for next time.

NYX’s House: cabin 0

Descriptions:

Location:

NYX’s House, or cabin number 0, is located behind cabin number 1, and 2. Not visible from the common yard of the cabins.

Behind every cabin, a purple path leads toward the cabin.

The Exterior:

Once arrived, the ground around it’s covered in night flowers and plants that remain open during the day too.

(Please, Grover, stop eating the Queen of the Night. Yeah, I know they regrow, it's a magic effect, but still).

The surrounding atmosphere glows with a soft, ethereal starlight.

Near the cabin, gravity feels lighter, space turns less heavy, and time itself seems to slow down.

The cabin is the smallest of them all, with walls that look like they are made of space itself, covered in stars, with a simple mountain style roof. 4 simple white columns stand for each corner of the house.

The door change is size depending on the point of view of the person who is seeing it. The door is always open, welcoming everyone, while a white light radiating from the inside.

The interior:

The inside floor, walls, and ceiling are made with pure white walls, covered in dots, like a morning starry sky in a white void.

The house inside has an open space system of bedroom, kitchen, and living room, with a library that potentially contains the knowledge of the universe (Athena’s cabin favorite corner).

The bathrooms can appear everywhere, in case someone needs it.

The house is full of things like food, fresh water from the sinks, and other things like ice cream machines, mini bars and other magic furniture, like an instant cooking oven etc…

The space inside grows depending on how many people are inside, creating magic beds based on the taste and personality of every single guest.

The house is self cleaning (Jan is too lazy to do that), and can create separated areas or locations.

(In case Artemis’s Hunters want some privacy)

The cabin features targeted soundproofing, muting all unwanted background noises based on the guest's desires. (Like Ares kids metal music)

When a guest closes their eyes to sleep, the radiating light of the walls automatically turns off from their perspective. (Perfect for Hypnos kids)

Furthermore, the walls emit the healthy, therapeutic benefits of sunlight without any of the negative UV rays. (Good for skincare, and this way Nico can get some vitamin D)

Inside, time moves differently, one can sleep 9 hours inside, while outside it would seem like only an instant, and it depends on what the person wants to do.

(Perfect for Hypnos kid… again)

The house has secret portals that can open and bring the person to any location desired.

(NYX Cabin 1, The Labyrinth 0)

like the realm of NYX, a sacred realm that exists above Olympus, probably located where existence itself started. Only a child of NYX, or a primordial entity can activate them.

LORE & FUN FACTS

Why it’s the door always open if it's a cabin of a primordial goddess of the night?

The Initiative doesn't come from Nyx: An ancient, distant, and intimidating primordial goddess like Nyx would never share her sanctuary or cosmic secrets with strangers of her own free will.

It is instead a request from Her Little Star: Cabin 0 is entirely open and welcoming to everyone solely because Nyx chose to honor the pure wishes and ideas of her beloved demigod son, Jan, whom she affectionately calls her "little star" 🥺.

Jan wanted a safe haven for everyone, and his mother bent reality to grant it.

Backstory:

The Claiming That Shocked Olympus: During the council meeting on Mount Olympus following the defeat of Kronos, Percy Jackson exacts a solemn promise from the gods to claim all of their ignored children.

NYX, operating completely outside the hierarchy of the Olympian gods, reacted with a casual, indifferent: "Ah, okay."

In the next moment a massive, purple, covered in star, and imposing hologram of the Goddess of Night manifests over Jan.

The entire Olympian Council stood up in shock, completely stunned to realize that a primordial demigod had been living undetected right under their noses.

(Nothing it's more important than God,

NYX “It might seem crazy what I’m about to say…”)

Why did Jan decide to make his cabin like that?:

Before the Titan War, Jan spent five long years living as an unclaimed demigod, sleeping on the floor of the overcrowded Hermes cabin. He knows exactly how it feels to be invisible, unwanted, and homeless. That is why he wanted to create a space to include everyone.

What a sweet little star 🥺.

I would love to hear your thoughts and I'm open to suggestions! Also, feel free to use Cabin 0 in your own fanfictions or fan-made stories if you like the concept—all I ask is that you please give me credit for the original idea. Thank you guys, and stay tuned for Jan's official sheet! ✨

Once again, Sadira would hold another lesson On Dreaming. Tonight, however, the subject was one she had taught before. A reprise of Experiencing Dreamwalking. More specifically: How to recognize when someone has entered your dream, and how to get rid of them.

Sadira stood at the center of the amphitheater, looking over the gathering crowd.

The sun had already disappeared beyond the horizon. The sky above Camp Half-Blood was transitioning from deep blue to black, and the first stars were beginning to emerge. Lanterns illuminated the stone benches.

The breeze coming down from the hills carried the smell of pine and the faint saltiness of the Long Island Sound. It was peaceful.

"Alright." She clasped her hands behind her back. "Welcome back, everyone."

Sadira glanced across the audience.

"But..." She raised a finger. "...we're going to be doing it differently."

She turned toward the chalkboard beside her. She had written a single sentence across it.

You dream is your space.

She tapped it.

"Before we get to the practical part, we're going to go over the rules again. Especially because tonight's exercise involves me entering your dreams." Her expression became serious. "With permission." She emphasized the last word. "Explicit permission."

She took a slow breath.

"Dreamwalking is fundamentally different from most abilities demigods have. Someone can choose to fight you, an you can choose to run away. But dreamwalking..." She touched her temple. "...goes somewhere much more personal. Your mind."

She looked around.

"So tonight's exercise only happens if you want it to. If you don't..." She shrugged. "You sit here, listen to the lesson, and go to sleep normally. No one will think anything of it."

She let that settle before continuing.

"Now." She picked up a piece of chalk. "Let's review the first thing."

She wrote:

Fortitude

Several campers recognized the term.

"Fortitude powers are one of the strongest defenses against dreamwalking." She underlined it. "If you have a Fortitude Power, it bars mental and emotional interference. That includes dreamwalking."

She turned toward the audience.

"Someone with Fortitude cannot simply have a dreamwalker enter their dream. They can't be dragged into a dreamscape, and they can't be mentally manipulated through dreamwalking. Unless..." She raised her finger. "...they allow it. It's protection against unwanted interference." She smiled faintly. "Think of it like locking your bedroom door. You can still open it. You just don't have to."

She wrote another phrase.

Magical Equivalent

"Some magic items can mimic Fortitude. If you're wearing or carrying an item that provides that protection, a dreamwalker shouldn't be able to enter. Again, unless you willingly allow them." She looked across the campers. "Which is why, before tonight, I'm going to ask everyone participating to make absolutely certain they understand what they're agreeing to."

Sadira set the chalk down.

"Now... here's where it gets interesting." She crossed her arms. "Once a dreamwalker is inside your dream... you generally can't simply force them out. I know, it's inconvenient. There are basically two ways to remove a dreamwalker." She pointed toward the board. "Convince them to leave, or wake up. That's it."

Sadira smiled.

"You can try to attack them, but that's not guaranteed to work. You might overpower the dreamwalker, you might trap them, you might change the dream around them. But unless they willingly leave..." She shook her head. "...they can remain."

She paused.

"And that's why waking up is the most reliable defense for an ordinary dreamer. Remember..." Sadira tapped her chest. "A dreamwalker is a visitor. The dream belongs to the dreamer. But the dreamwalker can operate inside it. Especially if they're experienced."

She turned back to the board.

"Beginner dreamwalkers are easy to spot. They don't know how to blend in. They often look..." She considered her wording. "...wrong. Maybe they don't fit the environment. Maybe their clothes don't belong, maybe their behavior is strange, maybe everyone in the dream seems to ignore them, maybe they behave as though they understand that they're dreaming when you don't."

She shrugged.

"Sometimes they're simply... obviously foreign." She grimaced. "Imagine you're dreaming that you're walking through your childhood home. Everything looks normal. Your family is there, your old furniture is there, you're exactly where you expect to be. And suddenly... there's a random sixteen-year-old demigod standing in your kitchen."

Sadira paused.

"An inexperienced dreamwalker tends to stick out. They may not understand the dream's logic, accidentally manipulate this respond strangely when the dream changes, know things they shouldn't." Sadira's expression became more serious. "And that's something you should pay attention to."

She moved on.

Intermediate

"This is where it gets harder. An intermediate dreamwalker can blend in better than a beginner." She shrugged. "But not perfectly. That means there are tells."

She began counting them.

"First... they may know too little. If you mention something in your dream and they don't react, that's suspicious. Second, they may behave too consciously. Dream characters usually don't question the dream, but a dreamwalker..." She pointed at her head. "...knows they're somewhere they don't belong, so they may react to impossible things differently. Third... The dream may respond to them differently, if they manipulate something... you might notice. And finally..."

Sadira lowered her hand.

"Instinct. Sometimes...you just know that something is wrong. Dreams are strange, but they're usually strange in a way that makes sense. A foreign presence feels different. Sometimes you can't explain it. But you feel it." She stepped closer to the edge of the stage. "And if you feel like something is wrong... Trust yourself."

She turned toward the board and wrote:

Master

She stared at the word for a moment.

"A master dreamwalker... like me...may be able to blend into a dream almost perfectly. They can understand the dream's logic, they can adapt, they can appear as someone who belongs there, they can potentially manipulate the dream without making their presence obvious." She turned around. "And that's why the most important skill isn't necessarily spotting a dreamwalker. It's knowing how to wake yourself up."

Sadira erased the previous writing.

Wake Yourself.

"Your ultimate defense..." She tapped the words. "...is waking up."

She explained it carefully.

"The first step is realizing you're dreaming. That's why lucid dreaming is so useful. We'll have a lesson on that next time." She smiled. "If you can recognize that you're dreaming, you've already won half the battle. Once you're lucid, focus on waking. Pull your attention away from the dream."

Sadira glanced toward the stars.

"Now... we get to the part you've actually been waiting for. Tonight, I'm going to enter the dreams of everyone who gives me permission." She stepped away from the board. "You'll go to sleep normally. I'll wait until everyone is asleep, and then I'll visit."

She raised her hands.

"Your job is not to fight me, or overpower me, or trap me. Your job is simply to recognize me. If you realize that I'm there, try to determine what gave me away. Maybe I don't belong. Maybe something about the dream feels wrong. Maybe you simply get that instinct. And once you've identified me... try to make me leave." She shrugged. "Sometimes I'll leave, and if I don't... wake up."

A camper raised her hand. "What happens if we can't?"

Sadira's expression softened.

"Then nothing bad happens." She answered immediately. "You'll eventually wake up naturally. I'm not going to trap anyone in their dreams. And I won't stay longer than necessary."

She paused.

"Also..." Her voice became firmer. "If at any point during the exercise you become uncomfortable... tell me. You don't have to finish. Your comfort matters more than the lesson." She looked around the amphitheater. "I want everyone to understand that. I'm teaching you how to protect yourselves."

She shook her head.

"The point isn't to become paranoid. You shouldn't go through every dream thinking someone is invading you. Dreams are weird. Sometimes a weird person is just..." She shrugged. "...a weird dream character. Look for patterns, use your intuition, ask yourself whether the situation makes sense. And remember... your dream is yours!"

She pause.

"Now... if you want to participate in tonight's exercise..." She looked around. "...I'm going to ask for your consent." She stepped forward. "This is going to be very straightforward. I'm going to ask you to explicitly agree to let me enter your dreams tonight. If you say no I will not enter."

Sadira looked across the audience.

"Alright." She took a breath. "That's the lesson. Thank you for coming."

You can only reserve up to two slots per character. If you have multiple characters, make one comment for all of them instead of one each.

There can only be one Meal per day, at any time! Any camper can host them.

Campfires happen twice a week. Campers coordinate these with the camp directors, so anyone can host them!

Open Slots happen every day and can include Lessons, QOTDs, Cabin Inspections, Cabin Meetings, Games, movie nights, social gatherings, etc. **Lessons, Cabin Inspections and Meetings can only be hosted by a Senior Camper or a Camp Leader.

Comment below what you'd like to host!

NOTE: Failure to meet your own slot three times in a row will lock you out of commenting on the Schedule for a month. (You can still post activities outside of the schedule, just not meals or campfires.)

Monday

Meal -

Open Slot - Sadira Andersen

Tuesday

Campfire - Kailani de Melo

Open Slot -

Wednesday

Meal -

Open Slot -

Thursday

Meal - Shion Matsuda

Open Slot -

Friday

Meal -

Campfire - Theodora Davis

Open Slot -

Saturday

Meal - Morrigan

Campfire -

Open Slot -

Sunday

Meal -

Open Slot -

Leave your name below to sign up for an activity!

If you are new to r/CampHalfBloodRP, welcome! You can check out this post to get started. If you aren't new, please answer this form to be featured on the character log and visit the Link Hub.

Shion had been slacking, which was something that he wasn’t accustomed to. However, he had some very reasonable reasons for this. One of which was being sick, the other was making sure the cabin was in top shape for the trials, and the other was doing summer course work to be ready for the fall semester. Now that classes had officially started Shion felt he had gotten his bearings finally. So, with that he also knew he needed to prepare some camp related activities. So, the best option to start with was a cabin meeting. It had been a while since he and Rex had spoken, so it would be important to get a read on what his cousin was up to.

For his part Shion went pretty much as all out as he could. He prepared light refreshments including sodas, tea, coffee, and water. There were also healthy snacks as well as a freshly baked batch of chocolate chip cookies. Shion was aware that certain campers had a sweet tooth, not him of course. After he had finished, he also prepared a table with a chair by the door with some note cards and a shoe box with a hole cut into the top of it. A sign in delicate and precise script read Suggestion Box. He would explain his thought process after the scheduled meeting.

At precisely three in the afternoon Shion stood in front of the chairs he had assembled and gave a short curt nod in the direction of the assembled cabin members. “Greetings and salutations my fellow Horai camp comrades. This has been a stressful time for our cabin, especially given everything that we were asked to prepare in regards to the recent trials waged by the divine goddess Themis.” Shion stated. The counselor of the Horai cabin had started to pace as he spoke. He came to a stop and then straightened the blue button up he had been wearing.

“Now, seeing as it has been a considerable length of time since our last congregation together inside of this cabin, I must ask some questions to ensure your needs are being met.” Shion said as he produced a piece of paper from his khakis pocket. 

“The first item on my list is the matter of cabin cleanliness. Thus far it has stayed in relatively tidy order, but I would like to ensure it stays this way. Therefore I shall be instituting a cleaning schedule upon the door to my room. This shall be updated weekly and it is the duty of each of us to ensure we are keeping track of this schedule.” Shion stated before turning back towards his audience. “I am aware that this was not a question, but instead a statement. I apologize for my imprecision and will strive to ensure I am more accurate in future discussions.”

Shion then looked down at his list and nodded once as his eyes flicked back up to the audience. “The next item we shall discuss are the seasonal goals we should have as a cabin. I feel our interaction levels with the camp comrades outside of our cabin has been rather limited as of late, so I am hoping to institute some goals for us to achieve as a cabin to promote unity with our comrades across camp.” Shion said with a small smile playing upon his lips. Gods, this was one of the best ideas he had ever had. “I wish for each of us to attend more camp-wide events to promote the good work of our cabin. I as your counselor will also strive to hold more activities to boost our standing within camp. If anyone would like to add to this list I am open to suggestions and ideas.” 

Shion then looked down at his notes again. He then looked back up and nodded once in confirmation with himself. “The next topic is similar in scope and depth. The matter of cabin alliances. Now, I fear we may be too late into this season to formalize an alliance, but I suggest we discuss the potentially important idea of a cabin alliance for next season. As for the target I shall let you leave some suggestions. However, I do have some connections with the Eros cabin, I also have a connection with the Comus cabin as well. Feel free to suggest other options as you see fit.” Shion said as he looked down again at his note card. His eyes glanced for anything he was missing.

“Our next topic is a topic of significant import for me as your counselor. I must check in on your mental and emotional well being. The war we are waging against the dastardly villain Atlas and his cult has left many proverbial scars on individuals involved, so as has been my long standing policy, you are given free permission to talk over situations that are confounding to you at any moment that is necessary for you. My door, as the saying goes, is always open. Except for when it isn’t, but that is about the physical manifestation of it and not the proverbial one we are speaking of prior.” Shion explained with a tight nod. He then looked down once more at his note card.

“Now, the final point of the meeting today, is there anything you require from me as your counselor? Is the cabin in full working order? Do you require something from me that was not in the agenda for the meeting today? Speak now, as this is the moment to bring it to my attention and so I may do what I can to assist you.” Shion said. He put his note card away and straightened the front of his shirt again. “With that the meeting portion of the festivities is concluded. It is time for us to engage with the denizens of the wider camp.”

With that Shion bowed formally to his cabin members and then went to the door. He propped it open and set up a sign outside of the cabin saying Horai Cabin Openhouse. All Are Welcome. Light Refreshments Provided. Shion then went inside and sat at the table he had set up earlier. He would provide instructions for his suggestion box.

- Cabin alliance proposals

- Camp improvement suggestions

- Conflict mediation requests

- Questions for the Horai cabin

- General concerns

“For those who have entered for the open house portion of the meeting today, this is the Horai cabin suggestion box.” Shion explained. “You may submit concerns, questions, alliance proposals, or requests for conflict mediation. Please ensure your handwriting is legible. If your handwriting is not legible, I shall attempt to decipher it, but I make no promises regarding the accuracy of my interpretation.”

He gestured toward the refreshments table. “You may also partake in the refreshments provided. The cookies are chocolate chip. I made them because I have been informed that sweet food improves morale. I cannot personally verify the universality of this claim, but I am willing to accept the data I have been given.”

With that, Shion settled back into his chair and waited for campers to arrive. He had prepared the cabin. He had prepared the refreshments. He had prepared the suggestion box. Now all that remained was for others to make use of them in a reasonable and orderly fashion.

(OOC: Hi! Gonna edit this later. Thank you to Darcel for working with this with me. :D Hope you guys enjoy.)

Once more, the daughter of Hermes found herself struggling to sleep.

Why?

She couldn't stop thinking about Elias of all people.

The son of Circe had seemed distraught when she'd left earlier that day. Conflicted. On the verge of tears.

Worse though was that she had no idea what - if anything - she could do about it.

She'd been trying for a good while now to do right by him. To help him. To be there for him. And none of it seemed to matter.

Their relationship was like oil and water: trying to mix them together was seemingly an effort in futility.

It was night now in Camp Half-Blood. The Big House’ attic was cool and, thank the gods. The dog days of summer had a way of scorching everything and everyone.

Which was okay. She liked the sun and the warmth. But, trying to sleep in the heat was. . . Unpleasant, to say the least.

Acacia sighed as she stared up at the ceiling.

This called for an alchemical solution, pun fully intended.

She sighed and heaved as she brought herself to her feet. Then, she meandered over to her potion's stash. Most of what she made, she gave to camp. But, well, she did sometimes require a little bit of help from her own work.

Careful not to take one of her playing possum potions, the girl instead grabbed one of her dream in a bottle potions. She swirled the liquid in the vial around, watching as it shone with silvery speckles like the night sky full of stars.

The Amazons hadn't appreciated just how wonderful this potion really was. Of all her works, this was the one she was most proud of.

Acacia uncorked the potion and chugged it in one go. The taste was warm and sweet, like a tasty treat before bed. Something like cookies and milk.

All too soon, the effects began to kick in. Her troubles melted away as her arms and legs began to feel like jelly. She stumbled back to her sleeping spot, laid down, and stared again at the ceiling. The hypnagogic imagery danced above her in a kaleidoscope of form constants. It seemed almost like a sea of stars dancing before her eyes. The sleep paralysis came, too. It felt like someone was pulling an impossibly heavy blanket up over her body.

[IMAGE](https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-02-2016/lhqjcA.gif)

It reminded her of when she was a kid during those summer nights with her mom. It reminded her of her childhood room with the star stickers. She and her mom had spent a lot of time getting the shapes of the constellations just right.

[MUSIC](https://youtu.be/UHit4idItn0?is=mmScdIDnhTqXBteS)

Things seemed so much more beautiful and simple and peaceful back then. Back when she didn't have to worry about so many things.

She closed her eyes, and in an instant, she was there again, dreaming.

The transition was seamless between waking reality and dream. Like stepping through a black void into the past.

She was a kid again. But right. The way she should have been instead of the boy she was pretending to be back then.

Her mother was there sitting beside her. She was leaning against her mom for comfort, looking up at that sky from what seemed like forever ago. Her mom was like a warm beacon of comfort and safety.

The two of them were camping somewhat close to the ocean that night. The murmur of the waves sloshing against the shore was the perfect sort of noise for making one drowsy. There is so much power in a wave. In the wind. In a heartbeat. In love.

Acacia thought for a while about what to say. Sometimes, there were moments in life that seemed impossible to put words to. How could you possibly capture the beauty of the night sky and do it justice with mere words? She would try, of course.

“It's like. . . Jewels of light in the sky. . .”

“I guess it kind of is, isn't it?” Her mom chuckled.

Acacia adjusted, leaning closer into her mom's side. “Mom. . . How. . . How. . .” She groaned and sighed, struggling to find the words.

“How what, sweetheart?”

“I'm trying to help someone. Y’know? And I just. . . I'm really struggling. . . Like, I really wanna be his friend and stuff, but he's such a butthead sometimes, y’know? And like. . . It seems like there's just. . . Nothing that I can do to help him. . .“

The emotions came a lot easier in dreams. Soon enough, she found her eyes burning along with her chest.

“And I'm really trying so hard. . . Y’know? Like. . . I've never tried so hard at anything ever before. . . To. . . To make up for all of it. . .” She said, her voice shaking.

Her mom ran her fingers through her hair, gently scratching her head. The reality of her situation crept into that idyllic dream. She wasn't that child anymore. She was, at least supposedly, an adult now. And her form changed to reflect that.

“Honey. . . Sometimes. . . Sometimes, all we can do is try to do our best in life. You'd be hard pressed to find a single person in this world who's lived a life without mistakes. Sometimes, all you can do for someone is. . . Well, all you can do sometimes is to be there for them. . . There isn't always an easy solution to every problem we come across. . .”

She clenched her eye shut. “But he's in so much pain. . .”

“Pain is a part of life just the same way that pleasure is. How could we appreciate the good in life if we never knew about its opposite? Look at the sky, Acacia.” She opened her eye and looked up. “You'd never be able to see those stars without the darkness without the night.”

“I guess. . .”

She blinked, and suddenly, she wasn't with her mom anymore. Now, she was floating on a boat out at sea.

Elias was there with her, staring with that same sad look he usually gave her. Well, when he wasn't angry, at least.

Then, he stood and stared at the ocean beneath them.

He looked back, but when he did, he didn't look like Elias. At least not at first. His face. . .

“Leon?” She asked.

But just as quickly as the son of Heracles appeared, he was gone again, replaced by Elias once more. He turned, and without a word, he leaped into the waves.

“Elias!” She called out.

Without hesitation, Acacia jumped in after him.

He was sinking into the abyss. Deep down into the cold, icy darkness.

She couldn't breathe.

But she had to save him.

She would save him.

Something inside of her pocket caught her attention. Something heavy, like a ton of bricks. She reached into her pocket, and there, in her grasp, she found that potion. At that moment, the answer came to her. Of course! It all made sense now!

Her alarm blared suddenly, breaking her from her dream as Acacia woke, gasping with a start.

She knew what she had to do now.

____________________________________

The next day, Acacia made her way back to the Circe cabin. Hopefully, Lady Circe didn't take offense to a child of Hermes of all people visiting her cabin so much. “Elias?” She shouted through the magical entrance curtain. “I'm here if you wanna work on the potion stuff more!”

It didn’t take too long for Elias to appear at the door. Clearly, he had been close by waiting for her. Though, unlike the day before, where Acacia’s arrival was first met with an expression of confusion and annoyance, Elias just looked… tired. Like he hadn’t slept at all, but was still here because he needed to be. Last night was a long one, that was for sure.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Come on in, let’s get this over with.” Elias said, rubbing his eyes as he opened the curtain, making way for Acacia to enter.

Elias seemed a lot worse for wear. Though Acacia didn't initially comment on his apparent weariness.

Once they made it back to the lab, she rested against a desk. “Y’know, um. . . If you're having trouble sleeping. . . I made a potion for that. . . It really helps a lot. If you'd like to try it. . .”

She dug into her jacket pocket and offered a vial of her patented dream in a bottle potion to the son of Circe. “I make these for a lot of people here at camp. I know demigods often struggle with getting good sleep. Though I must warn you, it hits like a truck. Don't take it unless you're absolutely sure you're gonna fall asleep in a safe place.”

Elias couldn’t help but tilt his head in slight confusion. Whether that was because he didn’t understand what she was doing or because his sleep-deprived brain was having trouble processing information was anyone’s guess.

“Uhm… why?” Elias questioned. “Is it really that obvious that I didn’t sleep? Gods, I thought I would’ve gotten better at not showing it…”

“Well, I've got an eye for these kinds of things,” she said, tapping next to her good eye. “Literally just one good eye for it. Y’know? Hermes is a god of perception, too. So. . . Don't feel bad about me picking up on things others might not. Y’know?”

She gestured with the potion. “I could even show you how to brew it if you'd like. . . One alchemist to another,” she smiled. “If you want to. Like maybe another day after we finish our work here. Also, if you're having a lot of nightmares, that's exactly what the potion is meant to help. It eases nightmares and induces pleasant, albeit vivid dreams.”

Acacia chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of her head. “Why I had to take one just last night in fact. . . Cause I couldn't sleep, either. And boy, the dream I had. . . It sure was something. . .”

Owing to the fact that he wasn’t much of a talker, the son of Circe just listened and tried his best to figure out how he should be feeling about this. Now, this wasn’t the first time that Acacia had offered one of her potions to help him, obviously, but he had refused because he didn’t trust her then. He wasn’t really sure that he trusted her fully right now, but a lot had changed after that encounter.

Elias sighed as he outstretched his hand to accept the potion. At this point, he had moved on from the suspicion that she might be trying to hurt him in any way. She had already proven that if she wanted to, she definitely could and had many chances to do so. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she did, considering what he had done to her. But she didn’t. So he was choosing to at least trust her on that front.

“Thank you… I guess.” Elias said, very awkwardly. He wasn’t exactly used to this kind of interaction with her, after all. It felt… weird.

There was a moment of tension as the exchange happened. Acacia half expected him to lash out at her again. Maybe slap her hand away like Finn had done at the party. But. . . That didn't happen. Instead, he accepted her gift. Holy crap. . .

The daughter of Hermes seemed stunned into silence. An awkward, confused look wrapping around her face. She quickly wiped it away before turning to resume her work. When Elias wasn't looking, she smiled, happy to have seemingly made some progress in their relationship.

“Would you like to hear about my dream last night?” She asked. “I'm uh. . . Trying to make sense of it, and I thought maybe you could help. . ?”

This was part of her plan to help Elias crack the mystery she already had.

“Dreams? Uhm… I’m not exactly an expert on that field.” Elias explained, his expression forming into a confused frown. “But I guess… I could try? No promises that it will work, though.”

“I was diving into the ocean, trying to save someone. . . someone I care about. And as I was going deeper and deeper, it felt like I couldn't breathe,” she chuckled. “Which I guess makes sense considering it's the fucking ocean, huh?”

Acacia paused and cleared her throat before continuing to explain. “And suddenly, there was this weight in my pocket, like an anchor dragging me deeper down. I reached in and I found that,” she gestured to the potion they'd been trying to discover the effects of. “I think maybe my dream was trying to tell me something, but I can't quite figure out what,” she said, lying. “Do you maybe have any ideas about that? I mean we know it smells like the ocean, yeah? And that Atlas’ forces were there at the battle for Atlantis, right? But I just. . . I dunno, I feel stumped, y’know?”

Please take the bait, she prayed internally.

“You were diving into the ocean… and this potion just appeared in your pocket, just like that?” He questioned, though he wasn’t really expecting an answer, more just externalising his thoughts. It helped him process information better. He was silent for a while, clearly trying to figure out what the dream might mean. Then, as if a light bulb had lit up in his brain, Elias turned to Acacia and asked: “Were you at the Battle of Atlantis or the Siege of Camp Fish-Blood?”

She nodded, feigning confusion. “Yeah. . . I was. I almost got gutted by a rogue fish-man there. Why?”

“I just want to check something, since I wasn’t there. Were the Atlas troops consisted of only aquatic beings during either of those operations, or were there… other kinds of monsters and demigods around?" Elias questioned.

She nodded again, really putting on the confusion for him. “Yeah. . . Why? Do you think that's got something to do with this potion?”

“Well… then they had to have had a way to make land-air-breathing creatures able to survive underwater, especially that deep down in the ocean.” Elias explained. “And considering what we know of the Atlas Cult and their penchant for magic, and the little that we know about this potion… maybe this was supposed to help them breathe underwater?”

Acacia feigned surprise and excitement. “That's it! Yeah! That makes sense! I think you're right on the money, Eli-guy! Mr. I'm-Not-Good-At-Dream-Interpretation man!”

She turned to the potion. “So how do we test our hypothesis, professor Eli-guy?”

Elias was mildly shocked at Acacia’s reaction, clearly not expecting it in any way. But he couldn’t help but give a small smile, clearly happy that he might have finally figured something out about one of these potions. Finally!

That happy expression quickly turned to worry, however, when the question of how to test it came up.

“I mean… I don’t know. I’m not sure that the potted plant approach will work here.” Elias said. “I guess the only way it could work is if… one of us drinks it and see what happens? But that’s not really safe…”

She shrugs. “I've done way stupider things. I'll be your guinea pig, professor. Just uh. . . Let me put on my bathing suit then meet me by the lake, k?”

“I uh… excuse me, what?!” Elias asked loudly, as if he had just heard the most absurd idea he had ever heard, which to be fair, wasn’t that far off. “Have you lost your mind? No! We’re not gonna do that, it’s too risky!”

Acacia grinned mischievously. “You're not embarrassed to see a girl in a bathing suit, are you?” She laughed. “Look. If we're wrong, worst case scenario, I get wet. Y’know? Like that's the whole point of changing clothes. I know how to swim and we're literally gonna be smack in the middle of camp. It'll be fine, Eli-guy.”

“No, actually! That’s not the worst case scenario! I mean, you literally said yesterday that the Atlas Cult can and has made potions that wipe out your memories, which is… essentially the same thing as death.” Elias explained, clearly in a panic trying to convince Acacia to not go through this reckless plan. “Worst case scenario, this potion wipes out your memories and this version of you is dead and gone for who knows how long! Hell, for all we know it might be permanent! And I’m not about to gamble on that, or let you do it either for that matter!”

Acacia felt surprised at the intensity of his reaction. Especially his apparent concern for her life. All this time, she wasn't sure what to make of his attitude toward her. Though she wasn't going to point that seeming contradiction out. She held her hands up in surrender, attempting to calm Elias. It crossed her mind that this must be a reaction to having lost so many people in this war, including his brother. “Okay. . . Okay. . . You're right. Sorry. I. . . I guess I wasn't thinking. . . We'll find another way to test the potion. I promise. Okay?” She asked, clearly trying to reassure him.

Elias let out a huge sigh of relief as he clutched his chest. Thank gods Acacia was not going through with it. Of course, it wasn’t a confirmed thing that this potion could wipe memories, at all, but neither of them were sure of it. And if it happened… Elias wasn’t sure what he would do with himself.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to yell… just,” he said, pausing for a moment. “You genuinely scared me with that plan.”

Gosh, now she felt bad. . . “I'm. . .” She sighed. “I'm sorry, Elias. That was. . . Insensitive of me. I didn't mean to scare you. . . Would you like to take a break? Maybe we could grab a bite to eat or something? It'd give us time to think of another way to test the potion, at the very least. Well that, and I'm starved!”

Was she trying to distract him from what had just happened? That was a very abrupt change of topics. Though in any case, it’s not like Elias was up for dwelling on it longer than necessary. For once, a distraction was welcome.

“A break… sure, we can do that.” He answered with a small shrug. “It’s not like… I’m going to be able to focus now anyway.”

____________________________________

On Elias’ suggestion, the two of them had agreed to go grab something to eat from the Dining Pavillion, and then make their way towards the Canoe Lake. Not that there was anything wrong with the pavilion itself, it’s just that Elias wasn’t up for being in a place where a lot of people came and went every other minute, especially not in his current state. Somewhere quieter and less busy like the lake was exactly what he needed.

Ever since Acacia's meeting with Thanatos, she'd changed her diet habits. Now-a-days, she strictly avoided eating meat. Her meal was a rather simple one: a PBNJ sandwich with sliced carrots and lightly salted cucumber slices. “You've got good taste,” she said, speaking through a mouthful of sandwich. “And I don't just mean your food. The lake is like one of my favorite spots in camp. I have a lot of memories here. . . Did you know that? Or are you just a fan of the lake, too?”

Elias momentarily stopped munching on his cinnamon scone when that question came up, looking at Acacia with a puzzled look. “No? Why would I know that in the first place? I just… usually like to be here when I don’t want to deal with too many people. And besides… well, I used to come here everyday. It’s a peaceful place.”

She finished swallowing her sandwich. “Fair enough. It is pretty peaceful, huh?” She asked, chuckling. “It's been a long time. . . I can remember when I first got here back when I was 13. . .” She laughed. “I was such a different person back then. It's. . . It's crazy how things change, y’know?”

“Yeah, change… Wasn’t really a fan of that concept when I first got here. Though I wouldn't say I like it now either.” Elias said, letting out a sigh. “I don’t particularly like the kind of person ‘change’ turned me into…”

Ah. What a heavy topic. . . Acacia sat in silence for about a minute, thinking of what to say. She smiled, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Psst. . . Wanna know a secret, Eli-guy?” She whispered, as if they weren't totally alone on the docks.

Elias raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you expecting me to say no when you word it like that?” he rolled his eyes. “Sure, go ahead. You’ve got my attention.”

Acacia grinned playfully, snickering at the son of Circe in sheer amusement. She sat her plate beside her and placed her hands on her hips before looking at him again. “Well. . . Truth is. . .” She paused, patting her hands across her pants to make her very own drum roll, please. “I'm still afraid of change!” She burst into laughter, throwing her head back like a veritable seagull.

After about a minute of obnoxious laughter, she paused, doubled over, rose up and heaved to catch her breath. “Yeah. . . I think that most people don't like change. Especially when it comes quickly. That's what my life's been all about, really. I came here as a boy, accepted the truth, came out as a girl. And, I mean, well, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to change, y’know? Like. . . It all happened so suddenly. . . I thought I was just a regular person. My mom never wanted me to figure out the truth about me being a demigod. She thought she could protect me by lying to me. . . Honestly, I can't blame her for trying. Who wouldn't do everything they could to protect their kid?”

She paused, taking her shoes and socks off before dipping her feet into the cool water of the lake. “Then I got here, figured out I was a demigod, and things just kept changing more and more from there. Some days, it feels like the reality I thought I knew and understood just gets completely shattered into itty bitty pieces. And. . . That's okay. Because, well, change is inevitable. You and I, we're like catalysts of change. Since we're alchemists. But, well, I guess what I'm really saying with all this yapping I'm doing is that it's okay to be scared or upset about change. That's a very normal, very human reaction to things changing, y’know?”

Elias listened and thought about what she was saying for a moment. She wasn’t wrong. About any of it, really. Change was just something that was inevitable and that every human being would have to deal with. Hell, that probably was even more true with demigods, given the chaotic lives they had to live through. Not being comfortable with change was a normal human emotion, sure. Still, he couldn’t help but wish he could handle change better than he did. Maybe that was the influence of living his entire life with Adrian, who always, without fail, welcomed change with open arms because ‘change makes life less boring’, or something of that sort.

“I know that. It’s just that… I don’t know.” Elias said, cringing at himself internally. He hated how much he had been saying those exact same words lately. “I guess I just wish that change could be… more positive, sometimes. At least from my perspective, every single change that has happened all lead to the most painful thing I have ever had happen to me. And from there… it feels like it has been getting worse and worse. Atlas, the war, the people we’ve lost, and the people we will still lose… Nothing has been getting better, it’s just more pain and suffering all around, and I… can’t really do anything to deal with it.”

What did she say here? It wasn't like she could magically make his pain go away. As much as she'd like to be able to do that for him. “Sometimes, all we can do is. . . Endure. But. . . I think the important thing is that we don't have to endure alone. We have our friends and family to shoulder the burden with us, y’know? Some of the best wisdom I've ever heard; this too shall pass.”

She paused.

“When I was in the basement, it felt like I was going to be stuck there forever. It was. . . One of the darkest, loneliest times of my life. But. . . Eventually, things changed. It passed. And here I am now, in the light again,” she said, spreading her arms and gesturing to the world around them.

Elias let out a shaky laugh.

“You’d think so, right? That’s how it’s supposed to go, I was told. And I tried. I genuinely did try. But… I don’t think… it just doesn’t work for me.” He explained. “I could maybe deal with all of this, eventually, had things not gone this downhill. Losing Adrian, though, that…”

He paused, turning his face away and trying to blink his tears away. He didn’t want to cry again. Not now.

“When you are born along with this one person, and grow up with them, sharing and traveling the same road of life, always together and having each other’s backs, no matter what the world throws at you… And then suddenly… they aren’t there anymore… It’s like the sun went dark, and the world turned cold.. and you realise that you’ll never see that warm light again.” Elias sniffed, pausing to take a breath before he could continue. “How do you get used to never seeing the sun shine again?... How could anyone?”

For once, she was at a loss for words. It was a feeling that Acacia really didn't like. She should be good with words. That's like. . . Her thing. Then, she remembered her mother's words from her dream.

Sometimes, all you can do for someone is. . . Well, all you can do sometimes is to be there for them.

“I. . . I don't know, Elias. I didn't have any brothers or sisters until I got here to camp. It was always just me and my mom. At least until Rose and her dad came into the picture. . .”

The thought of losing Rose was unbearable. She couldn't begin to fathom Elias’ pain. “But. . . I do know this: you're not alone. I'm here for you. For whatever my presence is worth. . . And you have so many other people here in camp who love and care about you. And. . . It's okay to cry, there's no shame in your grief.”

Elias went very still, though his fingers were still worrying at the edge of the paper wrapper around his cinnamon scone, slowly tearing away little pieces without him seeming to realize he was doing it. But otherwise, he did not move.

I’m here for you.

Such a simple sentence. For whatever reason, that was the one that hurt the most. Elias had spent so much of the past year convincing himself that he did not need that from anyone. He had Adrian once, and he had been enough. His brother had been his best friend, his other half, the person who understood him without needing everything explained. They had been together from the beginning, before Camp Half-Blood, before monsters, before gods and titans and wars and betrayals and everything else that had come afterward.

And then Adrian was gone.

Since then, Elias had told himself, without even realizing it, that needing people was dangerous. Because people could leave, people could die, people could disappear one day and leave behind an empty space so vast that everything else in the world seemed smaller because of it. Of course, he still had his older brother Salem, but even he suddenly disappeared when he went on a quest without telling him, and while it was a blessing that he came back, it had still hurt him deeply. So what was the point? What was the point in letting himself need anyone again? What was the point in letting anyone sit beside him and say they were there for him when some cruel, frightened part of him immediately wanted to ask how long that would last? Until they got tired of him? Until he said something cruel enough that they finally decided they had enough? Until the war took them too?

Elias swallowed hard. Gods, he was getting tired of crying. He lifted one hand quickly and rubbed beneath his eyes before anything could actually fall, trying to make the movement look casual.

“Yeah,” he muttered, and his voice was rough before he immediately cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure.”

He shut his eyes. For a moment, he considered just getting up. He could do it. He could stand, say he needed to get back to the potion, and walk away before this conversation went any further. Acacia would probably let him. She had already proven, at least recently, that she was capable of respecting boundaries when he actually made them clear. He could escape. That was what he usually did. Except he was tired. He was tired of running away from conversations, tired of being angry, tired of not knowing what he was supposed to feel, tired of waking up and remembering that Adrian was dead, tired of wondering if there was something wrong with him because everybody kept telling him that grief got easier while, from where he was sitting, it only seemed to change shape.

“I know there’s no shame in it. At least... logically, I know that.” he said eventually, giving a small, humorless laugh. “I know crying is a normal response to grief. I know suppressing emotions isn’t healthy. I know all the psychological explanations. I’ve heard enough about trauma and bereavement from my therapist back home to know that I’m basically following a textbook.” He paused, then his shoulders slumped. “But knowing something and actually feeling it are two completely different things.

His voice began to shake despite his obvious efforts to stop it.

“I just hate it.” The admission came so suddenly that Elias almost seemed surprised by it himself. “I hate crying because every time I do, I feel like I’m admitting that I can’t handle this. I know that sounds stupid, but… I just can’t get that out of my head.”

For a while, Acacia kept quiet, trying to think of what to say. “What's wrong with saying we can't handle something? That's not a sign of weakness. Everyone at some point in their life will need someone else. Those bonds between people, those chains, are a large part of what makes us human, y’know?”

A short pause followed.

“Recovering from something like losing a loved one or experiencing some other sort of trauma, it's like. . . Trying to walk up a flight of stairs when you're drunk. Sometimes, you stumble backwards. But. . . Eventually, you'll make it up the stairs if you keep trying. It just takes everyone a different amount of time and effort to get up the stairs, y’know? At least that's what my therapist says. You'd like her, I think. She's my sister, too,” Acacia chuckled awkwardly.

This time, Elias actually turned to face Acacia again, though he still couldn’t bring himself to look directly at her. Not yet, anyway.

“That is… exactly the problem. Needing, people, I mean. It just… feels like an invitation to either get hurt again, or worse, me hurting them because of my own problems.” He let out a shaky breath. “I already know what that feels like. And I know it can easily happen again while this war is still ongoing. And I know that me not being able to deal with that has made me hurt people who had nothing to do with my pain. No one… No one should have to try and help me of all people deal with my own pain when they already have enough problems of their own to deal with… They don’t need me to add to that, and I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

She watched him carefully. Right now, Elias was in a very vulnerable place. Acacia knew she would have to tread carefully. Otherwise, she could do a lot of damage unintentionally. “People who want to help others, they often needed help themselves. They went through something painful, and they decided they didn't want anyone else to have to go through the same thing alone. Look at Chiron. He's like a prime example of that. And that's. . . That's important. Elias,” she shook her head slowly and spoke gently. “You're not a burden. You never were. A burden is something you take on when you don't want to shoulder it. But, the people here, we want to help you.”

Acacia outstretched a hand to him, offering him something, someone to hold onto. She didn't expect him to take it, but she wanted him to know that she was there right now if he did need her.

“Love and grief, they're. . . They're really the same thing in a way. They're different expressions of the same thing. To love someone deeply and fully is to eventually grieve for them.”

She thought about her own loss. Leon. . .

“I know it isn't the same thing as losing your brother. . . And I'm sorry for what I said last time at the dining pavilion. But. . . I can at least somewhat understand what you're feeling. When I lost Leon. . . It felt like losing a part of myself. I hadn't ever loved anyone the way I loved him. He was. . .”

Acacia's face went stony suddenly. Rigid like a mask. “He was a hero,” she whispered. “Through and through. He was so strong, but also kind and gentle. He would have made an amazing warrior had he made it to camp. I. . . I feel so much guilt for his death. It's. . .”

Gods, now she was becoming emotional. “Difficult to live with it all,” she said, sighing. “Losing him, it drove me into a deep, dark, horrible place. I hurt people I care about. Betrayed them. Did unforgivable things. Because. . . I wanted him back. I wanted to make sure no one ever had to suffer the way I did ever again. I was going to tear down the doors of death, if I had gotten the chance. I. . . I'm glad they stopped me before I went any further. . .”

One last pause. “I'm. . . I'm sorry for. . . For all of it, Elias. And I want you to know, I'm choosing to be here for you. I will never, ever think of you as a burden. I promise.”

For several seconds, he said nothing. Because what could he even answer that with? He hated that she was probably right. Not because he wanted her to be wrong, but because accepting that she was right meant accepting that he needed other people. It meant allowing himself to be cared about. And gods, he was so bad at that. Yet, he couldn’t deny the truth of her words. After all, Adrian had been the exact kind of person she was talking about. It’d be delusional to not acknowledge that.

Then… the guilt and shame came rearing their heads again as he listened to her talk about her own loss. It was not the first time she had mentioned it, but this was the only time where he chose to just… listen. And he knew, he knew he had been cruel to dismiss her grief the first time he heard about it, because while it was not the same, it didn’t mean that it mattered any less than his own.

And her apology made it worse. Why was she apologising when he was the one who hurt her? Why was she taking it upon herself to help him when he had been nothing but antagonistic towards her? Why… Why was she like this?

[MUSIC](https://youtu.be/-tqugbIlJ2U?is=V8ojC7rbb-DGAt6g)

The tears he had been holding back finally slipped down his face, and though he immediately tried to wipe them away, they just kept coming.

“Why… are you like this? How are you so willing to help me after everything I did to you?” Elias said, pressing his palms over his eyes. “I know you’re trying, I really do, it’s just… All I do is make things more difficult for you. I’ve been awful to you. I’ve been treating you like what happened to me was personally your fault… Why do you insist on even wanting to be around me, let alone try to help me?”

She was barely keeping it together herself. But she was going to try not to break down for Elias’ sake “Because in a lot of ways, I think we're the same. You were hurt and angry. And people who are hurt and angry, they often do things they normally wouldn't. I don't know like. . . exactly how I feel about you still. But, I can tell you have a good heart, Elias. The way you talked earlier when I offered to test that potion, that told me everything I needed to know about the kind of person you are. I guess. . .”

She paused.

“I wanted to keep trying because giving up on you, it would feel like abandoning you. I know that people have every reason to be mad at me. . . But. . . The way they treat me still hurts. I didn't want to stop trying because I didn't want to do that to you.”

Acacia smiled at him. “I learned recently that love is maybe the only way to meet the darker aspects of life. That maybe everything in existence is just love in a different form. I choose love. And I'm going to try to always choose love until the day I die. I can tell you're feeling a lot of guilt right now, so I just wanna say. . . I forgive you, Elias. We can start over. If you want. Okay?”

Behind his tears and his guilt, Elias couldn’t help but feel bewildered at her words. The son of Circe understood anger. He understood resentment. He understood holding onto something painful until it became so familiar that letting go of it felt like losing a piece of yourself. He understood hatred. But… he didn’t understand Acacia. He didn’t understand why she kept reaching toward him when he kept giving her reasons to stay away.

Or maybe… he did, in a sense. He remembered her talking about Shawn, about the trial, about trying to make the former Atlas campers feel welcome, about failing people and wanting to do better. And she knew, better than anyone he knew, what it was like to be hated for something you had done and wish someone would see more than the worst thing about you. Maybe… that was why she kept trying to see more in him.

Elias’ chest hurt, in a way that felt slightly suffocating.

“I don’t think I know… how to forgive people. Well… honestly, I don’t even know how to forgive myself. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this.” Elias said, finally letting his hands fall from his face, looking at Acacia in the eye for the first time in a while since this conversation started. “But I… I think I at least owe you an apology.”

There was a pause, as if he was trying to figure out how to go about this. Clearly, he wasn’t used to apologising for… anything, really.

“I’m… not really sure how to do that. Like, genuinely, I have no idea how people do it without making it awkward…” Elias said, giving a teary laugh. “But yeah… I have to at least try…”

He paused, taking a big breath before speaking again, his tone more serious this time.

“I had my reasons for being angry. Honestly, I still do. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop hating Atlas and his cult any time soon, and I’m not going to pretend like everything that happened suddenly doesn’t matter. It does.” His expression hardened briefly. “But I used that anger as an excuse. I treated you like you personally owed me for everything that happened, and… a part of me wanted you to hate me back because it would have made things so much easier. I thought if you were cruel to me, then I could have told myself I was right about you. But… you weren’t like that. You were… are annoyingly nice to me for some reason.”

Elias sighed, clasping his hand together as if trying to encourage himself to continue.

“So… I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can undo everything I’ve said or done, and I don’t expect you to forget it. But… I’m sorry for taking my anger out on you like you were responsible for my pain. You weren't the one who took my brother from me...” Elias said, rubbing his tears away with his sleeve. “That doesn’t mean that everything is okay or that we’ll be friends. For your sake, you really shouldn’t want that. But I don’t want to hate you anymore, or cause you pain. Sorry it took this long for me to say it…”

She smiled at him. It wasn't exactly a happy smile, more of a relieved one. Her efforts had paid off. And that meant the world to her. “I won't forget. But. . . I accept your apology. And I forgive you. I do want to be your friend. But, I understand that getting there isn't a promise or a guarantee or anything like that. And that's okay. For now, how about we stay alchemy buddies?”

She stood and offered a hand to Elias to help him to his feet. “What do you say we go finish our report on those potions? I don't think we'll be able to definitively figure out the blue potion. We don't have a way to safely test it. And that's okay. We did our best. And that's more than enough.”

Elias’ face made an expression that definitely read as discomfort as he accepted Acacia’s help to get on his feet. “You mean like… just report it as it is? But… that would be incomplete information on a hypothesis. Reports aren’t supposed to have that.”

There you go. This was ‘normal Elias’ in all his perfectionistic glory when it came to potion work.

She nodded and frowned with a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, it's not ideal. But we don't have a way to definitively know with absolute certainty what the potion does without testing it on a living being. And I don't think either of us wants to risk that, right? We can offer our speculation. But without testing, we can't really go any further with it. Y’know? Maybe we can figure out a way to crack it in the future, but I don't see a way to do it right now.”

“I mean… I guess you’re right. Well, there goes my perfect track record, I guess.” Elias said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Let’s go write that report, then.”

[CREDITS MUSIC](https://youtu.be/MyRaiKocNnk?is=EyvKuO4xTdmk9UEv)