Prophesied Powder, PJO

5.1

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Chapter 46
The Start of The War

Volume 5: The Last Olympian

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Pat's year had been rough. He turned sixteen in January, and it only seemed to signal the end of the world. Though Chiron had done his best to somehow get Warren to force Pat to stay in the suburbs of Long Island, and, once realizing that wouldn't work (because honestly, how could Warren beat his son's stubbornness?), attempted to persuade Pat to do so himself, Pat still came back to Camp Half-Blood on the same day that his school let out.

He'd known how different camp was from his visit in the winter, but his arrival for the summer seemed to make things shift even darker. Every demigod appeared to think the end was near. Lookouts were scheduled in shifts along Long Island Sound and Half-Blood Hill, along with night guards. It was the most militaristic that camp had been...ever - or at least in ages, far before the Titans.

Pallas had an exhaustion to him that Pat couldn't deny; he'd been living in the war muck year-round since the battle of the Labyrinth, and with Lee's death, Pallas gained a lot of responsibility very suddenly. He'd been more than willing to let Michael Yew take the role of head counselor off his shoulders, but that did nothing to change the way that his siblings turned to him.

"It makes sense," Pat had told him once over the phone, "You've seen more in the field than anyone in that cabin."

"I wish I hadn't," Pallas had said back.

All of the head counselors seemed down in their own ways - Clarisse had more rage in her system than normal, and Silena seemed like a nervous wreck whenever she thought people weren't looking (though Pat figured that was because of her lies). Michael and Pallas were always shifting through the archery range and talking in hushed whispers, and Beckendorf was in the forges most days trying to give Camp Half-Blood a fighting chance.

Pat kept his head up with mainly spite and anger. This place was his home as much as New Jersey and his house in Long Island were, if not more so due only to the undeniable connection to his roots that he felt whenever he planted himself in the sun and lay in the grass - a moment where he felt like the gods were just distant relatives that he saw once a year, and at the same time, a moment where he felt like he was one of the ancient Greeks, plopped down on a grass hillside in Athens. Kronos had shoved the wrong bear, and Pat wanted his home back.

Annabeth was back before Pat and in the full swing of things; she was Athena's daughter after all, and her mind was running crazy with strategies to beat an army so much bigger than there's. Pat found himself walking through camp with her and rapid-firing ideas that ranged from nuclear fusion to mass funeral planning. They'd spent multiple entire days together or with Malcolm or Chiron, just talking - thinking, as calmly as they could in desperate times.

There was a particularly heated conversation with Clarisse and Michael over an idea involving ranged attackers, and Pat eventually gave up on reasoning with such hotheads (really, Michael was so much like his father). With an annoyed groan, he had stomped away and made sure to let them both know that they were impossible.

"What was that about?" Silena asked him as he passed the Cabin 10 porch.

Pat bit back any rude remarks about traitorous endeavors and settled for a petty, teenage angst-driven bite, "Whatever!"