Scattered Dimensions

Chapter 5: Ghosts Of My Past

Alright, nope, nope, that's it. That's where I can't do it anymore. What in the name of the River Styx is going on? I can't understand anything anymore. I don't want to deal with all of this anymore. I just can't. I looked at the sword one more time. It was the same blade, the same composition, everything looked the same. I pulled out my pen and turned it into my sword, Riptide. I looked at my sword once again and swung it in my hands. This was my sword. And I am thankful that it chose me. I didn't know what to do with this unwanted gift. I could only think of one thing to do.

I immediately left towards the Athena Cabin. I needed Annabeth. And maybe Chiron too. I also carried both the dagger and the cursed sword along with me, both of them in their sheaths. I saw her half-brother, Malcolm, outside pacing around alone. Walking towards him, I remembered that he was the head counsellor of the Athena cabin and that he also probably knew where Annabeth was.

"Hey Malcolm," I said, as I walked towards him.

"Hey Percy, good to see you. Woah, you have actual regular celestial bronze weapons in your hand. What happened to Riptide?" he asked, as he reached over to shake my hand.

"Oh no, I have riptide. These are gifts for me and Annabeth, apparently. Speaking of Annabeth, do you know where she is?" I asked him.

"Oh she is in the Big House with Chiron. They are worried about the Oracle," he replied.

"Yeah, we need to save Rachel," I replied.

"I know you will," he replied, as he waved and left.

I headed to the Big House. As I entered the place, I saw Chiron, Annabeth, and Nico rummaging through various kinds of papers, boxes, and other weird trash lying around. Annabeth was reading something from a piece of paper she had found on the floor.

"Annabeth," I exclaimed loudly.

"Percy. What's wrong?" she asked as she looked at my face.

I took out the dagger and unsheathed it. I saw her face and she looked horrified, surprised and also happy. Huh. I could see her wide eyes were slightly tearing up. She looked up and walked up to me.

"How did you, where did you even find this?" she asked, still a little stiff.

"That's not it," I replied, as I pulled out Luke's sword.

I could see her expression immediately change as soon as she saw the sword. Even Nico and Chiron were surprised, maybe even shocked.

"That's not possible. That sword was destroyed. It shouldn't exist," said Chiron, as he reached for the sword in my hands. I handed the sword and its sheath to him as he carefully placed the sword back in the sheath.

"What's going on here, Percy?" asked Nico. Everyone could feel the awkward tension and dread in the room.

I explained everything that happened the best I could. I told them about Hermes, the letter, and what the letter said. I also told Nico about what had happened when I entered the camp earlier today. The room was quiet and everyone's faces were pale, with Nico's face paler than usual. Lots of unexplained things were happening around us, and we needed to figure them out fast. As we lay in silence, we could hear roars and screams from outside.

We all ran outside to see a fire burning outside the perimeter of the camp. Immediately, I pulled out my sword and ran in that direction. When things like fire happen this close to the camp, it's generally monsters. And if there were monsters, there's a chance that there were demigods fighting for their lives outside. As I ran outside the perimeter of the camp into the thickening cloud of smoke and rising heat, my watch immediately morphed into an armour around my upper body. Monsters.

As I walked to the source, I could hear the grunts and cries of various people. The voices were familiar. I looked around to see a tiger running around. The tiger looked at me, waited for a while, and suddenly transformed into a human.

"Frank!" I exclaimed, surprised and overjoyed to see him.

"Percy!" he shouted back as he jogged to hug me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.

"Questions later, let's help out the others," he said as he guided me into the forest.

There were these weird-looking creatures snarling at someone. They looked like feral dogs, but they had this long, thick hair, kind of like that of a lion on their heads, and they had these iron hooves like those of deer for feet.

"Crocottas," said Frank, gripping his weapon tighter. "They are hyena-like creatures, very deadly. Can bite your body into two and swallow you whole in two gulps. "

"Dangerous, got it," I replied, as I prepared to attack them.

Suddenly, I saw a huge thunderbolt strike through three of those, turning them to dust instantly. On the other hand, I saw this huge wave of fire that burned through the rest of those dogs and destroyed all those monsters. As I tried to glance through all the commotion, I saw a familiar blond-haired face slowly come down onto the ground. On the other hand, there was another familiar scrawny face with grease twins grinning like a kid with a new toy in his hands.

"Jason, Leo, " I yelled as I ran up to them and hugged them tightly.

"Careful Percy, you'll break me," replied Leo.

"It's good to see you guys here," I said, as I looked at both of them.

Frank said, "By the way, Hazel and Calypso are here too," as he walked with the two of them, Hazel's hand in his palm and Calypso walking towards Leo.

I awkwardly waved at them and turned towards Leo as I began to scold him, "You can't just recklessly use your fire in a forest, you can burn things down."

"Sorry Percy, things were getting tough," he replied.

I glanced at the small stream of water running down nearby and pulled the water out of the stream to put out any fire that caught in the forest.

"Let's take this meet and greet into the camp," said Jason.

We all went into the camp. Jason and Frank accompanied me to the big house while the others left the cabin. Annabeth scolded me for running at the fire blindly. Calypso went to check on Rachel, trying to see if she could help her somehow. Leo followed her. Frank explained that Chiron had told them about the situation. He told us how things were a little tough at Camp Jupiter too. He told us that Reyna couldn't come as she was dealing with the stuff happening back at Camp Jupiter. Apparently, it was more political nonsense regarding the governing matters of New Rome than monsters or unexplained sicknesses.

Suddenly, Leo had come in, running and gasping for air. He bent down, trying to catch his breath, and blurted out, "Rachel's awake."

We immediately rushed towards the Apollo cabin, where Rachel was waiting. For some reason, they didn't transfer her to the infirmary at the Big House. It didn't take us too long to reach the cabin. As I entered the cabin, suddenly, everything stopped around me. Literally everything. It was the same as earlier, like time had stopped again. I was able to move this time around, though. As I looked around, I saw someone standing by the head of Rachel's bed.

Wait. This was not possible. He should be dead. How am I seeing him?

"Hey Percy," he said, with a smile on his face.

"Charles Beckendorf!" I exclaimed in surprise.