Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

(Volume I)...Prologue

A storm raged over Camp Half-Blood the night that Tyson left for the Cyclops Forges at Poseidon's court. Due to the Golden Fleece having healed Thalia's pine tree sufficiently, the storm passed over camp like normal. However, this knowledge did nothing to help the foreboding feeling that had placed itself in my chest. My predictions always had a knack for coming true, and as if I was one of the Three Fates myself, they were almost never pleasant. My predictions were never wrong, no matter how much I might want them to be.

Lightning danced in the sky above camp as I feel asleep, as if the sky was sharing my feelings as well. My dreams were just as restless as they have been for weeks now. Demigods' dreams were almost never just dreams, but visions not meant to be easily brushed off as some nightmares dream scape.

When I opened my eyes in the dream, I saw the same cliff that I saw a year ago when Annabeth, Grove, and I had snuck into the Underworld. It was the cliff that Luke's shoes tried to drag Grover down into. Tarturus waited down there, with monsters and creatures older than some of the gods themselves. I could hear a voice calling from down below, taunting me. Polybitues sits alone in his cave, fooling himself into believing that he has won a great battle, Kronos' sickening voice calling up to me, what stops you from being the same as him. And there it was, a source for my uneasiness. Something had felt off since we sent Clarrise back to camp with the Fleece, it seemed as if Luke let us go too easily. Now I know that's because he had.

My dream changed as I heard Kronos' acidic laugh. This time I was following my brother, Tyson down to Poseidon's court. On a deep blue throne, with coral decorating it, sat a man that somehow looked regal in a fisherman's clothing. As if noticing my presence, he looked me in the eyes and spoke the same two words that had been mailed to me days ago, "Brace yourself."

I woke up with a start.

There was a loud banging at my door. Though annoying, it could not yet be called persistent since the perpetrator of the noise let themselves into my cabin before I could even call out to them. Grover. The half goat was stuttering something about Annabeth and the hill. "She's lying there... just lying there..." was the most coherent sentence that the boy could manage to form. The look in his eyes wasn't that of grief or wordiness like I would have expected if Annabeth had been attacked while on guard duty last night, or if she had been killed. Instead there was an intense look of panic, wrongness, and above all, fear.

Something was off.

I ran outside, across the central yard with Grover following close behind me. Dawn was just breaking on what would have been another pleasant day at camp. The horn for breakfast had not yet rung, but still the whole camp was alive due to the event happening at Half-Blood Hill. The campers were stirring and coming out of their cabins, whispers following us as we ran to the hill. I couldn't help but to recall my dreams as we ran, some of the other campers joining us in some bizarre fashion of armor and pajamas. Kronos' strange proclamation and my sense of foreboding. I think I'm starting to understand where this is going, and I wasn't sure I liked it all that much.

A familiar clop of horse hooves rang in my eyes, and out of the side of my eye I saw Chiron galloping up beside us. His face was grim. The centaur grabbed me by my arm, hurriedly swung me up onto his back, his actions telling just how dire the situation was since this was something the man would normally never do.

We thundred to Half-Blood Hill. Chiron was mumbling something to himself, like a scientist just figuring out why the experiment had not quite gone the way that he had wanted. "Cure the titan lord," he whispered. "He's tricked us again, given himself another chance to control the prophecy."

I didn't have to ask him what he meant.

We came upon the top of the hill, everyone lifelessly moving out of our way, their faces all similarly struck like they had seen a ghost. We stopped at the base of the tree, where a strange girl was lying. Annabeth, still clad in her Greek armor, was kneeling next to the girl.