Blood In the Water| The Sea of Monsters Male Reader Insert

1. I Have A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My first mistake was thinking that this year would be even a little bit calmer than the last.

My second mistake was probably acknowledging that and then ignoring it.

Typical me stuff, I guess.

See, I was expecting a lot this year. Maybe fight a couple monsters, deal with some traitors, ya know, the usual stuff you do at camp.

I wasn't expecting to wake up to a panic across the valley.

I trudged out of Cabin Eleven with my shirt halfway on and a goal in mind: fuck shit up. Much to my surprise, however, no enemies were here.

I fixed my shirt and began to follow campers who ran up the hill towards camp borders to see what all the commotion was about.

"(Name)," Chiron called out from the front of the crowd. "Come forward."

That's not a good sign.

The group split down the middle for me out of respect for Chiron and I stepped through until I was standing next to him.

Now in front of everyone, I realized just what they were focusing on: Thalia's Pine.

See, the story behind it was that some girl called Thalia alongside my friends Annabeth and Grover and one other demigod who I won't name came to camp being chased by a large group of monsters like six years ago. They got cornered at the top of the hill (which I still don't understand, just go down the hill, right?), and Thalia, who was a daughter of Zeus, sacrificed herself to give her friends time to get to safety. As she was dying, instead of saving her or something dumb like that, Zeus turned her into a magical pine tree. Her spirit strengthened the magic borders around the camp and protected it from things like bloodthirsty monsters and door-to-door salesmen.

Gotta love when the gods make decisions, they're always either decent or hilariously stupid. Made for good entertainment.

"What's going on?" I asked the activities director.

He said nothing, only looking back towards Thalia's Pine. I followed his gaze and saw what he was looking at.

Three feet from the ground, there was a small puncture wound in the trunk oozing green sap. I looked up, noticing the once bright green pine needles had lost their luster and were beginning to turn yellow.

"Poison," I stated with a frown and then looked back over to Chiron. "When?"

"I don't know," he grimaced. "Is there anything that you can do?"

I recognize he might be asking me because of my actual magic, but I was still a little surprised.

I took a step closer to the trunk and kneeled down to take a closer look at the puncture hole. If this wasn't fixed, the borders around camp would fail and anything and anyone would be able to get inside.

"Nothing about the tree," I told him. "But I could probably strengthen the magic coming from it so that the barrier holds up for longer."

"How long do you need?"

"How long do I need?" I repeated with an eye roll that he couldn't see.

Oh yeah, I guess I wouldn't have been able to do something like this last year, but with a year of training and a bit of motivation, I'd become a lot more skilled in everything magic. I was no master, but I was pretty damn okay for someone who's only done this for a year.

I got good enough to specialize in something.

Let me put it like this, magic is incredibly diverse. You can create or cast a spell for any occasion if you're good enough at it.