𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩

Chapter V I I

7
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Getting A New Member

Ever come home and found your room messed up? Like some helpful person (hi, Mom) has tried to "clean" it, and suddenly you can't find anything? And even if nothing is missing, you get that creepy feeling like somebody's been looking through your private stuff and dusting everything with lemon furniture polish?

That's kind of the way Cyrus felt seeing Camp Half-Blood again.

On the surface, things didn't look all that different. The Big House was still there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered around the valley-the amphitheater, the combat arena, the dining pavilion overlooking Long Island Sound. And nestled between the woods and the creek were the same cabins-a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing a different Olympian god.

But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong. Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counselors and satyrs were stockpiling weapons in the tool shed. Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like ugly scars.

Somebody had messed with Cyrus's favorite place in the world, and he was not... well, a happy camper.

As they made their way to the Big House, Cyrus recognized a lot of kids from last summer. Nobody stopped to talk. Nobody said, "Welcome back." Some did double takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried on with their duties-running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school. And believe me, Cyrus knew. He'd been kicked out of a couple.

None of that mattered to Tyson. He was absolutely fascinated by everything he saw. "Whasthat!" he
gasped.

"The stables for pegasi," Cyrus said. "The winged horses."

"Whasthat!"

"Um... those are the toilets," Percy blinked.

"Whasthat!"

"The cabins for the campers. If they don't know who your Olympian parent is, they put you in the Hermes cabin-that brown one over there-until you're determined. Then, once they know, they put you in your dad or mom's group."

He looked at Percy in awe. "You ... have a cabin?"

"Number three." Percy pointed to a low gray building made of sea stone.

"You live with friends in the cabin?"

"No. No, just me and Cy." Neither of the Jacksons did feel like explaining. The embarrassing truth: they were the only ones who stayed in that cabin because they weren't supposed to be alive. The "Big Three" gods-Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades-had made a pact after World War II not to have any more children with mortals. They were more powerful than regular half-bloods-well, besides the occasional case of Persephone children, like (y/n), who was actually a part of his mother's essence. They were too unpredictable. When they got mad they tended to cause problems... like World War II, for instance. The "Big Three" pact had only been broken twice-once when Zeus sired Thalia, once when Poseidon sired Percy. Cyrus had for a mere hour and a half thought that he was one of those, before Neptune broke the news that he wasn't even supposed to be in Camp Half-Blood, around Greeks. None of them should've been born, or standing where they should-dead in the roots of a pine tree, alive and breathing after being claimed by Poseidon, or in Greek grounds.