Heart Pierced - Kayla Knowles (1)

XLVII. Hope On The Horizon

(A/N: Back to Colton's POV for the remainder of this book! Also, rather ironic chapter title in a way given what is discussed here.)

Mid September 2009

Percy went back to NYC to continue his time in high school after this prophecy was done with. He hadn't been happy about having to come back out for another prophecy, to be honest. I didn't blame him one bit at all for the way he felt about this, I'll be real here. I totally did not blame him, despite our rivalry status.

To be perfectly honest here, all of us were kinda sick of all of these prophecies at the moment, no doubt about it. But hey, the fates seem to enjoy toying with us way too much currently — a trend that would unfortunately continue down the road until mostly after I had demolished the fucking asshole Roman emperors who had it out for my girlfriend's biological — if Apollo can even be called such due to not having DNA — godly parent and his kids, including my girlfriend — and also after Apollo had taken care of that double crossing snake bitch Python. In case you're wondering why I call a fiendish snake such as Python double crossing, you'll find out later on down the road. For now though, all we could do was just wait. For now, the Gods kept honoring their promises — though like with just about every fucking good thing that we had going up until after the third war in five years we had to fight, it wouldn't last too much longer unfortunately for all of us.

Thanks a fucking lot, Zeus.

In the meantime, however, Camp Half Blood for a lack of a better word — flourished. The day after the fight with Porphyrion, Travis and Connor — with Luke, Annabeth, Thalia, Malcolm Clarisse and Chris tagging along — took the entire Hermes Cabin down to the temple to start the process of collecting the valuable items that might be in there. Both Annabeth and Malcolm had created lists of exactly what certain groups of Hermes Cabin campers were going to be looking for, and where certain groups of items went. Needless to say, with Luke and Chris there to help supervise their siblings alongside Annabeth who was keeping things orderly with the help of Malcolm, things over this day and the next few days went off without a hitch.

I suppose I should tell you all the items I swiped for me and Kayla from the vault, because even though the Typhon Cabin did receive some items from the vault, these were more of decoration value than anything else. So without further ado, I'll get started here. Actually, I'll just describe the items that looked most valuable out of the ones I did take.

For Kayla, it was a bow. I know, I know.. it sounds stereotypical, but hear me out on this one. There's a thing we have here at Camp Half Blood where some people have magical weapons and items gifted to them by their godly parents, or such weapons are obtained by visiting Hephaestus' forge.. which reminds me, I never really found out if the god of the forge has his master forge now - since you know, the labyrinth was destroyed. But moving on, the thing about this bow was - it also was magical, somehow. Yes, it was a magical weapon despite being in a temple.. from Japan. It had an iridescent shimmer to it that flowed like waves in a rapid frequency across its hardwood limbs with what looked like bamboo in the middle of it, as well as with its "bamboo" backing too. Its string was what looked like a mixture of two materials woven together to provide a bowstring that would last longer - I wasn't sure of what they were actually made of, I'll be honest here.

For me, it was a scepter. Again, I don't know how exactly a scepter with a clearly Greek design ends up in a temple over thousands of miles away from Greece in a Japanese temple that then surfaces after years of being missing on Long Island, but this was exactly the case here as bewildering as it sounds. It was of celestial bronze infused with stygian iron, creating a swirling design of alternating bronze and dark iron rings that wove their way up the scepter. Like the Greek design, this was tipped by a metal ornament. However, the ornament used for this scepter.. was what for the most part looked like a miniature copy of my crown as the Monster King. It was quite remarkable to even look at, to be honest here.