Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

012, percy the skipper i'm

CHAPTER    TWELVE
PERSEUS JACKSON

₊࿐࿔✸⋆｡° ⚘༉ . ⊹

Lunch felt like a funeral party. Everybody ate. Finley drank copious amounts of wine. Nobody seemed particularly happy. The other campers kept glancing over at Percy like he was the corpse of honor.

Reyna made a brief speech wishing them luck. Octavian ripped open a Beanie Baby and pronounced grave omens and hard times ahead, but predicted the camp would be saved by an unexpected hero (whose initials were probably OCTAVIAN). Then the other campers went off to their afternoon classes—gladiator fighting, Latin lessons, paintball with ghosts, eagle training, and a dozen other activities that sounded better than a suicide quest. Percy followed Finley, Hazel, and Frank to the barracks to pack.

Percy didn't have much. He'd cleaned up his backpack from his trip south and had kept most of his Bargain Mart supplies.

He had a fresh pair of jeans and an extra purple T-shirt from the camp quartermaster, plus some nectar, ambrosia, snacks, a little mortal money, and campaigning supplies. At lunch, Reyna had handed him a scroll of introduction from the praetor and camp senate. Supposedly, any retired legionnaires they met on the trip would help them if shown the letter. He also kept his leather necklace with the beads, the two rings, and the probatio tablet, and of course he had Riptide in his pocket.

He folded his tattered orange T-shirt and left it on his bunk.

"I'll be back," he said. He felt pretty stupid talking to a T-shirt, but he was really thinking of Sylvie, and his old life. "I'm not leaving for good. But I have to help these guys. They took me in. They deserve to survive."

The T-shirt didn't answer, thankfully.

One of their roommates, Bobby, gave them a ride to the border of the valley on top of Hannibal the elephant. Finley groaned the whole time about the world spinning, but it really wasn't that bad. From the hilltops, Percy could see everything below. The Little Tiber snaked across golden pastures where the unicorns were grazing. The templed and forums of New Rome gleamed in the sunlight. On the Field of Mars, engineers were hard at work, pulling down the remains of last night's fort and setting up barricades for a game of death ball. A normal day for Camp Jupiter—but on the northern horizon, storm clouds were gathering. Shadows moved across the hills, and Percy imagined the face of Gaea getting closer and closer.

Work with me for the future, Reyna had said. I intend to save this camp.

Looking down at the valley, Percy understood why she cared so much. Even though he was new to Camp Jupiter, he felt a fierce desire to protect this place. A safe haven where demigods could build their lives—he wanted that to be part of his future. Maybe not the way Reyna imagined, but if he could share this place with Sylvie...

They got off the elephant, some more graciously than others. Finley fell off, then immediately bent over a bush and started hurling into it. Hazel, Frank, and Bobby let out noises of disgust, and only Percy seemed to be worried. He hesitantly walked forward to help her. The moment he was about to put a hand on her back—Finley snapped up and raised a pointed finger in the air.