Trials of Apollo

🎶Another Terrible Day, At Camp Half-blood Where Everything's the Worst🎶

I thought after Gaea, I'd finally have peace. I only had two more summers to go, then I could go to New Rome. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to try to imagine a future for myself. Somehow, I was still alive. Maybe, I'd stay alive long enough to have a future. Of course, something had to go wrong.

After we defeated Gaea, Apollo stopped communicating with us. At first, I didn't think much of it. I was used to my absentee father being, well, absent. Plus, we had–a history–stated simply. Being completely ignored by Apollo was by far not the worst thing he'd ever done to me. But soon my siblings confessed that he was silent to them too. He stopped appearing in dreams and none of our sacrifices at mealtimes burned with the familiar calming scent.

Nicola grew really worried; Will did too but he did his best not to show it. I, on the other hand, was just mad.

As the summer drew to an end and the winter rolled along, communications shut down completely. Any single electronic device stopped working in demigod hands. Iris messages shut down and wouldn't work either. We were completely shut out from the outside world. Satyrs were not reporting back to camp, and we couldn't communicate with Camp Jupiter.

I tried to pretend that everything would go back to normal. Rachel would come to camp and give some prophetic wisdom and say everything was okay. The communication issues were definitely not related to my father sucking. Everything would be fine...right?

WRONG

Rachel never arrived too camp, and her cave remained empty. Without Rachel to make sense of what was going on, it was becoming harder for everyone to pretend like everything was okay. You could see it on the faces of the older campers. The ones who have already lost so much; the ones who barely had anything left to lose. What more did the Fates want to take from us?

The desperate attempt for a sense of normalcy completely crumbled when Cecil went missing.

It was a random Tuesday, and I was teaching a first aid lesson to the youngest group of campers. We were supposed to be inside the infirmary, but cooping up ten ADHD gremlin kids in a small building with a ton of sharp objects was not the best idea. Will kicked us out fifteen minutes in when I let the kids practice bandaging each other.

I took the kids right outside and continued on the sidewalk. A few minutes later, Chiron blew the conch horn three times.

"It's not lunch time yet. Right?" Said Harley, he seemed disappointed by the fact that it wasn't lunch time. Harley was usually the person who needed first aid, he wasn't too excited to learn how to make a splint.

"No, it's not. You guys stay here, okay? Mel, you're in charge," I said, looking at my thirteen-year-old sister and trying not to panic. Three horn blasts meant there was an emergency of some sort. At camp, it could be anything. I picked up my enchanted first aid hip pack which was on the floor and ran over towards the dining pavilion. Will followed behind me, hearing the conch horn blasts from inside the infirmary.

A few of the older campers had already made their way to the pavilion. I spotted Nicola, Will and I joined him.

"What's going on?" I asked, looking up at Chiron. He was standing at the front of the pavilion. Next to him was Conner, who looked worried and pale.

"Heroes," called Chiron. "Conner has informed me that Cecil has gone missing. This morning, he wasn't in his cabin. We thought he'd be back by now but he's not. Each cabin will be split and cover different ground."

Everyone remained silent as the news crashed over us. Next to me, Will's freckled face paled as a look of panic flooded his face. Then, as I had seen him do whenever tending to a camper in critical condition, he masked his fear with a neutral expression. An expression that wouldn't escalate the situation; an expression that didn't show the crushing weight of fear within.