The Unusual Half-Blood

Chapter 1: A Ghost from the past

Annabeth and I stepped out of the shadow portal, at the camp's main entrance.

It was around 3 in the afternoon.

Despite being in pain, she was now wearing her signature 'mildly annoyed' look, though I'm not sure if it was due to the after-effects of shadow travel or the fact that I was carrying an unconscious cyclops on my back..........or both.

For some reason, she was really against the idea of bringing him along, even after he supposedly saved her life. I wonder why.......

As we passed the entrance and into the camp, I could see campers moving around in groups, carrying weapons and other supplies.

Most of them were geared up for battle.

I ran into a couple of senior campers from Ares and Apollo cabin, who patted me on the shoulder, saying 'Good work' as they passed by.

A few others waved at me and called out from a distance, as they went about doing their assigned chores.

Despite their welcoming smiles, I could see a small tint of anxiety in their eyes.

Everyone was on edge.

"The atmosphere feels tense........" Annabeth noticed.

"Yeah, we've had around 15-16 attacks this month, ever since the barrier started malfunctioning. Giants, Arae, dracaenas, Cerastes, all sorts of creatures. As a result, I divided our forces into two major groups- one to defend the camp's borders, and the other to actively eliminate any monster that ventures within 7 square kilometers of the camp."

This was also the main reason why I've been busy for the last 2 weeks.

Given my exceptional speed, I could cover a lot more ground than the others. So, I've been wiping out all monster nests and colonies within 1000 square km- a land area that goes way outside New York- to be on the safer side.

Judging from the diversity of the monsters, it was safe to assume that these were coordinated assaults and not some random events.

I'm sure Annabeth already had a feeling as to who was behind them and the poisoning of Thalia's tree.

According to Chiron's assessment, the tree has been poisoned for a while...... a year at least. Due to its abundant godly magic, it fought back the poison for a long time. But now, it seems to be at its limits.

It's possible that Luke did it last year when I deliberately turned a blind eye to his escape.

There were multiple other scenarios and speculations in my head too- ones that I had been discussing with Chiron for a while-but I decided to keep all that from Annabeth for the time being.

"Hey, Keith!" someone called out.

The Stoll brothers, from the Hermes cabin, approached us with their hands stacked with a pile of posters.

Like most of the other children of Hermes, they had elfish features, upturned eyebrows, and mischievous gleaming eyes.