Syrinx.

2.

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The Stoll Brothers.

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“Yo Conner dude, wait up!”

Conner Stoll stopped and waited as his older brother Travis caught up to him. The war had taken it's toll on them both. Travis's smile was a little more forced, and his eyes a little more shadowed. They'd lost too many of their brothers and sisters to the war. The entire Camp had suffered, entering a period of mourning last year that they'd slowly broken out of.

They were rebuilding. Moving on. They no longer burst into tears at the name of a fallen comrade, but a deep ache would fill them.

But the nightmares persisted for Conner. Visions of people dying, the light going out of their eyes. He'd seen too many. They'd be with him forever now.

Travis had gotten it easy during the war. He had been one of the behind the scene workers, pairing up with the Athena cabin to plan. Connor had been the leader of those plans, the one who put it all into action.

But it was over now. They'd won. Percy Jackson had prevailed. Annabeth Chase was back to rebuilding Olympus. Frank Zhang was going back and forth between the camps, resolving issues and remaining praetor. Hazel traveled with him most of the time.

Leo Valdez was currently petitioning to get the mystical Calypso off of her island. Piper was turning the campers view of Aphrodite's children upside down, and Jason Grace had become a permanent fixture at camp.

And the Stoll brothers were here, at Camp Half-Blood. Like always.

Conner didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. He knew he wanted to find someone and settle down, but at the moment the only half decent girls were from the Athena cabin, and they would rather talk about algebra than romance.

Not that Conner didn't appreciate a smart girl though. Girls with brains were hot. But he couldn't see himself with anyone at camp.

He wanted what Travis had.

Travis had his Katie. Katie was an angel, a saint according to Travis. Travis was talking about moving in with her, and Conner couldn't help but feel left behind. He and his brother had always been close, but after the way had ended, they had slowly grown apart.

He wanted something to happen. Anything really. Anything to keep his mind of the nightmares that plagued him nightly. Travis had tried talking to him the first few times that Connor had woken up screaming, but Connor refused to listen to him. He was on the bottom bunk, so there was no way that Travis couldn't hear him.

Eventually Travis had given up, instead moving to the bunk in the back of the mainly empty Hermes cabin. So many of their brothers and sisters had been lost, and several had been pulled out of camp by their parents or guardians. And so the normally rambunctious cabin was now one of the quietest.

Connor walked silently with Travis. He was glad that Travis didn't try to talk to him, he wanted to be alone. But with a brother that was almost as close as a twin, he didn't get to be alone much.

It was lunch time. The brothers headed to the dining pavilion, as the rest of the campers did the same.

Connor loaded his plate down with pizza and chips. Who needed nutrition? And then, as was his custom, he tossed a pack of peanut M&M's into the fire, murmuring, “Hermes.”

It felt almost like a joke to be sacrificing to his father, when they'd already sacrificed so much. He hadn't seen his father in nearly two years, if you didn't count a brief glimpse last year when his father had been delivering a package to Chiron.