Changing the Future

Chapter 31

Summer was quickly approaching, which filled me with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

Chiron had called me a few weeks back, informing me that he was going to begin the summer session a little earlier than normal to get as many campers back to training as soon as possible. I agreed with him, promising that I'd come back as a trainer as soon as classes were out for the year.

Needless to say, as my life got more complicated with my demigod life, my friends noticed that I was pulling away. I could tell that they had gotten suspicious sometime around spring break, when I turned down a chance to spend a week in Rome in favor of staying on campus.

"Seriously, Andy?" Leah had asked, setting down the large almanac she was reading. "You'd rather stay here than visit Rome, you know, the place you've been dying to see for ages?"

"I'm too busy to go overseas at the moment," I had said evasively, never looking up from the new book I'd recently gotten.

"Doing what?" Joe had asked.

"Working in the lab."

"Let someone else take care of it," Pete had insisted. "Plus, the semester's almost over. Dr. A can't take up your free time and fail you because of it."

"Actually, he can, and he will," I said, placing a bookmark between the pages I'd left off on and tucking it away into my bag. "I've got to go."

I knew I had hurt them by not answering their questions, but they were prying into my life and worrying about me. That made the three of them some of the best friends I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, but right now, I really wished they would keep their distance.

The day that our finals and semester exams ended, I packed up my half of the room and left a note on my bed, explaining why I'd left so suddenly. Slinging my two duffel bags over my shoulders, I vanished into a shadow, landing inside cabin three back at Camp Half-Blood.

I sighed at the sight of the desolate cabin. A fine layer of dust covered all the beds and nightstands; Percy's bed was still messy from the time he'd spent here last December. I threw away some of the candy wrappers I found on the floor, promising myself that I'd clean up the rest later.

Before I left the cabin, I put on my armor, something I hadn't done in a year. Sure, I had managed to find time to train during the school year, but bringing armor was too much to keep hidden, so I trained without it.

I pulled my hair back into a messy bun and headed for the arena, where I was to train campers in swordsmanship for the foreseeable future. Luckily for me, the first class wouldn't start for another half hour, giving me more than enough time to warm up by myself.

While I hacked away at dummies, I kept track of the ground beneath my feet. Back at school, I'd been investigating on the Labyrinth, trying to find other entrances than the ones I already knew about but was unsuccessful in my inquiries. But I was certain about the fact that I shouldn't feel the earth moving like the world's largest snake, slithering side to side through miles of hard-packed dirt.

Now that I was back at camp, the feeling was much stronger, more like a beating heart rather than a slithering serpent. It was distracting, to say the least, and I had to consciously keep myself upright. No one else was affected like I was, but I guess that had something to do with my control over the earth. Not like Gaea, but more in the sense of the limited control that Hades, Demeter, and Poseidon had.

Training was a little...no, it was a massive train wreck. With so many new campers, many of whom had never held something more deadly than a steak knife in their lives, it was a pain to teach them the basics. One kid almost ended up stabbing himself in the chest, because he didn't know the difference between his blade and his hilt.