Son Of Darkness

Chapter-3

It seemed as though every monster imaginable attacked their ship on their way back to New York. Ranging from rogue harpies to a large kraken.

By the time they arrived, they were all injured in some way and exhausted.

The Argo II was pretty worse for wear too. Leo swore that he and his siblings would fix it up in no time once they arrived back at camp. But at this rate, Annabeth wasn't even sure if the ship would make it that far.

The last stretch to the Camp the Argo II was forced to take to the water as the controls had been completely destroyed in the last attack by wild venti.

In the long run, this was better. It allowed them to have a less dramatic entrance to the camp so that they didn't scare the campers.

The crew got off of the boat as quickly as they could, relieved to be on land again.

They were immediately greeted by a welcoming party of greek campers so large it looked like the entire camp had come to gawk at them.

The nature of their quest had not been revealed to the campers yet because Chiron thought that it might cause them to begin to panic. So nobody knew why the four Greek campers had suddenly disappeared.

When Annabeth came ashore, she was completely focused on the quest, totally ignoring the questions that campers all around her asked as she led the rest of the seven over to the big house to confer with Chiron.

When they arrived in the meeting room, a meeting with all of the head counsellors was already being held.

Everybody looked up from what looked to be an intense discussion when they walked in.

"Good. You're all already here. We can get started right away".

Annabeth knew why they were all gathered already, and it wasn't because they were waiting for them to arrive. There was a board laid out on the ping-pong table that served as their official meeting table, and they seemed to be discussing war strategies when they walked in. But Annabeth ignored this. They would change all of that anyway.

Greeting Chiron with a civilised nod of the head, Annabeth sat down at the head of the table to face the inevitable bombardment of questions.

Surprisingly, Clarisse was the only one to say anything at first.

"What are you doing here?".

"What? Not happy to see us?". Leo, ever the jokester, tried to lighten the atmosphere in the room, but it didn't work as Clarisse turned and glared at him before continuing.

"You abandon us when we need you most and now you're just back. A day before a major war and you have the nerve to show your face here".

Annabeth could see her anger growing, and did her best to diffuse it. Although she was seriously confused.

"Wait, what. What are you talking about? We didn't abandon you. We were on a quest!".

"Yeah, so Chiron keeps telling us. But let me ask you this… a quest doing what? There wasn't even a prophecy". The face off seemed to be between Clarisse and Annabeth now. Nobody else, including Chiron said anything. Instead choosing to just sit back and watch the two talk.