Struck by Lightning

XXVII

The rising sun was barely visible behind the smoke that billowed from the wreckage of still faintly burning buildings. Every breath Percy took was thick with the taste and smell of fire and ruin. Everywhere he looked was evidence of what had happened.

Camp Half-Blood, his home away from home, was no more.

Barely anything in the camp still stood. The Big House, which had been one of the more prominent landmarks, was little more than a burnt-out husk of a building, with few of its wooden beams still standing in the midst of its collapsed state. All of the strawberry fields that the children of Demeter had painstakingly cultivated over successive generations of campers were little more than trampled fields, the plants shredded and uprooted. Most of the cabins were damaged in some way, and the ones that weren't were filled to overcapacity by the influx of people needing a roof over their heads in such tumultuous and dangerous times.

"This is bad," Thalia uttered, her voice low and firm in the face of such wanton destruction.

Percy clenched his fists as he suppressed his anger and frustration. There was little he could do here – Kronos and his fellow Titans had planned their attack too well. Both Olympus and Camp Half-Blood lay in ruins, with the latter taking far more damage due to the magnitude of the battle that had taken place. The bulk of the Titans' forces had assaulted the demigod camp, overwhelming the defenders and necessitating the arrival of the Olympians to even the odds. Even so, the collateral damage was too high.

And Percy had been unable to do anything to stop it. He hadn't been able to entirely defend Olympus, and he did nothing for Camp Half-Blood as it was torn apart by forces and powers far greater than its host of demigod fighters. They had rushed over to the camp as quickly as they could after leaving Olympus in Hestia's hands, but it had still been too late. The battle was over and all that was left was the damage that had been inflicted to the people that had once called the place their home. The only satisfaction Percy had was that Kronos had been stopped once and for all, but as he stood in the middle of what was once a thriving bastion for demigods, even that was of little satisfaction to him.

Hearing his shoes crunch on the gravel and debris that littered the paths, Percy made his way over to his cabin – the cabin of Poseidon. The door was barely hanging on, with one of its two hinges knocked loose from the doorframe, and there was the trunk of a collapsed tree – possibly thrown, judging by the fact that there weren't any trees that size that close to the cabin – embedded in the stone of the cabin's exterior, breaking through the ceiling and part of a wall.

Brushing one hand against the wooden door pockmarked with damage, Percy slowly walked into the place he had he had made his own over the past few summers, taking in its current state. The inside of the cabin was trashed and ruined. His bed was broken in half, the drawers – many of which were empty – in pieces, and his shelves, some of which carried mementos of the past, lay on the floor, their contents scattered. The fountain that Poseidon had added as a gift was cracked in half, the water from it leaking onto the floor of the cabin in a puddle. Likewise, Tyson's painstakingly handcrafted decorations were knocked off from where he had put them, many dented and dinged as they lay on the floor. He knelt as he examined some of things on the floor, absentmindedly picking up some of the pieces of his belongings before tossing them away again.

Percy heard a footstep on breaking wood behind him as Thalia stepped in to view the damage with him. They surveyed the damage in silence.

Percy stood up. "It could've been worse." He turned to look out of the broken windows of the cabin that overlooked the lake. "There are cabins that are completely gone. At least I have something to repair here." He fell silent, looking over the calm lake, its small ripples and movements at odds with the immense destruction on land.