Chapter 1

Percy Hears From Grover

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the wind was gently breezing. I lay in the shallows at Camp Half-Blood making whirlpools by my feet and just gazing up at the sky. Annabeth was nearby, displaying her vast architectural skill by making a 3-story miniature mansion out of sand. I watched her as she patiently restored a part of the house that had been pulverized by the waves, her gray eyes concentrating hard. I sighed, and sat up. I loved the weather, and the fact that I was hanging out with Annabeth on an awesome day, but things were so BORING around recently. After Kronos had been defeated, there weren't a whole lot of things to do at Camp Half-Blood but train and train some more. Every once in a while there would be a report of a monster somewhere, and a couple of campers would be dispatched to subdue it, and no one raised a fuss. I half smiled, almost not believing that I was wishing for a fight. A couple of months ago, peace and quiet was as nonexistent as the dinosaurs. I stood, shaking sand and shells out of my dark brown hair. Time to do something fun.

I looked around for a stimulus for my imagination, and saw it. A faded red surfboard was propped against a rock several feet away. I grinned, sprinted to the board, and brought it back to the shoreline. Annabeth looked up to see what I was doing, and gave me a patronizing look.

"Percy, are you really…?"

But she never got to finish, because I jumped high into the air and dove into the sea, making a colossal splash and almost demolishing her sand castle. Annabeth sighed and wrung the water out of her blond hair.

I swam underwater out a ways, and then came to the surface. I bobbed at the top of the water thinking. I had never been taught to surf, and I didn't really know how. Then I laughed at myself for being silly.

Sons of Poseidon don't need to LEARN how to surf. Psh.

I quickly skyrocketed out of the water like the ocean threw me out, which is essentially what it did. I came down on the board, and stood on it, controlling the waves and using them to keep me balanced. Then I turned, and blasted forward like being shot out of a cannon. Lifting a hand, I pulled up a wall of water and went directly up it, corkscrewing in the air and coming back down the wave like a ramp. I was now going very fast, so I put one hand under my board and jumped, pulled the board out from under me, and dove back under water. I used the momentum to propel me back to shore, and once I was close enough, I blasted out of the water, sailed over Annabeth, and hit the sand rolling. I popped up and grinned, bowing to an imaginary audience. Annabeth rolled her eyes and sardonically clapped. Then she stopped, and her eyes widened as she pointed to behind me. I turned around, and saw that there was a rainbow behind me from the water I had sprayed.

"Iris message." she said. "Somebody wants to talk to you."

I fished in my pocket for a golden drachma, then tossed it into the rainbow. The rainbow shimmered, and Grover appeared.

"Grover!" I said. "Where have you been? I haven't seen you for weeks!!"

Grover was a satyr (half-man, half-goat) that had been one of my best friends for a really long time. He had been appointed by Pan to spread the word to the other satyrs to help rebuild the forests and wild areas of the world. Recently though, he had been missing in Washington somewhere. Grover had a worried look on his face, but he smiled when he saw me.

"I've been busy. When I got to Washington, I heard rumors that there was a sleeping boy in the woods that wouldn't wake up." Grover gnawed on an aluminum Dr Pepper can. "I went to see if it was true." He paused.

"Aaaand?" I said impatiently.

Grover frowned. "And it was. He was sleeping in the glade, peaceful as you please. And he wasn't dead, because he had a faint pulse, but he wouldn't wake up. He looked to be 11 years old. Well, I tried everything. Pushing, shoving, playing my pipes. He wouldn't get up." Grover looked decidedly nervous by this point. "So finally, I was going to walk away when I tripped over his arm. When I got up and turned around, his arm was bleeding a little. Then, his arm sank into the dirt like it was absorbed." I raised my eyebrows. Grover continued. "Then his arm came back up, fully healed. Percy? I think I found a son of Earth."

I froze. If Grover meant…

"Do you mean a son of Gaea, the Earth Mother?"

Grover nodded. "Yeah. I'm going to try to move him, but we need to get him to camp now. If I'm right, he's incredibly powerful."

I nodded. I had fought a son of Earth during the Kronos Crisis in Daedalus' labryinth. "I didn't even know Gaea could reproduce with mortals. The kid did bleed actual blood, right?"

Grover nodded. "Yes, blood. Not ichor." Ichor was the blood of the pureblooded gods.

I scratched my head. "Okay, thanks Grover. Try to move him somewhere else. If he wakes, don't tell him ANYTHING."

Grover snorted. "Of course not. See you Percy." Then the rainbow disappeared.

I turned to Annabeth.

"Chiron?" he asked.

Annabeth looked deep in thought. I noted that she looked a lot like her mother Athena. "Yeah. Chiron."