Chapter 1- Trouble at Camp Half-Blood
It was a normal day at camp. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the satyrs chased the nymphs through the strawberry fields and the climbing wall had been set to lava mode. It was lunchtime now and Piper and the rest of the Aphrodite cabin were filing out of the arts and crafts cabin after creating several pieces of makeshift jewellery and staying away from the muddy clay because it might damage their perfect skin. Piper, of course, had not minded the clay in the slightest but the moment she had laid hands on it her siblings had demanded they return to their cabin after the lesson to 'cleanse her'. She had no idea what that meant, but if they thought for one second that they were going to get in the shower with her then she would scalp them with Katoptris.
Just as they were about to walk up the path to the cabin area, Piper's boyfriend Jason dropped out of the sky in front of them. Several of Piper's half-sisters squealed.
"Hey, Pipes." He greeted with a warm smile. "How was arts and crafts?"
"Messy." She replied, holding up her clay covered hands. "On our way to the cabin to clean up before lunch."
"We're going to cleanse her." Drew spoke up, having become much more agreeable since the war.
Jason frowned. "Cleanse her? What does that mean?"
"Don't ask." Piper grumbled eager to avoid the potentially lethal fate that awaited her in the Aphrodite cabin. "Let's go and talk somewhere else."
They separated from the other children of Aphrodite and walked down to the canoe lake. A nymph crossed their path with a particularly young and brisk satyr following her. The nymph let him get within a foot of her and vanished in a spattering of flower petals, leaving the poor goat to dive headfirst into a boulder on the side of the path. He went limp on the floor.
"Is he okay?" Piper asked worriedly. She'd never seen a nymph attempt to kill a satyr like that before.
"He'll be fine." Jason said, continuing forward as though nothing had happened. "That fawns been following the nymphs around here for weeks all day and night. They can't even sleep if he's around because he keeps bothering them. Mr D's threatening to kick him out."
"Oh," Said Piper. "I didn't know Mr D cared enough to take action against a satyr."
"Only when the nymphs are in danger," Jason smirked. "That's how he ended up here in the first place."
They continued down the path through the forested area until they arrived at the canoe lake. The bright sun had turned the water a deep blue that was so clear you could see right down to the sand beneath it. Several water nymphs were playing in the centre of the lake and splashing each other with merry glee and giddy laughs. Jason led her around the beach towards the wooden pier where the boats were tied together and lashed to poles to stop them from floating away. At the very end of the pier, where Piper herself had once conversed with the water nymphs to discuss transportation to Camp Jupiter, sat a black haired boy in an orange camp T-shirt and new jeans. Percy Jackson.
Piper and Jason shared a look.
"How's it going, Percy?" Piper asked whilst lacing her voice with charmspeak. These days Percy held his emotions so close to his chest that the toilets could explode and no-one would have spoken to him yet. You couldn't even leave him alone with his thoughts anymore.
"Thinking about her," Percy mumbled, staring into the water. "It happened two months ago today."
Beside her, Jason shifted uncomfortably. Percy was talking about Annabeth and whenever that happened some not-so-natural disaster would occur in camp. Last time it had been a minor earthquake near the climbing wall which sent lava spewing everywhere and almost killed the campers who were on it at the time. Fortunately, no-one had been permanently wounded but there had been an undertone of fear and caution in people's eyes whenever the saw Percy after that. Piper had heard from Annabeth before her death that Percy's darker abilities had been brought out in Tartarus and the possibility of his girlfriend dieing. Now Annabeth really had died and Percy was getting worse and worse every day which meant Piper had to put on the charmspeak and find out how to deal with his problems before something irreversible happened and Percy was sent for trial in the Roman senate. Many centurions, aside from Hazel, had threatened to bring him in for quarantine if he didn't pick himself up soon but two months was hardly enough time to heal a broken heart. Piper had to find a way to stop Percy from destroying camp and get over Annabeth's death all whilst dealing with her own sorrow at the death of her best friend.
"I know, Percy." Piper said softly. "We all miss her."
"More than anything," Jason agreed. "But maybe dwelling on the past is keeping you in the past too. You should remember Annabeth with love and affection, not spend the rest of your life destroying the plumbing. Leo's threatening to strike."
That had been a few weeks ago. Percy had seen something that reminded him of his deceased girlfriend and torn apart the pipes beneath Camp Half-Blood which the Hephaestus Cabin spent twelve days repairing. Leo had brandished his spanner like a weapon and furiously berated Percy, calling him a bunch of names Piper had never even heard of before and threatening to have Calypso smack the son of Poseidon if he didn't pick up his game. It had been very tense between the two of them since Leo had brought Calypso to camp for a pit-stop and Percy, now a bachelor, had been looking at her in a way that Leo claimed was 'not appropriate'. In reality, Percy had been remembering how he had turned Calypso down for Annabeth and felt saddened by her death but Leo did not know that. No-one had spent this much time moping when Leo was dead.
"I'm-… I'm sorry," Percy wheezed, dropping his head into his hands. "I can't stop thinking about it. The war was over, we'd won, and then…"
Piper knew what he was talking about. It had been about four days after Gaia and the giants had been destroyed. The Romans had just departed from the borders of Camp Half-Blood and the campers had gone to bed for the night. All was quiet and peaceful and the harpies were on patrol. Then, with no warning, there had been a massive explosion outside. Piper had run outside in nothing but her PJs to find the Athena Cabin ablaze. Orange flames licked the roof and smoke soared into the sky. Its armoury had been blown across the courtyard between the cabins and the glass had melted. Everywhere campers where screaming and running about and attempting to fight the fire with limited success. Percy himself had come racing out of his cabin, causing it to rain and used his abilities to cover the cabin in water but the flames soared even higher.
Several hours later, when the cabin had been reduced to a black husk of burn wood and scorched earth, they discovered the remnants of a powerful bomb beneath one of the bunks that had mixed Greek fire with propane and magic to create an unstoppable blaze that killed everyone inside and left no bodies to bury. The Romans had come hurriedly back over the border once they received word and searches for survivors were conducted.
No-one made it.
Later, when the council meetings between heads of the remaining cabins had been held, it was not difficult for them to come up with a host of reasons for why such a brutal attack would be carried out. It could have been disgruntled monsters seeking revenge for the recovery of the Athena Parthenos (but why did they spare Reyna?) or it could have been a Roman bomb planted during a stealth attack that was forgotten to be deactivated. That had been dismissed as well. Eventually, they all realised that in order to attack a powerful force you needed to outwit their strategists. The children of Athena were the best strategists that both demi-god camps had and upon conclusion of the meeting soldiers were sent out to every nook and cranny of Camp Half-Blood to try and find those responsible or any other traps that had been placed. To Piper's despair, they had found nothing.
The worst news, even worse than the attack itself, was the announcement of Annabeth's death. Nico Di Angelo had been able to sense the deaths of all those within the cabin and could personally guarantee that Annabeth had perished. Hazel, through streams of tears, also confirmed this as she had felt it on the way back to Camp Jupiter. Percy had been devastated by the news as he had previously searched all night for Annabeth and since he had been told of her death he had never been the same.
Piper intended to help fix him as best she could.
"What do you say to lunch, Aqua man?" Jason asked. "You'll feel better with a full stomach and Tyson's coming over today."
Percy lifted his face out of his hands at the mention of his brother. Tyson had been a real comfort to him since the murder of the Athenians.
"Okay," He said, hauling himself up to his feet. "Okay. Let's um… let's eat." He tried for a smile but didn't quite manage it. At least his mood was improving.
Piper washed her hands off in the lake and followed the two boys back up the path towards the dining pavilion. The satyr who had crashed his head into a rock was nowhere to be seen and Piper couldn't help but wonder if he'd woken up himself or been dragged away by the harpies for dinner. That was highly unlikely since the harpies weren't awake in daylight hours and Piper suspected that his fellow satyrs had simply taken pity on him and got him out of the sun. Even if it was September this was New York and the temperature didn't really drop till October. The only difference from summer was that most of the other campers had gone home for the school year and it was a lot less crowded at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Chiron greeted them as they entered the pavilion.
"Jason, good to see you. How are the altars going?"
"Good." Jason said. "We've done shrines for Janus, Hecate, Hebe, Kympoleia, Triton…"
"Yes, yes," Mr D interrupted, sloshing his diet coke around in the can. "You've been building shrines for the traitorous minor gods. Good job. Now sit down and leave me alone."
Piper frowned. Not every minor god Jason had listed had played a part in the Second Giant War and most of them were now completely loyal to the Olympians. This must have been about that other problem that her mother had mentioned. Many of the half-bloods from both camps who had been visited by their parents were aware that there was a new problem the Olympians were refusing to speak about and many thought it was about the attack on the Athena Cabin in July. Piper couldn't say for certain what it was they were in a fuss about but she knew it couldn't have been that serious if Hera was not messing with her life and ordering some deadly quest to stop it. Then again, Athena had seemed pretty mad on their last visit to Olympus and everyone was complaining about minor gods so it must have had something to do with them. It seemed that there would never be a stable relationship between the Olympians and their subjects.
"Well, that's interesting," Said Chiron, trying not to give Mr D his most suspicious look. "Take your seats at your tables and we'll get started."
Jason and Percy bustled off to sit at their lonely tables and Piper had to squeeze into a space at the head of the Aphrodite table. Most of her siblings had opted to stay for the school year as there were now so many monsters running around New York that it was taking a lot of time and effort for the more combat ready demi-gods (the Ares cabin) to get rid of them. Clarisse had been spending entire weeks out on the streets with her siblings as they hunted down every pack of monsters they could find.
Once everyone was settled, Chiron stepped forward and raised his goblet.
"To the Gods!" He announced.
"To the Gods!" The campers repeated as their meals appeared before them and each table rose to scrape the best pieces into the hearth for their godly parents. Piper threw in almost half of her salad and mentally pleaded for her mother's guidance. If she couldn't even hold a conversation with Percy about his feelings, how was she supposed to help him move past them? It all seemed hopeless.
Piper continued to ponder her dilemma all the way through lunch. It was like a nagging itch she couldn't get rid of. She'd spent many hours coming up with speeches to convince Percy to move forward with his life and was finding her own caught up in his problems. This was no way to help Percy, or herself, deal with Annabeth's death and the only option left from this point was a policy the children of Aphrodite liked to call 'tough love'. You had to tell the person in mourning that they were going nowhere through their sadness and had to pick themselves up if they wanted to move on in life but it had always been a last resort for Piper. She couldn't imagine having to tell one of her friends that they had to move past a stage of grief. That would be just about the hardest thing she'd ever done.
Just as lunch was ending and the dishes were whisked away by harpies, a son of Ares decked in full battle armour came running into the pavilion.
"Dracaenae!" He announced. "Two hundred Dracaenae just outside our border! Clarisse says to bring artillery!"
The campers began scrambling about, racing out of the pavilion in search of armour or unsheathing weapons and making straight for Thalia's Pine Tree without a moment's hesitation. Piper leapt to her feet and forded her way through the crowd towards Jason amidst Chiron's shouts of "Campers to battle positions! Swords at the ready!" and managed to grab his hand and hold onto him in the ensuing chaos. There had never been such a thing as two hundred monsters on their doorstep, only when Gaia attacked, and now demi-gods were searching for vials of Greek fire, celestial bronze weaponry and drawing up plans for battle as they made their way towards the enemy upon their doorstep.
"We've got to get out there." Jason said and Piper nodded her agreement. It was high time these monsters learned to respect Camp Half-Blood.
Together, they flew into the air and darted towards the magical borders where the true extent of the problem met Piper's eye. A lot more than two hundred Dracaenae where at the border now and there were other figures with them. Tall humanoids in black cloaks wielding stygian iron blades waded through the crowd, slashing and hacking at every demi-god that crossed their path. Piper had never seen anything like it.
"Land down there!" She called into her boyfriend's ear and pointed at a spot near the Golden Fleece where Peleus the Dragon was roaring and breathing fire into the oncoming crowd of monsters.
They hit the ground running and Piper, drawing her Boread sword, charged into the Dracaenae and began to freeze, shatter and stab every monster she could get close to. The cloaked figures were in the thick of the crowd, wading their way towards one spot as a well-oiled machine, programmed specifically for killing half-bloods. Piper slashed her sword across the bodies of five Dracaenae at once and watched with mild satisfaction as their bodies froze mid-scream and tumbled into a pile of frost on the grassy floor. Then, as the other campers from the dining pavilion came charging across the border to face their enemies, she saw something that made her blood curl and face go white.
There, in the middle of the group of cloaked shadows, stood Percy.
He was fighting much better than he usually did, Piper realised immediately. It was almost as good as his style before he'd gone dark and desperate which was still a lot better than the fighting of anyone else at camp. But even as Piper watched Percy return to his former glory, it all began to fall apart. One of the figures managed to find an opening in Percy's defence and slammed the boy in the side of the head so hard that Piper could hear the dull thud from the other side of the battle field. She tried to wade through the battle to help him but was deterred when more and more Dracaenae began to cross her path until an impenetrable wall of snake legged monsters lay between the demi-gods of Camp Half-Blood and Perseus Jackson.
Beside her, Jason attempted to break through them with his winds but more took the places of those who were blasted away and the campers found themselves being steadily forced back over the border. Somewhere to her right, Nico Di Angelo had raised a platoon of skeleton warriors that were beating down every snake lady that dared come near them and a small path began to form in the monsters ranks. Piper raced over with adrenaline increasing her speed but as she looked up to check on Percy, and make sure that he was right where she could get to him, she saw his unconscious form hoisted over the shoulder of a hooded man as the group turned and fled the battlefield. Piper gave one last shout for Jason before something large and blunt slammed into her side and the world went black.
