Chapter 2
Annabeth's POV
"Annabeth. Annabeth? Earth to the 'Bethster?" I slowly opened my eyes and found myself staring at the ceiling of the big house.
"Are you okay?" Grover asked, staring at me intently. Even he had changed, after the war. He had seen satyrs and spirits die for a cause he had led them to, and he had made a vow to protect them for the rest of his semi-immortal life. This was one of the few visits he still managed to get in.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." I said, not looking at him directly, and trying to fall back asleep. Grover wasn't going to let me though.
They really closed today Annabeth. They closed Olympus, and people are saying that it's indefinite. I thought that they would work out whatever's been going on, but they won't even tell me what's going on." There was bitterness to Grover's tone that surprised me. Even with his new titles, his seat on the Council of Cloven Elders, he had never been a "cup half empty" type of person.
"I'm sure someone just forgot to sacrifice to them or something. Maybe it was Hera." I said happily "She always takes things personally." We laughed nervously for a second, before realizing there was something wrong. No clap of thunder, or gust of wind. No threatening sound affect of any kind.
"Yeah, that's bad." I said. Hera was especially finicky about being insulted, so we should have heard something.
A Half Hour Later
I woke up in the middle of the night to someone knocking on the door of the Athena cabin. I got out of bed, and opened the door. Ryan Barley, one of Apollo's latest, and youngest kids, was outside the door panting.
"Deryn… been claimed. Not… going away. Sword." He gasped. I was already out the door.
By the time I got to the big house, most of the counselors had been notified, and left. But the sign was still there.
It was glowing a deep, dark blue, with sea green dotted here and there, like the last rays of sunlight before the ocean gets too dark to see in.
The sign itself was an all to familiar sword flanked by rampant pegasi. Riptide was pointed tip-downward, with strange symbols rotating around it.
"Nice, huh? I designed it myself. I wanted to give a good impression of power without seeming too Zeus-like." I whirled around and saw the last person I had wanted to. "Percy?"
"Sorry, no time to explain." He said, as he picked up Deryn. "But we need to go before they kill you."
Then he grabbed me by the wrist, and ran out the door.
That's when the big house blew up.
