I never expected to ever experience camp life again. It was a curious and wonderful feeling, smelling the musky smell of the pegasi and the burnt smell of clothes on fire (because of failed attempts at the lava wall, of course).
The satyrs pounced around helping out with the different things that needed help, while the naiads sat at the shore combing their wet hair. The training ground was filled with demigods practicing their sword fighting, some of them yelling as they were knocked back helplessly, others roaring in victory as they disarmed their opponents.
I pinched my arm from time to time to check that I wasn't dreaming, and always experienced a slight shock and heard a soft sizzling sound every time I did so. Dylan, Kayla and YiYun were more than happy to join in the camp activities, and had quickly left their quest days behind.
Dylan was hanging around Sandrine a lot, trying to initiate friendly conversations with her that slowly grew more personal, and finally gathered up the courage to ask her out on a date, of which Sandrine did not hesitate to agree to.
Kayla was overwhelmed by Camp Half-Blood, since coming to this demigod camp was one of her life goals. She went about with her Aphrodite cabin mates, sharing with them about the quest, and teaching them a few useful hand-to-hand combat techniques, all of which were a whole new world to them.
YiYun had left the camp momentarily on a quest to find Ed, her lost crush, who had apparently disappeared from camp a few months ago. She had gone absent without official leave, and no one knew where she had gone except for the quest members. We decided to keep it our little secret.
Calypso, on the other hand, had politely requested for the members of the Hephaestus Cabin to build her her own cabin directly next to Zeus Cabin, so she would have somewhere to sleep comfortably. The male members of the Hephaestus Cabin found her request extremely difficult to refuse, and the female members simply adored how politely she asked. Within a week, Calypso had a wonderful white cabin with a sizeable garden outside filled with different sorts of flowers, some of which I'm pretty sure don't exist in the mortal world.
Nightrack had been granted permission to fly in and out of the camp, and often spent his time soaring above the trees as a dragon or playing with girls as a puppy.
Lia never failed to stick close to me 24/7. We had a pretty shaky run together as siblings through the past few weeks. She had a pretty traumatizing experience being inflicted with so much pain during out battle with Hyperion, and eventually dying because of the same Titan. She was quick to forget about her short trip to Hell, and resumed her usual innocent, childish character.
And I was the one that had the most trouble fitting back in. Being bombarded with questions by the clueless and paparazzi-like campers, I had often flown away from the pestering crowd to have peace. During these rare times I chose to reflect upon the happenings of the quest, whatever I could remember of it.
Well, firstly there was that huge willow tree in the middle of the woods, which I had noticed had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. That lead us to Las Vegas, where we had found the Lotus Casino in which we found Kayla. We had evacuated everyone from the casino and even rescued Lia from beneath the reception counter (oh yeah, I remember that too). And then there was that burger place, of course, where we had met Aphrodite, and shortly after, got attacked by a bunch of Hellhounds that were, without a doubt, summoned by Hades.
And then we had met Nightrack, who became our friend because of a Mars bar. Nightrack flew us all the way to the Cyclops cave, where YiYun and Dylan shared and intimate moment by almost becoming Cyclops dinner. There I had saved them and met the old professor, who had passed me the everlasting lamp. We had met Damien in Chicago, while he was street performing. He became our quest member then. And then, in the back alley of a hat shop, Chiron told me all about the second half of the prophecy, much to my shock.
We flew to the Chicago Great Stage, where the muses were scheduled to perform as Korean Pop Stars that night. We placed a deal with them that if we put a stop to Hades with meddling with Camp Half-Blood over the building of his magnificent shrine, then they would tell us where Ogygia was. I was granted with the power of music by them, of which I didn't really have any use for except later. And then there was the tricky business of YiYun wandering off into the Underworld by herself and getting kidnapped by her own dad. Of course, I had to be the one to dive into the portal after her and to save her. After conversing with Pluto, Hades' alter ego, for quite a long period of time, I had beaten him 1-0 in a duel between demigod and god.
There was also the confusing moment when the villagers were raging towards us, the quest members, holding pitchforks and angry facial expressions. I still don't understand that. After that, we went back to the Korean Muses to find ourselves being challenged with a final task before we could know where Ogygia lay, and the task was to defeat Sun, the leader of the Muses. The 'Battle of Passage', they called it. It reminded me of some old medieval game I might have played on my computer. With a bit of usual combat and an unlikely twist of song battling, I had won, and almost killed her. But because of my mercy and kind-heartedness, I didn't and got granted with passage to Ogygia anyway.
After a bit of a whirl and a bright light, we were transported to Ogygia, where we went into a sort of petty quarrel with Hyperion. Because of that, we had an epic battle with him, and got inflicted with a lot of pain and even death, but Damien's kick-ass bronze Olympian figurines saved the day. And after all the drama, saying goodbye to Damien and all, I realized that it was Apollo who was behind this whole quest, and Lia had been brought back to life, which was extremely nice of Apollo.
I sat thinking some more. Was this the end of the quest? Was there more? It was kind of depressing to think that this would be my one and only quest. Would I go looking for more trouble? I could spend the rest of my demigodly days accompanying my sister and even marrying Kayla, or even with a bit of luck, Calypso. I was pretty sure I was in love with Calypso, although marriage with her might be a bit of a problem. She might have liked me this whole while and I haven't noticed the obvious signs. After all, this was a quest for Calypso.