Author's Note: Just wanted to say, I was a bit delayed because I wanted to make this chapter longer, and also because I was too busy reading. The official Tower of Nero is out. Check it out, if you haven't. And here's the disclaimer.
Disclaimer: Trials of Apollo and its characters belong to Rick Riordan.

With that, tuck in.

Chapter 10

We arrive at camp
No celebratory gifts?
Some nice friends? Oh yes.

The sky was brilliantly blue the next morning, as though Zeus was in a pleasant mood.

I woke to find Meg yawning. She had apparently woken up at about the same time as me. She noticed that I had woken and smiled grimly.

'I was thinking,' I began, 'that maybe we'd reach camp by sundown.'

'Yeah, about that,' said Meg, 'We should just have cabbed to camp, you know. That day we got off at Williamsburg.'

'Well, we might have looked suspicious. And given that Nero has his men stationed in all corners of New York, I say it was smarter to travel the long way.'

I understood what Meg wanted to say. We could have potentially saved more than two days had we just taxied all the way over from the pizza place on the second day. We might already have convened the purpose of our arrival to Chiron and the head counselors, and maybe would have been on a quest as well. I had had the same concerns recently. Why bother walking down Long Island when we could literally just take a cab for a couple dozen miles?

The thought had been gnawing on my conscience. Also, the fact that we hadn't been able to cover the distance sooner on foot also felt weird. The previous day's abnormalities counted, we still could have reached camp earlier had we had a straight route. Honestly, without Hermes Maps, I was absolutely lost sometimes.

Meg sighed.

I steadied myself on my feet. 'Up?'

Meg nodded and got up clumsily from her table. Having just regained complete conscience, I realized that the Wendy's was empty. I checked the clock on the wall.

10:34.

Weird.

In less than ten minutes, we were ready to depart. Meg muttered under her breath, apparently under the impression that I couldn't hear her, 'Lu would've liked the lasagna.'

I suppressed a smirk. She looked at me with a perfect poker face and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
I said, 'Let's go.'

Two hours later, walking along the expressway, I felt that we were closer to Camp Half-Blood than we'd been in months. Conversation between the two of us had been sparse, given that we had both been walking without absolutely any breaks.

A few cars passed occasionally. The usual hills kept appearing beside us, but Half-Blood Hill hadn't shown yet.

The skies were, as I had previously noted, a bright shimmering blue. Even post meridian the heavens were uncannily blue. There were absolutely no clouds at all and the sun wasn't overly bright. Everything was… blue. A clear shade of brightest blue. If there was a name to the exact hexadecimal color, I didn't know it, but it was as though the sky was shining, rather than the sun.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, but the occurrence was unnerving,

The safety the skies seemed to concede made it ironically feel as though we were bound to be attacked by strixes or Stymphalian birds.

Anyhow, being the ex-deity I was, the sky reminded me of an original I had once penned, The Brightest Morn. Even Aphrodite had approved of it. I had never gotten around to geting a label to release it. Columbia would've done nicely; even WME works.

I'm getting off track (get it, track?).

If I was any good at approximating distances, we were about a couple miles (football fields per second of banana) off. Praying to Tartarus that we wouldn't encounter any hostile creatures, I convened to Meg our closeness to camp.

'We might be there soon. Couple more miles to go.'

'Oh, yeah?' said Meg, 'I might pass out from the brightness soon.'

I said nothing.

(Side note: Try to swear off using complex words in these memoirs. They are read by undergraduates as well.)

Good thing we were entering camp via the front entrance this time. The last time in the woods had been enough to last me a godly lifetime.
Alert, we approached the last roadside building before reaching Camp Half-Blood. Suddenly, I vaguely happened to remember a bus, with a few demigods aboard, one of whom had called me 'hot'. I brushed the thought away.

I half-expected Meg to whoop at sight of Thalia's pine, but she didn't. Matter of fact, she didn't even see it. Her eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the road. I followed her gaze to see a teenager sitting among the bushes.

She seemed to be absorbed in something, with her back turned on us. Meg approached her slowly. When Meg was less than twenty paces away, the girl turned. She had curly light-brown hair, leaf green eyes and stern-ish features. She wore a simple orange camp shirt and light pajamas which had specks of dirt on them. She was vaguely familiar.

'Oh!' she started, 'We were expecting you two.'

Meg voiced what I was thinking: 'Who're you?'

'Well, sis,' she grinned, 'I'm Katie Gardner, daughter of Demeter. I think you've met my sister, Miranda?'
That solved one issue. I knew from where I recognized her: she looked very much like her sibling.

'I'm the head counselor of Cabin Four.' She continued, 'I'm more of a summer camper, so my sister was filling in the last time you two were around. But…,' she frowned, 'recently, Chiron's been worried. We haven't had much clear news since J-Jason – almost none at that. It'd be nice if we could get you two cleaned up and ready for a meeting in the Big House.'

When she hesitated at Jason's name, I noticed that her frown became more pronounced. As it was, Meg gave a weird little hiccup and my own thoughts became clouded at the instance of his name.

Katie carried on. 'Let's get you two inside. Rachel guessed your arrival, so we've been looking out. Since Meg was our half-sister and Apollo had, uh, kids here, Cabin Four and Cabin Seven were generally responsible for scouting. Oh, and we rebuilt our cabin. Now, if you'd follow me. Peleus has had nothing to do recently, and he might fry you, Lester.'

As we got closer to the camp entrance, I tried to continue conversation, 'What were you doing amid the bushes?'

'What? Oh—uh,' she hesitated, 'I was just tending to the ferns. Not all of them have a grain goddess looking out for them all day, you know,' Katie said, rather defensively.

In a minute, we stood at the top of Half-Blood Hill, looking down upon the valley which housed the Greek camp. The Golden Fleece shimmered brightly on top of Thalia's pine tree. The guard dragon, Peleus, turned at the sound of our approach, but turned away disconsolately at the sight of Katie.

As we began walking downwards, satyrs perceived our arrival and ran ahead to inform the camp. I would rather have preferred a comfy bunk bed to having camper-paparazzi interview us about our woeful adventures, but I figured it was for the best. Before we reached the bottom, we saw campers streaming out of their cabins and the strawberry fields towards us.

Some apparent faces in the crowd were that of my son, Will Solace, my daughter, Kayla Knowles and Nico di Angelo, son of Hades. Then, the crowds parted and a white centaur galloped over to us.

Chiron, the half-horse demigod mentor, gazed morosely at us. He said:
'About time, Apollo. I'll call the counselors; we need all the intel you can give us. I daresay you'll be exhausted, but you can't rest until we interrogate you. Get cleaned soon. And, everyone else, back to work.'

As the other campers dispersed, Chiron said, dismissively, 'Also, I hate to put you through this, but the camp is dry for information, and not even the Oracle has been much help.' He cantered away.

Meg turned to me, 'You'd think we had some real news. All we have is you being a total douche in front of Reyna, you dying, and your sister saving the day.'

'Ahem,' I said disdainfully, 'we also killed two Roman empe—.'

We were interrupted by a voice.

'Ahoy! If it isn't Apollo.'

We turned to see a chubby-faced, potbellied man, with almost-purplish black hair. He had a reddish face which seemed to reference to wine. He was donning a tiger-striped Hawaiian tee with purple trainers. He also had an average beard. It was Dionysus.

The last time we had been at camp, Mr D hadn't been present having been called to Olympus for QuickRes amid the double threat of the giants and apparently the Triumvirate. This was my first time having met him since my abolition from Mount Olympus.

He smiled. It was a genuine smile, and not the sneer I was generally used to. The few straggling campers seemed to look incredulous at this expression on Dionysus' face.

Dionysus walked towards me. He said, 'Hello, brother. Long time no see.'

Before I could think of a reply, he strode up and hugged me. My initial shock and confusion were overcome presently by an old, buried affection for my brother, fellow son of Zeus. I embraced him back. He smelt heavily of Diet Coke and… marshmallows. Were s'mores a new addiction of his?

I didn't know if it was a dozen seconds or a couple of days before we parted, but when we did, he nodded, said, 'Nice to see you too, brutha. Zeus can't complain; he was the one who decided to send me back to this wretched camp to complete my sentence. How I wish I hadn't chased after the nymph, eh?'

'Well, I shouldn't have chased Daphne,' I said, remorsefully, 'But gods seem to lose inhibitions in the heat of the passion.'

Glancing a look at Meg, he said, 'Okay, maybe later.'
Patting me on the shoulder, he strode off towards the Big House.

Meg had been watching our exchange interestedly. She chanced a one-way grin at me. I tried to smile, but it might have looked like I had a toothache.

We began walking towards the cabins. I wondered how many old acquaintances I was going to meet soon, seeing as I was more active on my Greek side than Roman. Not that it matters.

As though to prove my point, I saw two of the straggling campers turn abruptly as soon as Mr D was out of sight.
They were Will and Nico. I felt my heart give a premature ventricular contraction (sorry, that was the god of medicine in me; I meant 'my heart skipped a beat'; actually, was an extra beat, but for the sake of grammar).

I wasn't prepared to face the two yet; surely, I had to soon inform Nico of our prophesized quest. I readied myself to break the news to him.

Unfortunately, Nico's first question caught me off-guard.

'Is Jason really dead?' he asked, almost pleadingly, 'Isn't – couldn't he be brought back? Like t-the physician's cure.'

The question, obviously, brought back some sad memories. I pushed them away forcefully. I'd dwelled on them long enough to know that it wasn't any good to wallow in regret and loss.

'He is gone. There's nothing you could do,' I consoled him, 'The physician's cure works only if taken immediately after death. We-we held a funeral for him. At Camp Jupiter. I'm sorry, Nico.'

Nico's face betrayed a certain curious look. He knew the certainty of death, it's finality and absoluteness, being a child of Hades. Regardless, he looked traumatized and extremely upset. I wished I could've helped him, but the hardest challenges one faces on their own.

Unable to pursue conversation with Nico, I turned to Will. He also had a synonymous curious look, but his face, on the other hand, was expressing grief and care. Care. I realized, for Nico, who had now slumped across Will's shoulders.

He nodded towards me and Meg, and walked away towards the lake, supporting Nico on his shoulders.

I gulped. I couldn't imagine how many more such sullen faces I would have to inform, or rather, confirm, of Jason's death. I wondered soddenly whether I'd have to recount the tale at the meeting in the Big House. I sighed.
Meg bade to me and we made straight for the cabins.

It was Leo all over again.

A/N: I realised that I couldn't fulfil the first line of the prophecy without SPOILER ALERT adding troglodytes from the original book. How I'm gonna add them is a different matter. However, I will work the best I can on this book and I will not any of you readers down. It might take some more time because of *ahem* wider research into Greek mythology and stuff. Also, I know Riordan is working on the PJO series with Disney and the Kane Chronicles with Netflix, but I'd still be on the lookout for a new standalone novel about Will and Nico, if I were you.
Anyway, I feel like this is the longest chapter I've written so far (excluding the first two; those were written by Rick). The word count may say otherwise, but that's just the author's notes and all. This chapter, as a whole, is probably the longest.

However, I'm gonna have to cut it here. I'll be back with the next chapter soon...
For now, review this chapter and tell me if it was good enough, or if there's stuff that sounds off. Follow me or the story to keep track. You can favourite me if you want. And for the official outro,

Thanks for reading, hope you liked the chapter, and don't forget to leave a review.
I'll see y'all in the next one.
BYEEEE! :)
RomanArt74