They had to play capture the flag that night.
The camp was split in half, under the so-called-rule of either Ares or Athena, being the offspring of the war-based gods. Thankfully, Leo, Piper, Lance, and Jason all found themselves under the command of Athen, no matter how much Ares complained.
The one doing the most complaining was the Ares head camper, a large girl who appeared to have torn the sleeves roughly from her CHB t-shirt and tied a bandana around her head, purely to procrastinate on having to make an effort to tame the mousy strings of her hair that fell out of their haphazardly assigned places.
"Why do you get both the big three kids on your side?" She asked, large hands balled into fists that rested at the waist of her cargo shorts.
"Why not?" Annabeth had responded, not looking up from the dagger she was polishing until she deemed it done and moved to collect the cap from where it sat next to her.
"Why not? Why not? I'll tell you why - it's unfair, Chase!"
"All's fair in love and war Clarisse. Besides, you didn't want love," he gestured to the Aphrodite campers, Piper aside, ho stood in a circle, gossiping and chatting "So we just got a bit of a boost."
Clarisse began to fume, until she was approached by a boy, a Hermes camper, who calmed her with soothing words in a way no one else could manage.
As soon as she left, Annabeth could not stop herself from smiling; there was no disadvantage to numbers, and Aphrodite did have good fighters, even if there were things they would rather be doing. This would be too easy - especially with Poseidon and Zeus on her side, she had seen what they could do before, even if they had no grasp on their powers prior.
"Ready?" She walked over to the group of new campers who were all talking amongst themselves.
"S'pose." Was the general response that arose from amongst them.
Annabeth's eyes lasted on the gun that laid to rest in Lance's arms.
"Guns are good practically," She told him, receiving a nod of agreement "But they perhaps aren't the best in recreation - keep your aim decent: maiming is strictly against the rules." She walked away and Piper painfully observed that the shirt she wore was much too large for her, hanging almost to her knees.
Over the course of capture the flag, Leo had managed to find something aside from a flag: a workshop. It looked as though it had been out of commission for a fairly long time, neither it nor the surrounding area looking the most kempt.
But that wasn't all. There was a dragon, one made of interlocking bronze scales, that moved around in ways that clearly showed it was on its last legs. It breathed fire, too, and had breathed it all over Leo.
Everyone had held their breath and looked away. But he wasn't hurt, just annoyed he was left standing there in his boxers and very little else.
The great metal dragon allowed him to near it.
He had it fixed before too long, up and running as it should have been.
But there was a name tied to the dragon, Charles Beckendorf. It was a name that made conversations darker, it was a name that settled over groups of people like dark clouds, it was a name that had genuinely made demigods he would have thought were fearless, cry. It was the name of his late half brother.
He had died in the war, at the beginning of it, on a short quest with Percy Jackson, and there was that name again, the other would not have gotten out of either, had he not been Lance's half brother.
They said, after his death, cabin 9, the cabin of Hephaestus, had been cursed. Nothing of theirs was working as it should, even if there was no fault in the workmanship. The haywire inventions, were violent, the number of forge injuries had increased at such a rapid rate that the children of Apollo those who worked in the infirmary, were beginning to complain about the significant increase of work they were required to do.
But Percy Jackson's wasn't the only name tied to Charles'. The second was said with just as much hushed hesitation and remorse as the name Leo had originally been pondering. The next was, by some odd fluke, Piper's late sister. Silena Beauregard, the daughter of Aphrodite, the head counsellor of the cabin up until her death, the girl who had led the Ares cabin to the war when they refused, protesting about the flying chariot they believed to be rightly theirs, stubborn to the point of abandonment until they believed their counsellor was leading them to fight. Silena Beauregard who had made it possible for the gods to beat the titans. SIlena Beauregard, the traitor no one dared call such, no one dared to even think of her like that.
She was the daughter of APhrodite, the boyfriend of Charles Beckendorf, a hero in her own right, ties to Kronos or no.
But, that said, the Hephaestus cabin were far from alone in their misfortune; very little was going as planned in Camp half Blood.
Piper was haunted by a dream, a dream of her father when she had last seen him, a dream that melted from the image of her father into that of a mountain, that of a giant of fire.
Then there was the prophecy, a less-than-pleasant premonition passed through the lips of Rachel Elizabeth Dare, their local oracle.
"Child of Lightning, beware the earth,
The giants' revenge the eight shall birth,
The forge, dove and wave shall break the cage,
And death unleash through Hera's rage,"
The voice in which the prophecy was told was not that of the kind, artsy mortal, rather that of the ancient oracle who spoke only in cryptic messages, voice easily comparable to a pained gasp for air.
Before she had spoken, Rachel's eyes had lit up green, too bright to be any modicum of natural, her hair flailing behind her, a cloud of red that was much alike to fire, as wisps of green surrounded her, like something straight from a fantasy story. Then, after she had shared her message, she had collapsed, back into the arms of some campers who had clearly rehearsed the routine.
Then, around the campfire that had so quickly changed in colour, they all sat, trying to decipher the prophecy. They were aware of the haste they had to make, of the tight deadline that would only hold until the WInter solstice, four days later.
"Child of lightning," Annabeth speculated "Obviously Jason." She tapped her fingers on her chin "I have to say, I don't know about the eight, just yet…" The tapping sped up rapidly "The forge the dove and the wave, children of Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Poseidon." She looked over to Jason "I suppose, as the quest leader, you are to chose who accompanies you."
"Leo?" He asked without hesitation.
The other responded in the same manner.
"Lance?" He continued.
Lance scoffed back "Like there was literally anyone else here who you could have picked," but he did not protest at having to go.
Jason was about to speak again but was cut off abruptly.
"Me!" the voice was eager and too girlish, and Jason hated it right away "I'm the head counsellor," it protested shrilly "I should go-"
"Piper?" Jason spook simply over her. She stopped, looking mortified and staring at Piper as though she were dancing on her grandmother's grave.
"What? Why her - she doesn't even know what love is? You want her to be your dove?"
"Yes."
That led to them meeting up early the following morning, greeted by the fantastic sight of a newly fixed-up bronze dragon waiting atop Halfblood hill. Leo was, of course, there with it.
"This is Festus," he said, gesturing up at the large, mechanic beast.
Jason didn't know whether to laugh or leave, exasperated "Festus means happy in Latin - you're telling us we're going to be riding around on happy the dragon?"
Leo was unperturbed "Yep."
He then proceeded to speak to festus as though he were human, interpreting his whirs, clicks and creaks as some sort of language that far bypassed anyone else's understanding.
"Leo," Piper said with a joking headshake "Why are you talking to the robot?"
Lance's heart jumped a bit as he watched, an image of a big, blue lion popped into his mind with more clarity than anything he had seen before. However, he quickly dismissed it; it was a ridiculous image he was sure meant nothing.
"Nah," He told Piper "It's pretty normal,"
"It's really not," She patted his arm in a mocking form of condescending comfort meant for no purpose but as a joke "Your definition of normal is just warped."
He just shrugged off her hand with a smile and short laugh.
"Alright," Leo called "Everybody on!"
They sat, one behind the other, on the back of the bronze dragon, waiting for it to fly. It did with little delay, making Piper squeal and clutch her fists around jason's shirt as he sat before her.
She wondered how she was the only one scared, playing with reasoning in her mind, contemplating in an attempt to calm herself.
Jason can control the wind, he isn't in danger. She thought. This is Leo's effort, it would make sense that he trusts it. But Lance?
"You don't know what normal means." She murmured.
Lance heard Piper speaking in front of him and resigned himself to admitting she was right.
"You don't know the half of it,"
She giggled, much calmer now, as they had stopped rising and were simply gliding over the cool swells of the fairly thin, damp air, far above the world she so often passed over "Neither do you!"
"I never claimed to."
A fair stretch of time in silence, interrupted by the wail of the wind, the occasional twittering of birds and the more common whistle of the breeze passing through gaps left in the thicker treetops, between dark green leaves.
Then Leo spoke, voicing a question he had been harbouring for a while but always seemed to forget to ask.
"Hey?" he received three hums, each a wildly different pitch, as a notifier of their listening "Do you remember how you lose your memory?"
"Somewhat." Lance told him "I didn't have much of a clue when I woke up, about anything, but it felt like my head was about to explode, so that was a pretty good tip-off that it was some sort of head trauma. I definitely know now, though - Miracle boy, meteor boy, y'know?" he lifted his hands from the shiny bronze of festus where they rested, raising them to the space in the air besides him, at which time he used them to create air quotes around the names given to him by the media.
"Yeah, I know."
"I haven't got clue," Jason told him.
"None? Piper checked.
He nodded as he rolled his golden coin around in his hand "Not a one." He dropped the coin into his pocket, gently leaning back one hand behind him and smiling when he felt piper's fingers trail over his unsurely - he may not have known her, not really, but there was a sort of comfort there.
"But I intend to find out."