The rest of the trip to Maine passed without incident. The herd of 30+ campers crammed themselves onto a bus bound for New York. The moment they were able, two of the satyrs bounded off to arrange transportation back to camp and in no time Alexa was crammed into one of the camp vans with a third of their little group. The reception when they returned to camp was incredible.
The three of them were lifted off their feet and paraded through camp to the amphitheater where they all gleefully flung their shrouds into the fire. Alexa was more than a bit surprised when her own shroud of chainmail caught without much of a fuss.
The party that followed the veil burning lasted hours, well passed lunch time and into the night. Even Mr D started to get into the revelry near the end, which went a ways towards explaining why several campers woke up in strange circumstances when morning came.
It is one of time's cruelest of pranks that time seems to accelerate when something is dreaded in the near future. So, the last few days of summer seemed to leap past Alexa in a blur of late nights under the stars with Jazz, watching Sonya apologize to the many girls she had emotionally manipulated, and many fainting spells amongst the satyrs after Rose's makeover.
It seemed like no time at all had passed when Alexa stood at the terminal. Jazz stood still, checking her boarding pass again. Somehow, Sonya had managed to weasel her way into the same college, last minute. She stood a few yards away, ostensibly fussing over her luggage and quadruple checking that it'd get to Minnesota safely. In reality she was giving Jazz and Alexa their space to say goodbye.
"Are you sure you have everything?" Alexa asked, practically clinging to Jazz's arm.
"Yeah, yeah." Jazz muttered with a playful roll of her eyes. She gently reached down and ruffled Alexa's messy brown hair. "And since I know you won't ask, I'll write to you the moment we land, and once a week after."
Alexa smiled. After a moment or two she reached out and held Jazz. She wouldn't be able to get her to stay, not that she'd even try. Jazz had her heart set on college and a career beyond and Alexa was not going to stand in the way of that.
"You'll be fine." She said, mostly to herself as she hugged her best friend. "I know you'll do great out there."
"Yeah, don't count on it, Spits. I've seen my grades." Jazz chuckled. Alexa smiled and slowly pulled away. Jazz squeezed her one last time before letting go.
"I'll see you at Christmas, okay?" Jazz assured her. Alexa didn't trust herself to speak. She just smiled and nodded her head. Jazz smiled right back, her heart swelling with pride as she looked down at the girl she had taken under her wing so many years ago.
"Kick some ass while I'm gone, okay Spits?" She grinned. Alexa nodded again. Satisfied, Jazz turned, rejoined Sonya, and the two hurried down the corridor to get to their gate. Alexa watched them go, waving from her rooted position until she couldn't even see the backs of them anymore. She turned, and made her way back to the waiting van. She slipped into the back seat and finally allowed the tears to start falling. She cried silently all the way back to camp.
She was alone again.
It took Alexa more than two months to even partially pull herself out of the emotional tailspin Jazz's departure had left her in. Some days she found it difficult to even get out of bed and more often than not she found herself blowing off the usual camp activities she had once enjoyed just to sit by herself.
After the initial shock had worn off Alexa found herself drifting. Nothing particularly kept her interest for longer than a few days. Not books, not activities, not even people. The only exceptions were forge work, sword practice, and, due in no small part to her increasing insomnia, reading under moonlight and late night walks.
It was on one of these walks, about two years after Jazz had left, that something peculiar happened, something that immediately set Alexa on edge. An unexpected rain had begun to fall over Camp Half Blood.
Rain was unusual in and of itself in the protection of the camp's borders but the rain that drenched Alexa on that night was far more than the light sprinkling that Mr. D occasionally let in to water the crops. The sky had suddenly seemed to split open, the water coming down in bucket fulls, quickly drenching Alexa. Offhandedly, as was often the case in such situations, the girl couldn't help but wonder why rain, particularly this much, didn't cause her curse to go off in the same way swimming did. Just as quickly as the thought arrived, it was gone, replaced with a simpler one with an equally complex answer.
"What is going on?"
She stood there, near the Big House, watching as a bolt of blue-white lightning was sent groundward. Alexa's eyes widened as, an instant later it was sent back to the sky that had birthed it, at a slight angle. She made up her mind, there and then.
"One Mississippi'' she counted under her breath. "Two Miss-" Boom! Thunder crashed down on her ears, rebounding off the hills and buildings.
Alexa took off at a sprint in the direction of the noise and the flash. There was a short list of things that could shoot lightning like that, and hardly any were good. If something was coming for the camp, she was going to defend it!
She knew that thunder that close on the heels of the lightning bolt meant whatever it was was close. Less than a mile away at least. She barely got five steps in what was rapidly becoming mud, when the figure appeared in the driving rain near the bottom of a hill near the boundary. At first Alexa thought a monster, one of the creatures she could now hear howling over the wind, had managed to get past the camp's protective border. Within three steps the misshapen creature had resolved itself into three, supporting one another as they made their way into camp. In the center was a satyr, a young one, with thick curly red hair, seemingly unconscious. On his left, doing the lion's share in supporting him, was a boy around Alexa's own age, pale with short blonde hair, a little taller than she, limping slightly on his left side. On the satyr's right was a girl, elementary school age, also blonde, covered in leaves and mud but otherwise unharmed. Both children held weapons in their free hands, a knife for the girl and a sword for the boy.
Alexa had been on a beeline towards the trio but the girl saw her in route. She began to wave frantically, pointing in the direction they had come.
"You have to help Thalia! She's all alone back there!" The girl all but screamed. Had her face not been so wet from the rain, Alexa had no doubt that the girl would have tears streaming down her cheeks.
Alexa set her jaw and nodded, racing past them and yanking the lightning bolt charm off her bracelet. She began scrambling up the hill as the sword grew to full size, taking in the situation before her; She could just make out the girl, around her age, with black hair and a pin-covered leather jacket she felt that Jazz might like. In one hand she brandished a spear at the variety of beasts that crowded in on her, repelled slightly by the shield strapped to her arm. However, it was plainly obvious at a glance why she hadn't followed her friends to safety. She wobbled in place, her right leg unsteady beneath her. Likely broken, if Alexa had to guess. To compound problems, the monsters were closing in, flanking her to start cutting off her escape.
Alexa gulped slightly.
"Di Immortales." She whispered. There were at least ten hellhounds all snapping and snarling at the girl with the shield, an additional ten or so black feathered harpies and, Alexa paled, three wrinkled old hags with bat wings, woolen caps, and fiery whips. The Kindly Ones...all three of them!
What those three demigods had done to warrant so much attention from these beasts Alexa had no idea, but she was not about to let this girl get herself killed! Not if she could help it!
In one practiced motion Alexa brought the sword up, pointed the tip at the crowd of monsters, most of which had only just started to notice her, and tightened her grip. The bolt flew from the tip of her sword, right as she reached the side of the black haired girl. It zipped past her and crashed directly into the chest of the hellhound that had gotten it's courage up enough to leap. The poor beast yowled before it dissolved into shadow. Despite herself, Alexa found a wild grin spreading over her face as Thalia flicked her eyes towards her.
"It's okay!" She said, "Cavalry's here!"
Alexa slid up next to her, the beasts around them closing ranks. She turned, keeping her back to her new comrade, the pre-fight adrenaline filling her up with eagerness and a strange sort of inner warmth.
"Are...are you a daughter of Zeus too?" Thalia whispered. There was so much in that voice; awe, uncertainty, maybe a little hope.
"Afraid not. Just got a brother who knows a thing or two about electricity." Alexa answered, her sword sparking slightly as her grip tightened again. There was a lot to unpack there, a lot that Alexa would need to think about later. For now they just had to survive.
A harpy dove at both girls. Thalia raised her shield, sending the bird woman into a panic, struggling to avoid the bronze face of the gorgon stamped into it. Alexa twisted on her heel, slicing clean through one harpy and lopping the head off the one Thalia had panicked before coming to a stop. She used the leftover momentum to swing the sword upwards, right into the chest of the next leaping hellhound.
Two more of the tank sized beasts charged Thalia, snarling and foaming thick globs of sticky saliva as they snapped their jaws at her. She blocked one with her shield and drove her spear through the second. When the first attempted a lunge on her spear arm she bashed it's face with her shield, making the bronze gorgon perform a little headbutt before dispatching the canine with another thrust of her spear. Alexa squeezed her free hand into a fist and threw it downwards. Five of the hellhounds found themselves trapped up to their knees in the mud that had suddenly surged up, and half a second later three of the mutts were shish-kabobed by Thalia.
The pair had begun to build up momentum, feeling each other out, filling in the gaps of the other's fighting style, when Alexa felt the intense pain in her neck. She gasped for air as the fiery whip yanked her backwards, off her feet, her left shoulder falling straight into the waiting jaws of a hellhound. She screamed as the creature bit down, hard, sinking its teeth right through her shirt and the flesh beneath. She could feel the hot, sticky blood coating her back and shoulders, staining her shirt. There was a slight thud, the whip shifting on her neck slightly as the other end changed it's position.
"Ah, ah, ah, honey" The Fury in the blue hat tutted, baring her fangs, leaning forward from her perch on the hellhound's sizable shoulders. "She's not the one we're after! No need to be too rough!"
As she watched, helpless, one of the other two bat winged hags had managed to get behind Thalia. The daughter of Zeus was ready, turning and catching the whip on her shield and driving her spear into the creature's gut. The red hatted Fury let out a shriek then dissolved into sand. As Thalia pulled back however, the third Fury dropped from above, digging her claws into her neck and shoulders. Had it just been her, the one blind strike with the spear would've saved her...but in a flurry of black feathers the rest of the harpies descended on Thalia.
"No!" Alexa wheezed, she tried to raise her sword, but the massive monstrous hound tossed it's head back and forth, shaking her like a rag doll and sending her sword flying out of her hands. All she could do was scream and watch as the harpies swarmed like a school of black winged piranha.
Suddenly a smell filled Alexa's nose, a smell of burning ozone, her hair stood on end, and the entire hillside was bathed in blue-white light. Alexa tried to scramble away, but before she could even move an inch the lightning bolt crashed down from the sky.
Alexa was flung through the air, smoking and sizzling. She landed, back first in the mud with a wet thud, passing right through the rapidly dissolving shadow that had once been an immovable black furred beast. Managing to raise her head one last time, the last thing she saw was the last of the Furies, only visible in the black clouds because of the flaming whip. She watched as the leather winged hag flew high over the once bare topped hill and it's new, massive pine tree.
"No…" she wheezed one last time, an all too familiar feeling of dread, despair, and guilt filled her and hollowed out her insides. In that brief moment, she was five years old again, just as helplessly staring at the woman who had taken someone from her. Nothing had changed...she hadn't changed. Not at all.
Mercifully, she passed out before she could start sobbing.