The shadow's owner prances forward in a sudden swipe. It barrels into Nico and Thalia from behind, crushing them both under its enormous paws.
"My gods, what is that?" Percy exclaims. He instinctively charges at the monster, uncapping his blade Riptide. A slash, whack, and hack later, and he stands aside, discouraged at his inability to hurt it, though he did knock it away from Nico and Thalia.
"It's like the Nemean Lion!" Percy shouts, exasperated. "There's no way this is a Greek monster. I felt the blade cut its skin, for Zeus's sake!"
"It looks like an eagle," Thalia notes, recovering her wit. She raises her hand and conjures up tendrils of what appears to be lightning. "Forgive me, Father, for what I'm about to do to this creature of your domain."
This is the famed daughter of Zeus? She crashes her hand down and a massive bolt crashes down on the monster. Despite everyone in a ten-feet radius getting knocked back, the thing simply stands there unharmed.
I land in a wild raspberry bush. Using this small moment of cover, I conjure up my compound bow. I summon three arrows of Celestial Bronze, Imperial Gold, and Mortal Silver and load them in. The triple volley lands hard in the neck of the creature. It staggers back for a moment, and with a swipe of its massive wing, dislodge the projectiles with a grotesque squish.
"How did you do that?" Annabeth shouts. "You know that's a hieracosphinx, right? You can't kill Egyptian monsters with Greek magic, except for this new guy, apparently. Wait, Arthur, take this!"
Annabeth throws me her dagger at me, which is absolutely stupid for a child of Athena. Suddenly, it shifts into what appears to be a white tusk, like a canine from a hippo. I catch what should have been a dagger in my left hand.
To say my mind was fried would be an understatement. A sea of pictures swarm my vision, and time actually slows down. When these effects fade away, I finally collect enough brain cells to shout the only thing that makes sense
"A'max!"
The hippo tusk glows a bright orange. I feel an enormous amount of energy surge into my arm. A massive beam of light suddenly casts down upon the creature from my extended hand. The hieracosphinx begins to violently thrash. Its thrashing turns to convulsions, and in particular, its wings are twitching, trying to take flight. But, the effects of the spell seems to have bounded it.
I approach the monster to try and finish the job. Then, it erupts in a burst of Greek fire, green and hot like August in Louisiana. The creature quickly incinerates to dust and fades away in a mix of black and gold.
The others in the group recover their shock from being attacked by a monster most of them have never seen. Frank and Hazel are still dazed from flying headfirst into birch trees. Nico stumbles a bit but is otherwise unharmed. Reyna and Leo are both unconscious. Then, the world begins to spin around me, and I collapse upon my knees.
When I wake up, I am in the same infirmary bed I slept in back in February. The old campers except for Reyna and Leo surround my bed, all casting a worried look on me. In place of those two are two people holding hippo tusks and staff. My eyes widen when I recognize one of the two, a blonde girl with pink highlights.
"Sadie, is that you?" I ask aloud.
"It is me, you ninny," she answers. "How did you know Uncle Amos's signature spell? And with no training from us, at that."
"You already know Sadie?" Percy, Annabeth, and the other magician guy, a dark man with curly hair and wearing a Columbia University shirt, all say at once.
"I met her at the hotel on my way here to Camp Half-Blood," I recall. "We had a run-in with a Serpopard that night. Who knew that a kitten can be so dangerous?"
We all share an uneasy laugh.
I begin to recount the events of last night. The other campers listen with intrigue. In particular, they were mystified by how I could wound the Egyptian monster with Greek and Roman weapons.
"It's like that time the four of us fought Setne," Sadie remarks. "I thought we could keep our little task force secret. Now, here comes this son of one of us who can mix the powers all on his own and without the Book of Thoth!"
"By your account, did you say your spell summoned Greek fire?" the dark-hair guy asks. "A standard A'max from Uncle Amos can only summon normal flames. It must be one of those weird effects of mixing Greek and Egyptian magic."
"But I can only achieve such an effect when I cast an Egyptian spell with a Greek word," Sadie points out. "Annabeth needed my secret name to help banish Setne to that snow globe."
For a bunch of butt-kicking heroes, they really have some unusual and childish ways to defeat the enemy.
"I hate it when I don't understand," Annabeth mutters out. "You all are telling me this one boy can do everything Setne could, but without ever seeing that ancient book of spells. And, he manages to excel at the tasks of every kind of demigod there is, even ones that don't exist like Hera and Artemis. This can be true unless..."
"Oh my gods, Annabeth, the Prophecy!" Percy suddenly blurts out. "I had another nightmare the other night. I couldn't hear all the words, but I did hear something about a legacy."
"That's strange," I blurt out. "I did hear the Oracle of Delphi state the prophecy on Olympus, but it didn't mention the word legacy at all."
"I don't even want to think about what that can mean," Annabeth says.
"Wise Girl doesn't want to think?" Percy muses. "That's clearly a first. You'll have kelp growing out your head in no time. That's what you get for all those years of bashing me."
"Hey, at least I got rid of that stuff so you can actually pass your classes," Annabeth retorts.
Oh, my gods, these two are hopeless.
"Nine years together and somehow you two get cuter," Sadie teases. "The same can't be said for Carter and Zia."
"Watch it, sis," Carter, the previously nameless black guy, spits out. "You're the crazy one dating the God of Death." Sadie blushes a deep shade of red before slapping Carter on the back.
So these two are siblings. How that happened is way beyond me, but seeing that my family tree is a rope, I, again, don't question it.
"We have more pressing matters than your love lives," I interject. "In four weeks' time, I'm supposed to be deployed down to the Underworld. Zeus himself gave me this quest."
"That reminds me," Nico suddenly speaks up. "The Underworld is totally swamped with monsters like that. That chasm is brimming with monsters Dad hasn't seen since Roman times. Fortunately, some of the monsters of Tartarus aren't really bright ones and attack these guys with as much vigor as any demigod, but Dad's forces are being sapped daily. There are simply too many. Some crazy hybrid monsters are really turning the tide. My last report as field officer saw a hybrid Greek and Egyptian sphinx trucking through hordes of our undead. Are's tributes are getting hacked down in droves."
"Magicians of the Thirty-Second Nome are reporting a great disturbance near their headquarters in Long Beach," Carter pipes up. "There are similar reports of Greek and Roman monsters turning up near Los Angeles House. There are also a worrying number of unidentified monsters no one can identify in the archives."
"Carter, as Praetor of Camp Jupiter, I can guarantee your safety from the Roman monsters," Hazel says. "I will send a detachment of the Twelfth Legion to Long Beach."
"It's time for Arthur to consult the Oracle," Annabeth declares. "I miss seeing old Rachel."
Percy and Annabeth share an uneasy laugh. The rest of the people present have no idea why.