Chapter 5

Okay, is it just me or is my best friend flying? Nope she's flying alright. And pretty well too, but it still sort of freaks me out.

We fly and keep flying through the rain and wind. Great, now I'm probably going to catch a cold. I look up at Amelia.

"Hey, do you know the way to this camp?"

"Uh, no not really. You know I haven't actually been there before." She looks a little worried now.

"So, why are we going to this camp again?"

"Do you know any Greek gods?"

"Uh, sure, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Athena. Oh and Hermes." I'm puzzled. What does this have to with this camp we're going to?

"Well, uh, I'll tell you later. It's hard to talk while carrying you and flying."

We fly and fly until I see a long island. Amelia gasps, she's probably getting tired of flying so long. She starts going down. Yikes! Another deathly fall, but you know, I can handle death. It's the pain I don't like. So we're just plummeting down towards the ocean. Fun right? I hold onto Amelia much tighter. We crash into the ocean. Water is rushing all over my body, I can't tell if I've died yet or not. Then I float to the surface, I'm not dead. The waves are pretty rough though.

Wait! Amelia! Where is Amelia! I look all around me, I know I have to dive under to see where she's gone. And sure enough she's sinking towards the bottom of the sea. The song, from 'The Little Mermaid', 'Under The Sea' starts playing in my head and I start to sing along, but only bubbles come out of my mouth and a bunch of salt water comes in. So I sing in my head. I know, I should have been freaking out in a situation like this, but it was kind of okay with me.

I grabbed Amelia's hand and pulled her up. And we swam. I've never swam so fast in my life. I don't really like swimming though. We swim and swim until finally I see the shore. It's close, very close. So close I can smell the beach, I don't know how you 'smell' a beach but I just can, or it could be all the salt water up my nose.

When we reach the surface I gasp and lie down with Amelia beside me. "That. Was. The. Longest. Swim. Ever." was all I could say. And Amelia is pretty heavy. But just as I thought all danger had ceased, I hear this large rumbling sound. And in the distance I see fire.

As the thing gets closer I hear roaring and clawing. I jump up immediately with Amelia behind me.

"Amelia, what is that thing?" It looked sort of like a dragon with seven heads, but I could be delusional. I mean, I just swam over 500 feet.

"It's the hydra! But what's it doing here? Probably to stop us!" Amelia answered me.

"Well you sure know your Greek mythology."

"Of course, I've studied it my whole life. I can even read Greek," she paused, "And so can you." Huh? What does that mean. I've never studied Greek ever. The only story I know is Hercules, and that's from watching the Disney classic.

"Olivia."

"Yeah?" I could tell she was scared.

"Whatever you do don't cut any of it's heads off."

"Well I can't very well do that without a sword."

"Oh yeah. Then I don't need to cut any heads off." Oh I remember now. On Hercules he had to fight a hydra and when he chopped a head off it grew two more. We don't want that do we.

It was pouring down rain so it was hard to see anything. I could hear the hydra growling and see it's fire. Amelia dogged the flames as she swung her sword near the body. It missed and Amelia stood straight.

"Run Olivia! Run to the camp! They said that it has a magical boundary so no monsters can get in!" She yelled at me. Just as she finished talking the hydra knocked her with it's head and she flew against a tree, landing on the ground. She didn't get back up. I didn't want to leave her out here to die, it didn't seem like she had a lot of practice in swords.

So I tried being a hero again and grabbed the sword. I swung once and missed and then the second time I got it right in the chest and it exploded into flame and dust. Just like Empy, only a lot bigger and hotter. I thought it had singed my eyebrows. Like when we go to that Japanese steakhouse, the chef, after he makes a big fire, says "No more eyebrow".

"Yeah, no more eyebrow," I say aloud and fall to my knees. Then I remember, Amelia. Shoot!

I run over to her with sword sill in my hands. She doesn't seem badly hurt, but there's a pretty big bloody gash on her forehead. I kneel beside her.

"Amelia?" She grunts and looks up at me.

"You killed it?"

"Heck yeah I did!" She smiles.

"Whoa, I'm not that awesome at a sword."

"Yeah I know." I help her sit up. "You okay?"

"Yep, awesome, super duper." She stands up and holds her head. "We need to get to the infirmary."

We walk past were Amelia said there was a 'boundary where monsters can't get in'. What monsters? You mean there's more? Great! Awesome!

The rain stops, finally, and I smell wet grass. An awesome smell by the way.

"So where are we supposed to go?" I still didn't understand why we came here in the first place. And I'm still trying to register everything I've seen today; boys turning into monsters, flying across the ocean, swimming across the ocean, and getting attacked by a hydra. What a day.

"My mother said that if I ever have to leave and come here to go to the Big House," Amelia said.

"What does this 'Big House' look like?"

"What else, a big house"

"Oh yeah. Sorry, I'm slow."

"I know that Olivia." Then we both laugh and keep walking until we pass a tree with golden fleece hung on it guarded by a ... dragon!

"Whoa! There's like a dragon over there. Didn't you say monsters weren't allowed?"

"Yeah, that's Leneus I think they said, he guards the Golden Fleece. Don't worry he's friendly."

"Who's they?"

"Oh, other campers, you'll soon meet." I still have my doubts about that dragon, even though he seems friendly.

While we walked by Leneus was asleep. whenever he would breathe out, smoke rings would form above his head. It was sort of funny. He reminds me a lot of the dragon on Pete's Dragon. I know, I like classic Disney movies.

We keep on walking towards the center of the camp. There are a lot of cabins surrounding us in a little semicircle. There were blue ones, pink ones, yellow ones, black ones, purple ones, and any other color ones you could think of. The whole entire camp looked amazing. I mean, I for one have never been to a camp before, except this one just now. And it seems perfect. I can see strawberry fields in the distance and can smell them. And there's a green forest with birds singing in the trees. The ocean view is beautiful. You can hear the waves crash against the shore and the gulls calling. But, you know, it's just a regular camp right?

Wrong, when we start to get closer to the Big House I see something that looks like a white horse. Only there's no horse head. It's a man's torso and arms and head.

"O.M.G! What is that?"

"Jeez! You really need to work on your Greek mythology. He's a centaur, who they call Chiron." There she goes saying 'they' again. I wonder who the other campers are. Heck, this could be a neat camp, all these hybrids running around you'll always have something to look at. We walked closer to Chiron and saw a couple of guys with the bottom half of themselves goats. Okay, I can handle that.

"Satyrs, in case you didn't already know." Amelia informed me. She likes showing off how much more she knows then me every chance she gets. Chiron waves us down.

"Hello! You two must be the new campers. Welcome!" He says, a little too enthusiastic.

"Hi, I'm Amelia Rodgers and this is my B.F.F., Olivia Royal."

"Hmm, very nice too meet both of you." He smiles at us and flicks his tail, probably at a fly. All the while I'm gaping at his horse part. That would be cool to have a horse body.

"Uh, Chiron, you know my mother. Amber Rodgers right?" Amelia asks.

"Yes I do, very wonderful woman. Now since this is both of yours first day of camp I'll put you in the hands of some of our older campers." As he said that two boys and a girl came walking up.

"This is Percy Jackson," indicating an older boy than me with black hair and green eyes.

"Hey," he said.

"This is Nico Di Angelo," waving to another boy a little younger than Percy, with black hair and black eyes. Kind of like mine.

He just shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and looked at the ground.

"And this is Miss Annabeth Chase," Chiron put his hand on the shoulder of the girl with grey eyes and blonde hair.

"Nice to meet you both!" She exclaimed while Percy put an arm around her. I guess there together. "You'll have an awesome time here at Camp Half-Blood!"

"Yeah, if monsters don't kill you before you have fun," Nico laughed.

"Nico shut up! Sorry, but after you have a proper training you'll be able to stay alive."

I looked at her in a retarded way, "Wait, training? For what?"

"You mean you haven't told her anything yet?" Percy asked Amelia.

"No, I thought it better to wait, I mean we just had to fight a hydra and... Ouch!" She held her forehead.

"We need to bandage that up," Chiron said walking away with Amelia following behind.

"I guess we're going to have to tell you everything," Nico sighed.

"Okay? I'm not really sure what your talking about but whatever." I listened to everything they said, about gods and monsters, and well everything.

"So I'm a daughter of some sort of god?" They nodded their heads. "That's frickin' beast!"

"Yeah, but sometimes it's not that fun. I'm a son of Hades, the god of death," Nico told me.

"I'm a daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy," Annabeth told in a kind of stuck up voice.

"And I'm a son of Poseidon, you know, water and stuff," Percy said.

"What am I a daughter of?" I hopped it was something cool.

"We don't know yet, but you'll know soon because I made an agreement with the gods that they have to claim their children," said Percy.

"Cool!"

Wow, I'm a daughter of a god, a powerful god! This might be fun, or not.

I just love campfires. Singing campfire songs, eating marshmallows and smores. Perfect. But not when the marshmallows get all over your face and get stuck in your hair. Yuck.

After we were done talking we all came to a big campfire. I found out there is a lot of campers here.

"Ha ha, you need a napkin, Olivia?" Nico teased, "How about a bucket of water? Haha!"

"Hahaha, very funny. Not!" I grab a huge stack of napkins, but they just stuck to my fingers. Annabeth looked at me and her eyes got wide.

"Whoa! Dear, I think that's too many marshmallows."

"Yeah, I've already noticed that. Thank you." She rolled her eyes and laughed. Hey, I have some new friends.

Chiron clopped over to us with Amelia. She had a bandage around her head and looked a lot better.

"Hey!" I gave her a hug. I mean, who wouldn't after you just got attacked by a huge dragon thingy, hydra.

After everyone was done eating some campers started sharing stories and songs about their 'quests'.

"You'll be able to go on quests like that soon," Percy whispered. But as he said that a glowing light came from above my head, it looked like a ball of blackish, reddish fire. Everyone gasped, and Chiron smiled.

"Ah, a daughter of Hades."

Nico slapped me on the back, "Welcome sis!