Disclaimer: The author of this story reminds you that he owns neither Camp Half-Blood—as that honor goes to Dionysus—nor the previous publications concerning it, which were penned by Camp Half-Blood Senior Scribe Rick Riordan. He is merely a respectful demigod trying to bring more accounts of our world to the general public.

Furthermore, the gods of Mount Olympus are most certainly nothing but works of ancient fiction. May they go with you nevertheless.

-Chiron Kentauros

Activities Director, Camp Half-Blood

Chapter One: A Saxophone Player Saves My Life

As you begin to read this, allow me to warn you that being a half-blood isn't always the greatest thing in the world.

Actually, it's not a bad thing all of the time. If you like a little spice in your life, a bit of danger, and you aren't the subject of too many unfortunate prophecies, it can all even out fairly well. I've had a lot of fun over the past few months here at camp when I haven't been fighting Furies and hydras and rabid hellhounds. But between the good times—campfire songs with the Apollo cabin, capture the flag, beating Mr. D at pinochle, and just hanging out and talking with my friends—there's, well, fighting Furies and hydras and rabid hellhounds. And trust me, Hercules made all that look a lot easier than it really is.

I'm sure that despite my warning you're still reading this, and I don't blame you in the slightest. I'm painfully aware of the degree to which I'm wrecking the narrative by putting all of these caveats in when I'm supposed to be drawing you into the story, and in a moment I'll back up and begin things properly, but nonetheless Chiron has asked me to warn you of this: if, when reading this story, you begin to suspect that what I describe is something that is happening to you now—if you begin to wonder if you, yourself, may be a half-blood-it's probably an excellent idea to step away from the book or screen slowly, go back to real life, and forget about the whole thing as best you can. Better safe than sorry. And if you persist and find out you're a demigod anyway, welcome to Camp Half-Blood. Dinner is in the pavilion at 6:30, and whatever you do be sure to steer clear of Mr. D if he's around.

Man, I hate disclaimers like this one. Well, now that that's all over with, let's get this thing started and start it right.

My name is Jason Williams, and this is the story of how my friends and I sort of accidentally changed the world.

At the time this all began I was living in suburban Philadelphia with my dad, Ted Williams, who's the well-known founder of an up-and-coming tech company called Asgardian Software. Despite his suddenly having become a member of Philly High Society a few years ago when the company took off, none of it has gone to his head, and he's a great guy, really. We've always gotten along very well. According to him, my mom left us years ago before I was old enough to remember her. This, of course, was a depressing state of affairs, but I did my best to stay positive.

I'm around five-eight and relatively thin, with long-ish blond hair and gray eyes. I've often been described as a brain—or a geek, a nerd and an inept klutz, when those describing me are in less of a good mood—and it doesn't take a lot of self-examination for me to know just how true all of that is. My GPA is an immaculate 4.0—many thanks to no required Phys. Ed courses in high school—I've done several academic competitions—spelling bees, forensics and so on—with some success in the past—and the one time in my life I attempted to take part in a basketball game, well…the best that can be said is that I regained consciousness eventually, but I guess all's well that ends well.

To protect identities and all that, I won't mention specifically the name of the high school I attend, but I will go so far as to say that it's a pretty upper-crust prep school in downtown Philly that offers some really nice elective classes and activities. By April of freshman year, I was a member of the debate team, as well as second clarinet in the band, a regular contributor to the school newspaper, and getting my usual good grades while still making several friends and getting to know my new class. Although I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia at the age of seven, which can get totally galling at times, I love reading and I've more or less managed to overcome it in the years since. This year, I was reading steadily through Great Expectations as an end-of-semester project of my own.

It sounds like a good life, and it was. At the time, things were going far better for me than I'd ever expected, and my year as a Philly Phreshman (and trust me, that ridiculous moniker is most definitely not my fault) had been a good one. However, that's not to say that I still noticed some very strange things on occasion, like I usually do. I can't explain it—or that is to say, I couldn't at the time—but every now and then I seemed to catch a glimpse of something really weird and seemingly impossible.

Once, I thought I saw a dragon—an actual dragon, with golden scales and huge claws—fly past a downtown Philly skyscraper and disappear on a crisp morning last October, and spent about a week seriously considering the possibility that I'd gone completely nuts. Another time I ran into two huge guys who looked to be about eight feet tall and who were alike enough to be twins, who had walked past me a few yards away, bickering and uprooting entire trees and bushes that got in their way. That one was a little easier to skate over, but for years afterward I'd find myself pausing and staring thoughtfully at the little patch of dirt where one of the trees had been. At the time I put both incidents down to the dyslexia acting up—this may not seem like such a rational explanation, but what else can you do when you're faced with the impossible and you don't have the Ghostbusters on your speed dial? I had to believe something to explain it all—and tried very hard not to think much about it afterwards. Later, of course, I would know better.

The trouble all really started on April thirteenth, a cloudy Friday afternoon. It was lunch hour, and I was sitting by myself at the end of a cafeteria table, reflecting on a week well-spent and chowing down on a Philly cheesesteak (it's cliché, I know, but I love 'em and our school cafeteria makes them better than just about anywhere else on Earth). Suddenly, a sophomore named Flint Greenbaum walked up and slid onto the bench next to me.

"Hey, man." I looked up and muttered something or other in greeting. Flint was a tenor saxophone player of that particular class of lovable eccentrics that gave the school so much of its character. I'm sure yours has them, too—they wear old-fashioned hats, crack inside jokes, play guitar really badly, and launch impromptu comedy routines in the hallways whenever they feel things are getting too boring—or maybe that's just the way their conversations go normally, I don't know. But they're good guys at heart, you can count on them for a friendly conversation or to lend a favor, and goodness knows they keep things interesting.

This particular morning, though, Flint was looking nervous, which was unusual for him. His fedora was askew, and he kept anxiously twisting the class ring on his finger. Also, his cafeteria tray held a cheese enchilada, which was odd since they weren't on the day's menu. I figured that maybe he'd sweet-talked the lunch ladies into it—that seemed like it might be the kind of thing he would do—but nonetheless, it contributed to my feeling that something decidedly odd was afoot.

I gradually began to recall that Flint had been acting kind of strange all week—he'd seemed unusually subdued, and the previous day he'd come to a screeching halt in the hallway, stared at me for a few seconds, done a huge double take, and sprinted off as fast as he could. As a nerd I'm pretty accustomed to being made fun of, but I didn't know what Flint was up to this time.

Flint sniffed the air intently as if the cafeteria smelled good, which it did, but something about the gesture still seemed off somehow. "Jason, does something around here seem kind of odd to you?"

I just couldn't resist a hanging curveball like that, especially not from Flint, and jumped at the chance to break the tension. "Well, yes, but besides you…"

He gave a quick laugh, but it sounded more than a little unhinged. "Oh. Oh yeah, that's great. Seriously, though? It's like there's something in the air today, something ominous. You picking up on any of that?"

Maybe it was just the way he was acting influencing my thinking, but for a brief moment I thought I sensed something as well—a shivering down my spine, and a feeling of anticipation hanging in the air, as if something huge was about to happen.

I frowned. Instead of disappearing, like I'd assumed it would, the sense of foreboding seemed to get stronger. "Hmmm. I'm not sure," I said eventually. Despite the weird feeling I was getting, the rational-thinking part of my brain, though in something of a minority, was warning me that I could be walking right into an extended Flint-and-Company practical joke.

If so, Flint was certainly an amazing actor, because right now he looked close to absolute panic. "N-no, really! I"—

And right on cue, the lights of the cafeteria went out, plunging us all into darkness.

The room went completely pitch-black right away, and all of the natural light that was streaming through the windows was extinguished. It was completely impossible to see anything at all. Looking back on the occurrence later, I was to conclude that the darkness must have been caused artificially or supernaturally—yes, I did say supernaturally-as a simple power outage taking place in a room with windows at noon still would have left everyone able to see around them. At the moment, though, I didn't have time for any of these thoughts.

Naturally, pandemonium broke loose almost instantly. Most of the students reacted more or less the way you'd expect a large room full of caffeinated high-schoolers to react to the lights being turned off suddenly. Shrieking, giggling, semi-derisive cheering and so on broke out, one or two cafeteria trays clattered to the floor, and I suspected that the more passionate sweethearts of that lunch period would soon sneak off and start kissing in one or the other of the corners, only to be totally humiliated whenever the lights came back on (where's a chaperone when you need one?).

None of them, however, had the odd sense of approaching doom that had been hanging over me all morning. I jumped up from the table like a rocket, my heart pounding, only to catch my foot on the bench and sprawl forward uncontrollably, landing face first on Flint's cafeteria tray. The refried beans tasted good, it was true, but doing a face-plant into them unexpectedly wasn't on my top ten list of fun ways to spend an afternoon.

Before I had time to begin shaking the salsa out of my hair, or even start complaining—and believe me, I can be pretty quick about that most of the time—Flint, who I'd expected to see laughing hysterically at my mishap, seized me violently by the arm and began literally dragging me out of the cafeteria. I wasn't about to argue, and I followed him as quickly as I could, my mind reeling from being so violently wrenched from its normal routine.

Within a few minutes of dodging tables, stumbling around using the walls for guidance, and tripping over what I think was Will and Jessica making out over by the vending machines (I called it, remember? My classmates can be so predictable sometimes), we burst through the cafeteria doors and stumbled around in the harsh electric lights, getting our bearings. I looked back for a moment towards where we'd come from, which gave me my first real, chilling clue that something much bigger than an odd chain of circumstances and a power outage was going on here. With the doors open there should've been enough light to see into the cafeteria, but beyond those double doors there was nothing but pure darkness, like the room had never been there at all.

I glanced back at Flint, who was clearly in an advanced stage of hysteria—at this point, I was getting there myself. He was shaking like crazy, his square-framed glasses were crooked and behind them something seemed to have changed in his eyes, and he'd gone disconcertingly pale (which unfortunately emphasized his acne and scraggly teenage beard).

After muttering to himself in an extremely unsettling fashion for a few moments—I caught phrases like "Why now...why them of all…before we even…Every time…maybe even all three?"—he inhaled sharply, clearly trying to get control of himself, and said, "Come on, Jason! We have to get you out of here right now!" And with that, he dashed off down the hallway.

I followed him. Now, I suppose you're wondering what on earth possessed me to go running off after a suspiciously behaving adolescent in what looked a lot like an already dangerous situation, to which I can only respond that you weren't there at the time. The gut feeling I had that something was very wrong had been getting stronger of late, and while I realize, looking back, that it might have seemed like an irresponsible decision to follow Flint, something just told me to trust him. Later, of course, I would be very glad I did.

Whatever our motivations, we sprinted down three hallways, turned left, and skidded to a halt on the freshly waxed floor tiles at what I recognized as Flint's locker, the halls echoing with our footsteps.

Flint held up his hands in a cautionary gesture. "O-okay, just stay here for a second! I have to go get Biagio!" And with that he was gone, so quickly it seemed more like he'd vanished into thin air rather than run off. I hardly gave this a second's thought, though, because a much stranger matter was currently occupying my mind.

Biagio d'Amore?

Once I've described him, perhaps you'll understand why he was absolutely the last person I would've chosen to be associated with any of this.

Biagio is a senior at our school, and one of the richest students ever to walk its halls. He's seventeen and at least six-three, and he has this wavy, flowing amber-colored hair that's right on the perfect median between a rich, honey-like gold and a shining, rusty auburn shade. Now, ordinarily, I hope you realize, I would NEVER describe another guy's appearance that poetically, but I swear he styles his hair for that exact effect. He's one of those unbelievably handsome-looking people—perfect teeth, perfect tan, dreamy eyes—and it probably won't surprise you to learn that he is an absolutely incurable flirt.

Biagio considers the morning wasted if he hasn't flirted with at least five girls by lunchtime, girls regularly get into fistfights before school dances over the rights to ask him, and he has a new girlfriend almost every week. He usually wears—I am not kidding about this—a golden tuxedo with a black cummerbund and matching rose pinned to the buttonhole, a look he sometimes completes by wearing sunglasses indoors. He was a pretty funny guy to observe, it was true, but again, I would never have guessed that he had anything to do with whatever was going on. He definitely seemed kind of unreal, it was true, but in a very different way.

For a few more minutes I stood there at Flint's locker, alternating between trying to get the last of the South-of-the-Border Special off of my face, staring detachedly at the floor tiles, and trying to piece together what on Earth was going on. Try as I might, though, I just couldn't find a logical explanation for any of it—Flint's sudden nervousness, which was completely out of character for him, the lights going out, or the increasingly odd feeling I was getting. In addition to the trepidation, I was beginning to get a sense of something familiar—a déjà vu kind of thing. I suddenly remembered getting the same feeling after the weird things I'd seen before, like the giant twins. Perhaps it was my reaction to adrenaline or something, I reasoned, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow connected to some really old memories, things I'd forgotten almost completely over the years. Shaking my head, I gratefully turned to more practical matters: the school remained quiet, so I supposed the administration was still trying to get the lights on back in the cafeteria.

Flint came running back into view from the history hallway, dragging a Biagio who looked about as confused as I felt behind him. Of course, on him it was a radiantly handsome kind of confusion, something along the lines of what I imagine you'd get if a boy-band star actually tried to think.

"What the heck is going on here, you two?" he complained, which sounded quite strange spoken in the affected faux-British accent he was into using in those days.

Flint gave an inarticulate noise of frustration and started doing his locker combination. "No time to explain now! We really need to get both of you out of here. Here"—he wrenched his locker door open, producing, of all things, three skateboards—"grab one, and let's go!"

As I've previously explained, the odd cocktail of emotions, memories, forebodings and mysterious circumstances I'd been experiencing that day had made me throw caution to the winds somewhat, enough to follow Flint here, but there was a limit to it all—a point where my common sense would kick back in—and I was pretty sure Flint had just found it. Besides, have I mentioned that I'm not the best athlete in the world? "Are you nuts? We can't just ride skateboards through the school hallways! What the heck are you even…"

At that moment, something occurred that would change my mind quickly, not to mention changing my life forever. An old lady emerged from the band room and slowly began walking in our direction. At first all I saw was the edge of one of those tennis-ball walkers protruding from the anteroom that connected to the music hallway, followed by the requisite wrinkled face topped with fluffy white hair and a hearing aid. Although I wasn't sure, I thought I recognized her from one of the charitable organizations that had a habit of meeting in our school—octogenarians wandering the hallways tended not to be all that uncommon. I glanced in her direction, then turned back to Flint and Biagio, ready to begin arguing about the whole skateboarding thing again. Then I heard a clattering noise, and looked back in time to see the old granny's walker get away from her and crash into the wall opposite.

I sighed, figuring that at this point perhaps the best thing to do would be just to get away from Flint and Biagio, decide that all the craziness had been nothing more than a coincidental chain of circumstances and head for my next class. I jogged over to the lady, figuring that I could help her over to the office first.

When she saw me, her eyes lit up—not metaphorically, but with what looked like actual flames or live coals. At an unbelievable speed, she dashed towards me, and I finally got a full view of her.

I think I screamed. My mind went blank, and a chill swept through my body, rooting me to the spot. I don't care how cliché that is; it's what happened. The whole world seemed to go out of focus for a second, and when it came back in, I wished it hadn't.

I couldn't believe my eyes, but there it was: the rest of the old lady was some sort of reptilian monster. Her eyes glowed like headlights, leathery draconian wings brushed the walls (knocking crooked a third-place award given to the band in a competition in Washington some six years previously), and horrible claws raked at the air where her hands should've been. The handbag she'd been carrying transformed into a whip glowing like molten lava, which she swung at me and rushed forward.

Biagio screamed something that I think was Italian for "OH MY GOD!" This did seem to be an appropriate response, but I, personally, was far too surprised and terrified to say anything.

"RUN!" Flint shouted unnecessarily. All of a sudden, the skateboards seemed like an awfully good idea after all. Biagio and I both grabbed one and raced down the hallway, Flint ahead of us and the whatever-it-may-have-been in hot pursuit.

Looking back on this experience, I can emphatically state that being chased through an enclosed space by a horrible monster wielding a flaming weapon is NOT a good time to learn to skateboard, but sheer terror has powers of its own. We screeched around a corner, with me going just as fast as my more experienced companions, and suddenly came to a short flight of stairs leading down to the next hallway. We had no choice but to jump it. As the stairs approached, I had exactly enough time to wonder, in the back of my mind, exactly how these crazy situations could even happen.

Being chased through an enclosed space by a horrible monster wielding a flaming weapon is really, really, really not a good time to learn to JUMP while skateboarding, but again, you learn to improvise. We sailed into the air in a split second of even greater terror than before. Flint shouted something in what sounded like Greek or Latin, making the situation seem even more unreal, but at the moment that was the least of my concerns. Fortunately, two of us made a perfect landing and sailed down the science hallway at increased velocity.

Unfortunately, I was the one who didn't. Not surprisingly, I sprawled in a very uncoordinated heap on the ground, my skateboard clattering onto the tiles beside me. Luckily, our pursuer had fallen behind a bit, but a bone-rattling screech echoing through the building told me I still didn't have much time. I leaped back on the board and sped towards Flint and Biagio, thankfully catching up before the monster erupted into the hallway in a mass of flame, rushing towards us like a jet. At least, as much as "thankfully" can apply to a situation like that.

Within what seemed like seconds—it was hard to tell for sure, time passes oddly when your life's in danger—we'd arrived at a door leading out of the school. We would be out of there in seven seconds…six…five…

The monster screeched again and flicked its flaming whip onto the floor, which readily erupted into a line of fire blocking our path. Before we jumped again, I had time for exactly two regrets: that the janitors had chosen this of all weeks to wax the floor, and that I still hadn't learned to jump a skateboard properly.

Three…two…one…

There was a loud crash and an interminable moment of searing heat, and the next second was one of utter confusion.

I cautiously opened my eyes, noting that I was no longer moving, and found myself staring at a bright patch of sidewalk. The cuffs of my jeans seemed to be smoking, and I did a semi-voluntary little two-step trying to put them out. Something in front of me barked loudly.

Blinking, I looked up to see, of all things, a black dog the size of a garbage truck. Its eyes were a rusty nocturnal red, its fur was thick and matted with a white, roughly triangular patch on its forehead, and it was thumping its tail happily on the ground with enough force to cause a small windstorm. I suddenly noticed that the cuffs of my jeans seemed to be smoking, apparently from the little altercation with the monster a second before, but the dinosaur-sized canine held most of my attention.

We seemed to have gone right out of the frying pan and into the fire, but Flint ran right up to the drooling monster and clambered onto its back, pulling Biagio after him. "Come on, Jason! It's your only chance!" he shouted.

I hesitated for a moment, but then the creature that had been following us burst out of the doors and headed straight for me. That was enough to convince me. Besides, the morning had been so weird that by this point I was ready to believe that a giant black dog the size of a Kodiak bear could be a friendly ally with no problem. Once you start being that impulsive, it's kind of hard to go back to normal quickly.

I clambered onto the gigantic dog's back and clung as tightly to its hide as I could. "Go, Mrs. O'Leary!" Flint shouted, and the thing got slowly to its feet, nearly pitching us off, and began loping down the sidewalk, gathering speed.

By the end of the block we were galloping along—as a cat person, I'd never even known a dog could gallop- the wind whistling behind us. Our ride barked, and a shadow spread across the ground unaccountably, seeming to make the pavement just vanish beneath it—just one more impossibility on the indescribably strange ride of that morning. The dog dove into the shadow like a golden retriever after a stick, pulling us along with it. The reptilian thing behind us—was it a harpy?—blew a stream of flame after us, but it was snuffed out like a candle in a billow of blue-gray smoke as the shadowy nothingness closed over our heads.

And with that, lunch period ended—with a gigantic, spectral black dog (named Mrs. O'Leary, apparently) pulling myself, a saxophone player with more than a few secrets to hide, and a guy in a suit and corsage into the never-ending darkness.

Welcome one and all to the Rising Stars! For those who don't know I'm Maecenas, one of the many wonderful writers of . I have one other story on the site thus far, a Pokemon tournament story called Pokѐtopia: Gathering of the Heroes. Feel free to check it out!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. I plan for this to be the first in a full Jason Williams series, just like the Rick Riordan originals, so I'd love to hear your reviews, questions and comments on how it all begins. Jason is a character very similar to myself, so by reading it you should get a fairly good idea of what my personality is like. Also, this is my first time writing in the first-person, so let me know how I did!

I'm extremely busy and can't give any definite time for the next chapter to appear, but I've already started it and since I have several vacation days forthcoming, you can look forward to it before too long.

Vale! Maecenas out. And welcome back to Camp Half-Blood!