Yay Chapter 20! Twenty whole chapters!

Well, enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and I do not own the Heroes of Olympus. All rights go to Rick Riordan.

XX Siege

(Luke)

The invading armies backed off after their first aggressive onslaught. They were unable to break through our defenses. However, they immediately began siege operations. From a distance, our people in the watchtower could see them building catapults and a wall to circle our camp and cut us all off from the rest of the world. Sure, this was the only place in the worlds with demigods, but the land that our camp was on was not fertile land, so we could not grow crops. We depended on stocked up food, and food imported from some companies. Now that they had cut off that supply, we would slowly starve. Siege is very effective against non-self-sufficient places, as they will weaken from the hunger. We had about one week's worth of food stored up. The only thing that we could do was organize raiding parties. Annabeth took charge of organizing groups to charge out, break through the enemy siege lines, and get food. She was good at it, but on the other side, George Washington was training his men to stop such charges. You could see the preparations they were making, and both Annabeth and Athena's despair at their inability to come up with a plan to get food. It scared me, and I could tell it also scared a lot of the demigods who knew Annabeth well, because none of us had ever seen her not be able to come up with a plan. The fact that Athena couldn't was even more shocking. She was the goddess of wisdom and she should be able to come up with an idea. She did, but it seemed that somebody was helping the enemy. We figured out who that was in a short while. A scout reported back to camp that Gaea had gotten enough power to bring Enceladus out of the volcano that Jason and Zeus had stuck him in. He was now in charge of the stratagem of the enemy. That was the reason Athena couldn't do much. Enceladus was created to counter her. He was supposed to shut down all the ideas that she had. Now, it seemed that it was working. Therefore, the entire camp was helping Annabeth with her plans.

I was at the headquarters camp with Nico, who had managed to become more easy-going around me. He was the only one besides Annabeth who treated me as a complete equal, not somebody who had betrayed them earlier. We talked about one strategy, which involved building a bunch of battering rams and smashing through the enemy.

"You think that this will work?" I asked.

"I don't know, it's hard to tell. It really depends on whether or not the people carrying them get too tired or not." Nico replied.

Just then, Annabeth entered, looking frazzled. I felt guilty showing her another plan after how much she had already done, and the day wasn't even close to being over. When she looked over the plan, she pointed out a few flaws like she always did.

"Oh, those battering rams aren't designed well enough, they have to be lighter or the wielders will never be able to carry it AND ram it through enemy lines."

Meanwhile, I was staring at her. It had been a long time since I'd seen her, and even with her as tired as she was with dark circles underneath her eyes that showed how much sleep she was getting each night, which was probably less than three hours or so, she was still looking beautiful. I wish that I hadn't betrayed her when I got hoodwinked by Kronos. She had lost her trust in me.

"Are you ok, you're looking at me funny?" Annabeth's change of tone jerked me back to the present.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just thinking of stuff."

"Memories?" she asked.

"Yeah, stuff like that. The old times, with Thalia, you and me."

I hoped that she still loved that time, more than she loved Percy at least. I resented Percy a little, even though I knew it was wrong. He had done a lot for her, and she was the one who had expressed love first.

I shook my head from these thoughts. I was getting as bad as a child of Aphrodite with these love thoughts.

"Yeah, they were great." Annabeth said. There was a note of accusation in her voice. I couldn't really blame her. I wished we could go back to those times when it was just the three of us.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For everything that happened during the Titan War."

"You were hoodwinked, I can't blame you. And you did help us in the end, by sacrificing yourself. I'm not going to blame you for anything you did."

"Thanks… but I still feel bad."

"You made a mistake." She said firmly.

"Still…"

She put a finger to my lips.

"Don't say it. Just let go of it. We don't blame you and that should be good enough for you."

I nodded, even though I wasn't completely reassured. Her next statement shocked me.

"We're going to be on the battlefield in about two days. We've made all the preparations. We're going to have to fight soon. Do you still have your old skill at swordfighting?"

I did, but the fact that we were going to fight in two days was shocking. I thought that we still needed food. After all, our rations are short.

"Don't we need to break through the lines to get food first?"

"We're using the food shortage as a way to make our people fight harder. With the knowledge that if they win, they will live, and if they lose, they will die, the demigods will fight harder whereas Gaea's monsters and demigods don't have the incentive to fight as hard as we will."

"That's a terribly cruel strategy. You're going to tell the demigods that this battle is life or death?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to tell them."

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Luke's back, you know what that means.

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-Rafan2421