Wow, this is the longest chapter in this story! :D Hope you'll like it!

Happy reading!

Kayden

We had a monster class lesson, when Will was taken into a counselor meeting. Right after he'd cleared off, everyone in our group started asking for more info from each other and our teacher. Since no one had any answers, we just had to wait for the meeting and our lesson to end. So, of course, the normally pretty interesting lesson felt like it would never end.

In monster class, we learned about different monster species, and how to kill them (or actually just send them to Tartarus). Today our topic were sea monsters, which actually wasn't my favorite subject at all. The first monster I'd seen, had been a sea serpent. And from that day on, my life never returned to normal. It had been when I was ten, and we were on a holiday in Florida - me, my mom and my little siblings, Nathan and Kylie. We were on the beach, having a picnic, and then, suddenly, that huge creature plunged out from the water... That memory still gave me chills.

I sat down at my desk, listening as our today teacher, a najad from the Canoing lake, gave us a little too detailed description of a sea serpent's predation methods. When the lesson finally ended, I left towards the Apollo cabin with my siblings. We hoped for the meeting to be already over, but apparently it wasn't. Will hadn't come back yet. The situation had be pretty bad, if the conference took so long.

Fortunately, our lessons for today were done, so we could to whatever we wanted to. I only claimed my bow and arrows from the cabin, then headed towards the archery range with Lyn. Jessica said she'd go to the swording arena, because she believed that the children of Ares were there. About anyone else would refuse to go there for that reason. Well, there are many kinds of nutcases. And actually she held the field pretty well in a close combat, even against the children of Ares. In fact, Clarisse might have been the only camper, who could sometimes return her to the surface. And maybe also Annabeth, Percy and Jason... but non of the last tree were now at the arena ready to kick her ass.

Soon we reached the archery range, but there was no space. Apparently, also the other campers had wanted something to do, while waiting for the conference to end. I even saw some children of Aphrodite on the range. Normally, they rather used their time staring at a mirror or doing something else that was more typical to them. I watched, as some of their arrows flew a couple of feet, then dropped on the ground. Some of the kids couldn't even adjust an arrow onto the bowstring. I wondered, what they done all the archery lessons.

I winced, as Lyn suddenly pulled an arrow from her quiver, and with lightning-fast moves, shot it to a pine tree, which stood in the timberline. The arrow remained sticking out firmly from the tree trunk. Oh no, not again... This had happened before. Never with really good effects. In a second, a nymph in a dark green kiton appeared from the tree. She stepped angrily towards us and shook her fist, starting out a long litany of extraordinarily imaginative swearwords. I quickly exclaimed:"Sorry!" and we cleared off hastily. You could never know about nymphs, and I really didn't want to be turned into a sunflower or anything like that.

"Lyn, I think we should go somewhere else. This place is full", I pointed out.

Lyn glared at me angrily. "Yeah, I can see that."

"Shall we go to the arena? We could check out, how Jessica is doing with the Ares' kids", I suggested.

We walked to the swording arena unusually silent, and found out, that Jessica wasn't there. Instead of that, we found her sitting alone in the stand of the chariot racetrack.

"Jessica, what are you doing here? We saw the Ares gang at the arena..." I fell silent as I saw her look. "What?" I asked.

Jessica pulled her sword slowly from it's sheath, and stared at me. I backed up a few steps.

"Jess... Come on", Lyn sighed. "What's the fun in the tournament, if you now kill him? Just think of it that way. Everyone needs something to cheer them up - no offense, Kayden."

I shrugged, blankly. Jessica was thoughtfully smoothing her sword's blade with her forefinger, as if admiring it's beauty. Well, sure it was a fine sword with that golden hilt and finger guard and all... Apollo's gift to her. Though now it just reminded me of the Romans, whose weapons were gold. What was the name of their metal? Celestial gold? No.

"Why did I get this sword?" Jessica asked, looking neither of us in the eyes. "I mean... why me instead of Will?"

"Is someone a bit jealous to Will?" Lyn teased. "Since he's the director, and you're not?"

It really looked like it hit the sore spot. Normally, Lyn would've be in a tight corner by now. Now Jessica didn't even give her a glare. She just lifted her gaze and glanced somewhere over Lyn's head. "Angelica should've got Iliachtída, not I. She was a better warrior than I've ever been. A better hero. She saved me, but I didn't manage to save her." Her voice was full of bottled-up pain.

I sat down on the stone stair next to her, and placed my hand on her shoulder. She didn't shake it off. "Dad wouldn't have given it to you, if he wanted someone else to have it. Angelica was a great hero, but so are you. Stop imagining, that your life-meaning is to be her perfect clone. No one is comparing you to her all the time. You're the only one who does that. Besides, it's not a shame to play second fiddle to the number one child of Apollo in this generation. Maybe even to the best ever." It really worried me to see her like this. Some people maybe thought, that she was just arrogant, but it wasn't that simple. It was more that she couldn't accept having any failures, and sometimes she really had zero sympathy toward herself.

Jessica, who had placed her gaze back to her sword, grasped my hand, which was still on her shoulder, and squeezed it. She looked me into the eyes and managed to grin in a way, that looked more like a grimace. There was still the pained and dispirited look in her green eyes, but there weren't any tears. Jessica never weeped.

I touched lightly her sword, Iliachtída. The name was Greek, and it meant 'a sunbeam'. It was engraved on the gold hilt, (ηλιαχτίδα) and for some reason, the letters always seemed to shimmer. Apollo had given it to her by himself, when he'd arrived in Mount Olympus after overthrowing Typhon. That was when I saw my father for the first time. The sword was magnificent and fitted to Jessica perfectly, and I knew, I knew, that it was really been made for her. I just didn't know, how to make also her believe it.

"And Jessica, remember, that whenever you want to, you can always challenge Will. You would beat him for sure, and by that you'd claim his place as the director of our cabin! No problemo." I smiled at her, kidding, and she couldn't help but to smirk weakly. I patted her shoulder. "Okay, how about, if you now go to the arena, and beat up the Ares gang? I'm sure, that they'll come to the conclusion, that you now how to handle your sword, and at the same time, you can also parade to us. Don't you think so, Lyn?"

"Huh?" Lyn, who was sitting on the stair below us, balancing an arrow on her fingertip, looked like she was completely in her own thoughts. Then she tried to turn to look at us, which was too much for her concentration. The arrow dropped on her own toes. "Ouch!"

Jessica smirked, this time more successfully, then fell on her knees next to Lyn. "Are you OK?" She asked her.

"I guess so", Lyn muttered between her teeth. "It would be pretty lame to go to the infirmary and say, that I dropped an arrow on my own toes."

I agreed in that. Fortunately, Lyn was wearing her skate shoes, so there was no serious damage.

-LINE BREAK-

Jessica had that kind of good feature, that even if she was completely dispirited for a moment, she got over it in a few minutes if she got something to do. That's what happened again. First, she wanted to go and check, if Will had already returned from the meeting, and as we reached the porch of our cabin, there was the typical expression on her face, which she always had when she was taking care of important or/and dangerous stuff. She strided the stairs up and entered the cabin, me and Lyn at her heels.

The was no one in the cabin. It wasn't a surprise, considering that Will apparently hadn't returned yet. In front of me, Jessica sighed in frustration and slumped onto her bed, which was the nearest one from the door. The Apollo cabin was oblong. The walls, the drapes round the beds, and about everything else in the cabin was golden. There were beds on the both sides of the room, end next to each of them, there was a large storage box for the camper's personal stuff. The wide aisle in the middle led to the tail of the cabin, were was the weapon rack full of different kinds of bows, swords and other weapons. There were also a bookcase, a small table for doing homework etc. and some other stuff for killing time. Right in the back, there was the bathroom - maybe the one and only thing in the cabin seven, which wasn't gold.

I walked to leave my bow and quiver on my bed, and glanced up at the grand golden clock, which was forged into the form of the sun. It was 4:30 PM, so there would still be an hour before the dinner. "So... what shall we do?" I asked the girls.

"Could we now go to the arena?" Lyn asked from the doorway.

Jessica shrugged. "I'm fine with that. Kayden?"

"Okay", I said, and picked up my sword from the top of my storage box.

Lyn found her sword, too, and we started walking toward the arena.

I thought of Jessica, how close she'd been with Angelica and how she'd lost her. They had grown up together, shared the same childhood home... The camp was now my home, but sometimes when I thought of my old home, my home in Canada, similar guilty filled me. I hadn't seen my family for four years, and I had no clue how they were doing. But I had had to leave. If I'd stayed with them, I'd endangered them. I had thought I'd visit them after the Titan war, when it would be safer, but now, there were other problems. and there was always the possibility, that they wouldn't even remember me. The mist could've made them forget that I'd ever been part of their family.

Soon we reached the arena, and at least the half of the campers seemed to be there. There were many fights in action at the same time - Connor Stoll against some son of Ares, Briana from the Athena cabin with one of her brothers (I didn't remember his name) against Nyssa and Shane from the cabin nine, and lots of more fighting campers. In the stand, there were many other campers waiting for their turn and cheering at their favorites on the arena.

We climbed to the stand and sat down in to a free spot next to three children of Athena. Alex, a girl with a long, black hair and brown eyes turned to look at us. "Kayden! We were just wondering, who would we like to pick for a fight. Andrew, Haley, what do you think?"

Andrew shrugged and grinned at me mischievously. "Fine for me."

"Can't wait for tomorrow?" Haley ridiculed. "Well, I guess we can beat you up tomorrow and today."

Jessica raised her eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Well..." Alex considered, "I don't know about you, but those two are gonna be... well, in a pretty bad shape."

"You sure? I think you should give that an other thought", Lyn blustered and wagged her sword.

I happened to look at the direction of the Big House, and noticed, that a crowd of teens was coming out from the rec room's door at the moment. "Look!" I exclaimed, and pointed towards them.

Everybody at close range turned to look at where I pointed. The campers who fought on the arena left each other alone and headed towards the camp directors. The whole stand emptied, as everyone went after them. We would finally get to know, what had happened with the Romans.

So, did you like it? Remember you can always, ALWAYS review ;)

And if the next chapter takes a bit longer, please mind, that I'm busy! Usually, I have most time for this story in the weekends, but this weekend I have a basketball tournament in an other city, so I can't write. But I try to continue as soon as possible!

-Patroness Of Athens