I woke up the next day refreshed and opted for a cold shower; the water washing off any leftover soreness.

I sat at the Cabin 11 table. Breakfast was as extravagant as the dinner; nymphs floated around serving the dishes: pancakes, cereals, juice, and waffles with egg and sausages. Same as last night, everyone offered a piece of their food to the fire, uttering prayers to their parents. I just threw a waffle without a prayer.

I sat down next to Luke. "So, how are you holding up?" Luke asked.

"I am good." I smiled at him.

He smiled back at me, "It takes some time to get adjusted to..." he looked around and shrugged, "Well... all this, it's good that you're adjusting fine."

I nodded at him. "Yeah, it's a lot, but everyone has been accommodating."

"Can I try out some classes today?" I asked as I took a bite of my waffle.

He looked at me, almost excited, "Yeah. Sure. I thought you'd postpone it after Lee's warning" He let out a small laugh.

I grinned at him. "I don't scare easy."

I wondered how much I should tell Luke about myself. He seemed trustworthy enough, but Chiron's words about not belonging here kept me from revealing too much about myself. Besides, it seemed fun to try out the various activities around the camp, but as soon as I looked up from my plate, intense gray eyes again bore down on me.

The girl didn't seem threatening, but she kept a continuous watch on me. I leaned towards Luke. "What's her deal?"

I pointed with my eyes. "She keeps staring at me."

Luke looked at the girl and smiled, a sudden gleam in his eyes. "That's Annabeth." Annabeth seemed to turn red as Luke smiled at her and went back to fiddling with her food. "Don't worry about her. She wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for."

"An omen- like I'm gonna bring her some bad luck or something?"

"Nothing like that. For her, be able to go on a quest." Luke looked up to meet my eyes. "Annabeth could not go on a quest yet until… somebody special came to the camp. So she likes to observe them."

He paused as if telling me this made him uncomfortable. It seemed like he was close to Annabeth.

"I'll introduce her to you after breakfast."

After the breakfast, I rotated between the outdoor activities. The first class was archery with Chiron and not be cocky, but I was pretty decent at that. I wasn't hitting the dead center, but I didn't miss the target either.

Chiron told me that if I practiced, I could turn out to be a good archer.

Lee suggested I could be a child of Apollo and offered to ask one of his siblings to help me later, "I'm not the best at archery, but if you need healing, I'm your go-to guy."

The next was wrestling, which wasn't my cup of tea. As soon as the match started, I was lying on the mat flat on my back, flipped by one of the mean kids from table 4, Mark, which made sense cause if you put a 50-pound kid against a buff guy who seemed to be made just of muscles, what will you expect?

But it was still less humiliating than foot racing as I lost to trees, literal trees. I guess not literally, but what are you gonna call wood nymphs? They are trees.

The next was the Camp Forge, where mostly the children of Hephaestus forged their weapons. One girl there, Nyssa, helped me to forge a sword, which ended in a disaster as I heated the iron way too much and it just melted, burning the floor, which gave Nyssa a wonderful laugh and me anxiety as I almost burned my foot.

Next, I met with Luke who introduced me to Annabeth as he promised.

"This is Annabeth Chase." He gestured towards me. "And that's Zariya."

I gave her a nod. "Now that you know who I am…no matter how charming I look, I hope you can come talk to me face to face rather than staring at me."

She rolled her eyes. "I needed to keep an eye on you. Besides.." She came near my face. "I don't think you're what you seem to be."

It was my turn to roll my eyes as she continued, "Your brother, on the other hand…"

I cut her off. "He's not my brother." I understood why she thought that, but I didn't want to hear anyone badmouth him. I somehow felt protective of him. It was probably just cause he saved my life. He could have just left me alone, but he decided against it even after he lost his mother.

Her gaze hardened, her grey eyes clouding over. She muttered something about there being two and then just glared at me, "You have Ancient Greek lessons at 4."

Then turned towards Luke, "I'll see you later." Her voice completely changed.

"She'll come around." Luke gave me a soft look. "Now, let's go to the armory. Pick up a weapon for you."

He guided me into a metal shed; it had a variety of swords, bows and arrows, axes, spears, and a lot of other stuff. I decided to just go with the weapon I was most familiar with and picked up a sword.

Luke immediately advised me, "That seems a little heavy for you. You will have trouble balancing with that." He picked out another sword. "Here, try this."

I could feel the change as soon as I held the sword. It was lighter and felt a lot easier to use. It still wasn't as perfect a fit as my magic swords were, but it worked. I looked at Luke with admiration. It was really impressive. "This is way better. Thanks."

He smiled. "Don't get excited just yet, we have a sparing match now."

I smiled too. "That's even more the reason to get excited, right?"

We went to a big circular arena where the whole Cabin 11 was gathered.

We started with basic exercises of slashing and stabbing, which came easily to me. I was in between Connor and Travis. "Are you sure you haven't used a sword before?" Connor asked.

"I never said I haven't," I smirked at him, and the glint of mischief in his eyes increased.

"I guess you didn't." They laughed softly, making eye contact with each other. They were not up to any good.

Then we started dueling, and Luke became my partner since I was new. Travis warned me, "Be careful, Luke's the best swordsman in the camp in the last 300 years."

This was the moment I regretted talking smack to Luke. I was no longer excited about the duel; it was nerve-wracking. I had used a sword to protect myself on various occasions over the last few weeks, but I wasn't sure I could take on a swordsman who was that good.

The duel started slow. I was mostly just defending against Luke's blows.

"You gotta attack too. You're not gonna win just by defending." Luke advised.

Then the duel started getting faster, Luke was quick on his feet, dodging my blows, I swiped at him, and he deflected my sword and pushed me forward, I slipped forward using my sword to balance back and turned out, "Think about what defense the person you're fighting has to your strike first. Don't just attack without a thought."

I nodded at Luke. It felt like hours of me deflecting Luke's attack and getting thrust around. I wasn't feeling balanced. One of my hands felt empty. I was drenched in sweat and my face felt hot when Luke called for a break.

Connor gave a bottle of ice-cold water. "You're better than a thought. Travis just lost 10 bucks." He laughed.

"Are you complimenting me right now?" I smirked at him, and he rolled his eyes playfully, "Shut up. I take it back."

I smiled and drank the water. The water seemed to move through my body, cooling down and relaxing all my muscles that had been aching. My mind got clearer, and I felt powerful.

The next round of the duel started. Luke announced, "For this round, just focus on disarming your opponent."

I started strong, thrusting my sword forward around Luke's sword hilt. He was a lot swifter though and easily dodged most of my attack. The ache in my arm from holding the sword for too long, the movement of my arms and legs, the movement of the sword, and the formation of strategy felt way too familiar as if I had done that hundreds of times before. It almost felt easy.

Then it happened. I hit Luke's sword with force, making him stagger backward, which gave me a chance to twist his blade with the flat of my sword. His sword dropped to the floor with a clang. The whole arena seemed to stop and become eerily quiet.

Luke was the first one to break the silence when he laughed. "That was great. "

He patted my back. "You got some impressive skills in you, kid."

Everyone's eyes were on me and my ears became extremely hot, but I felt a kind of proud getting complimented by such a skilled swordsman.

I went to find Annabeth at 4 for the Greek lessons, but she was nowhere to be found. I decided to stop looking for her and instead go to the canoe and started walking towards it when I hit my head on something hard and fell on my butt.

As soon as my butt hit the ground, a girl who was about a foot taller than me yanked me back up by my shirt collar, making me feel limp in my legs with her black eyes. "Watch where you are going, newbie."

"Hey." I blurted out, "Sorry about that. I really should look at where I'm walking. Won't happen again. I'll even give you a demo of how well I'll walk from now on if you let my feet touch the ground." I let out a cracked laugh and soon my poor butt got the blunt force of being thrown back down.

She laughed, towering over me. "You are quite compliant."

I didn't wanna fight with a kid here. If something bad happened, I would be kicked out, and I was determined to prevent anything like that from happening.

"Where were you going?" She asked.

"To the canoe," I told her as I got up and cleaned the dirt off my pants. My poor butt will surely be sore tomorrow.

The girl smiled a cunning smile. Dang, I got myself in trouble now.

"I'll go with you then, see the demo of how well you walk."

For a minute my mind didn't realize that I had blurted that out in fear and trust me when I say this my dear readers, it still haunts my dream, at random nights at 3 a.m.

But It was too late to do anything else, so I decided to just go along. What could be the worst thing they do?

"What you don't like my offer?" The girl barked at me, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"No." I exclaimed." I'm sure it will be fun with more people."

It was the most uncomfortable walk of my life. I kept worrying that she would trip me or push me down or something, but it didn't happen... until we started to climb on the canoe. As soon as I sat down on the Canoe, the giant mountain of muscle thought it would be fun to flip it over. I mean, she flipped the whole canoe over.

I felt myself go deeper into the water, my surroundings getting darker, but I wasn't scared. It felt calmer than being with that rotten girl. I was floating in the water and it was the most at peace I have been... wait I'm floating? Why wasn't I drowning? I was about 80% sure it wasn't a dream. I should get out of here.

I started swimming towards the surface. The girl was laughing her heart out near the dock.

I felt my face getting hotter until all I could see was her laughing form, my ears were ringing and the next thing I knew was I was standing on the dock where the girl was and the 6 ft Sasquatch was on the ground her dark eyes glaring up at me, but I was a flick of fear in there which satisfied me to the extent even the chocolate that Lee gave me yesterday didn't.

She huffed out, getting up and storming towards me.

"Clarisse!" a voice boomed, "That's enough." It was Lee.

Lee stared down at Clarisse, who was fearless of him. I didn't take him as a confrontational kind of guy, but he was standing his ground even with Clarisse directing all her anger toward him.

Clarisse huffed," Whatever. I'll get a chance to pulverize you all soon." She stormed off.

I sighed," Thanks." I looked up at Lee.

"That's fine." He smiled at me.

He was perfect as a physician. He always felt so warm. "You aren't hurt anywhere, right?"

I shook my head, "Not really. I almost drowned, though."

Lee laughed, "Yeah, you were on the edge of the dock."

"No, I fell into the lake."

Lee blinked at me, looking almost lost. "You're not even wet."

What the heck? He was right. I wasn't wet. I was sure I had fallen into the water. Was it a dream? It felt too real to be just a dream.

"I don't know."

I looked at Lee, who seemed just as confused. "I did fall into the water," I spoke softly.

Lee came out of his daze with my words," It's okay, we'll figure it out. For now, let's get you back to the cabin."

That, my lovely readers, was the first time I had used my powers without even knowing about it.