The last day of the summer session was rapidly approaching and with the last week of summer came some last minute camp wide events; Three legged races, an archery competition, gladiatorial combat, and an arts and crafts contest, all performed with a well organized machine of cabin-mates.

The winning cabin would receive laurel wreaths and their cabin's banners hung in the dining pavilion during the bead ceremony and the following dinner.

Currently, it was neck and neck between Cabins 6 and 10, both with five wins under their belts. Cabin 9, had four wins, Cabin 4, had three wins, Cabins 5 and 11 both had two wins a piece, Cabin 7 had one win, and rounding it out was Cabin 12 with a big, fat, goose egg. Which was really saying something since Mr. D was one of the judges. Granted Cabin 12 only had one camper...but you had to think that Dionysus would cut Charlotte a little slack.

The campers were currently on the statuary portion of the arts and crafts contest, each tasked to use any materials and any tricks they wanted to make a statue in honor of the gods. Each group worked hidden behind a set of curtains, keeping their efforts hidden from the judges, and more importantly, their fellow campers.

"Now hold the ladder steady Helen!" Otto said from far below Alexa. The youngest camper from Cabin 9 stood on top of a ladder, blow torch in one hand, the other covered by a leather glove that usually would be way too thin for metal work. On her face was a pair of safety goggles with the blueprint of their sculpture superimposed on the right hand side of the tinted plastic.

"How's it going up there, Lex?" Otto called from below. Otto had started calling her Lex a few days previous, a sure sign that her big brother was warming up to her.

"Adding the clockwise swirl to section T-31 now!" Alexa called back without looking, her eyes focused on the bit of bronze before her. The blue flame washed over the orange-red metal, bringing the point she was working on into a higher and higher temperature range. Finally, just as it began to glow on its own accord, Alexa turned the torch off, reached out with her gloved hand and twisted, replacing the torch with a small pick from her tool belt. Using her power to keep the metal red hot she lightly notched the metal, giving the finger sized piece she was working on an appearance not unlike the spiral of a conch shell.

After leaching the heat from the metal,Alexa began to climb down from her perch.

"Good job!" Otto said brightly. "Think we're ready for the final assembly!"

What they had made didn't make a lot of sense to Alexa. The bottom of the statue was a standard marble pedestal, like all the cabins had been given, but above that she and her siblings had made a triangular plate, stretched so that the three corners were flush with the pedestal beneath. Each corner of the triangle was marked with a different Greek letter; The odd backwards five that was Zeta, the overly long n shape of Eta, and the mathematical symbol Pi.

Above this triangle was a track, similar to something you might see on a train set, though a bit more sturdy. This track was perfectly round, and went around the circumference of the pedestal. Above this was the sculpture itself and...well...to Alexa it looked like an actual bronze sculpture threw up. The amoeba shaped blob of bronze was a complicated criss cross of bands, twists, points and rounded edge. It was certainly impressive in an 'what an incredible mess' sort of way, but it certainly didn't look like any god she was familiar with. Regardless, Otto had been insistent and meticulous in its construction. So she assumed it had some sort of hidden meaning.

Seeming to read her puzzled expression, Otto smiled mischievously at his youngest sister. "Don't worry Lex, this'll blow the judge's pants off."

"Two of them don't wear pants." Alexa pointed out. "And I don't want to see that side of Mr. D"

Otto chuckled, but before he could answer the voice of one of the judges went through the Arts and Crafts building.

"5 minute warning campers! Put the finishing touches on everything " The speaker was a dryad, tall and thin, with brilliantly red hair and a simple white chiton. She sat at the shaded judges' table, with Chiron seated in the middle, and Mr. D seated on the far end. Out of all of them, she was the most animated and cheerful, Chiron was smiling but far more reserved and Mr. D just seemed to be bored.

"Alright team! Final assembly!" Otto said, clapping his hands. It took only one of the remaining five minutes to complete, and most of that was testing. The team stood back and waited for the final bell.

"Alright, campers." Chiron said, standing from the platform. "We're going to be fair about this. We have a deck of cards here with the numbers of your cabins. When we draw your numbers we will come and judge your sculpture."

"Wake me when you finish with that" Mr. D said with a yawn, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. "I already have my ratings for the demigods."

Chiron sighed and gave the pudgy god a slight nudge with his elbow. Mr. D took several more of these nudges before he finally conceded. "If you aren't going to allow me to nap then I might as well."

Chiron smiled and the nymph, Ruby, giggled softly behind her hands. Mr. D shot her a look and the giggling stopped at once. "R-right, lets see who's first, shall we?"

Ruby plucked the first card from the deck and revealed to the waiting campers the bright yellow sun on the face side. "Alright Cabin 7! You're up first!"

"Y'all might as well pack it in! Cause we got ourselves the best statue right here!" Said the Apollo cabin's counselor. Chuck was a tall boy, sun tanned, lean, with dark brown hair and an aphibal smile. So far as Alexa knew, the boy was from somewhere in Texas. Like the showman that all of Apollo's kids were, he waved his arm dramatically at the curtained off section. "Nymphs, centaurs and gods of all ages, I give ya, the Music Man!"

The curtains fell away, revealing a vaguely humanoid figure on the group's pedestal; Its skin was made of the wooden bars form a xylophone, its hair was the metallic strings of a guitar with two small curves sticking through, the ends of bass clarinets made into horns. The fingers on its hands were flutes Alexa couldn't identify, the hands were made of harmonicas and the arms were fretted and ringed with more strings. The two legs from the hips down to the knees were made of saxophones, from the knee down each leg was a clarinet, and each foot ended in a drum. The face of the being was a sort of funnel, which Alexa quickly realized was exactly like one from an old phonograph.

"This here sculpture, we dedicate to our father Apollo, as well as the lost god, Pan. We tried to make the sculpture in his likeness." Chuck said with a smile.

"Hey Chuck! Ya got some brown on your nose!" A voice from the crowd of campers called. Chuck grinned good naturedly and took a step back to let the judges look at the statue without obstruction. After a moment of consideration from each, they came to their verdict; Chiron gave the statue a 7, Ruby gave it a 9, and Mr. D gave it a 5. Cabin 7 was on the board with 21 points.

It was Chiron's turn to draw. Plucking the top most card from the deck, he showed the assembly of demigods the picture of the crossed sickle and stock of wheat. "Our next entry will be coming from Cabin 4" He announced.

All heads turned towards pavilion four. Their counselor, Nina, stepped forward. Nina might've been the oldest of Demeter's children they had at camp, but she was also the shortest of her siblings; At a solid 5 feet tall, her red hair and freckles made several people wonder if she were a lost leprechaun. She smiled at the crowd.

"We dedicate this statue" Nina said, her voice sweet as honey and musical as a bird song. "To our mother, Demeter. We call it, Khrysaoros, and you'll see why."

The curtain fell and to the shock of exactly no one, they all saw that Cabin 4's chosen medium was plant life. The dark wood of the statue was carved (or equally likely, grown) into the shape of a woman of about eight feet in height. Although she was beautiful, she also looked pretty fierce, with a frown that said 'the next thing that ticks me off is going to get sliced in half'. She wore a crown made of corn leaves, her dress was made of ivy woven so tightly together that the leaves seemed to overlap like chainmail. What was most impressive, however, was the scythe she held in her right hand. The shaft of the gardening tool was made of a different kind of wood than the statue itself, darker, closer to black than brown, and the blade of several different yellow flowers. Alexa recognized tulips, marigolds, and one large sunflower just to name a few.

"Oh my, that is certainly impressive" Chrion said with a smile.

"I suppose." Mr. D said lazily "If you like that sort of thing. Personally I would've used grape vines."

Thunder boomed in the clear skies over head. Mr. D rolled his eyes before looking up and addressing the blank expanse of blue. "I am not going against my punishment, I'm just expressing my opinion. Don't get your toga in a twist."

Ruby, for her part, seemed speechless, looking over the statue. When the judges gave their scores, Mr. D gave the cabin a 6, Chiron gave them a 7, and Ruby a solid 10, putting Demeter's cabin ahead of Apollo's by two points.

And so it went, one by one more cards were pulled from the deck and more campers presented their statues; Cabin 4 made a statue of (hopefully) animal bones dedicated to the twins Deimos and Phobos, Cabin 10 had doused one of their campers in gold body paint and put her on the pedestal just so she could claim she was the closest thing mortals had to their mother, Cabin 11 had made an enormous origami tortoise, one of their father's sacred animals, which almost blew away in a stiff breeze seconds after the unveiling.

Finally, it was time for Cabin 9's unveiling. Otto stepped forward.

"Our sculpture is a little odd." He began "Traditional building materials are not used in the same way. But I think you'll all find it...enlightening. We call this piece 'Shadows of the Big Three'"

The curtain came down the statue was revealed, and there was dead silence in the crowd. The silence stretched for three long seconds before someone, the Aphrodite girl who was still covered in gold body paint, shouted. "What the heck is that even supposed to be!"

This got everyone laughing, and Alexa wasn't the only one who's face burned in shame. To her surprise, Otto laughed along with them. "Of course, silly me, I forgot to unveil the actual sculpture. One moment!"

He walked casually to the final piece they had installed, a long metal arm that held a candle and a bronze cone. He lit the candle and quietly swung the arm around until it lined up perfectly with the Zeta on the triangular piece.

"There we are." Otto said proudly, pointing behind the statue, to the shadow cast by the candle. Rather than an amorphous blob that all but Otto had expected, the statue's shadow and light shining through it created the silhouette of a human figure; The shadow was broad shouldered, its beard highlighted by the light, its eyes glowing and flickering as the candle was rocked by the wind. His face was set and stern, one hand hung loosely by his side the other was wrapped around a jagged bolt of lightning dyed in red hues from the candle's flame. The campers gasped as the visage of Zeus stared up at them from the ground.

"Wait!" Otto said, grinning like the cheshire cat. "Hold your applause!"

He grabbed the candle arm and began to turn it around the pedestal. Campers moved to the side as the shadow twisted and changed. Otto settled on Pi. Zeus had gone, and in his place stood another man, this one was not quite as burly. His left hand rested jauntily on one hip and a small smile was traced through the lines of light on his face slightly hidden behind the much shorter beard. In his right hand was clutched a spear with three points that glowed with the same red light as Zeus' bolt.

"A good likeness." Mr. D commented. "I always said ol' barnacle beard looked a bit scrawny"

Without pausing to soak it in, Otto turned the candle's arm one last time, bringing it over to Eta. This time, the shadow's form was, as Mr. D put it, scrawny. Hades was much thinner and more wiry than either Zeus or Poseidon. The shadowy forms that had made up the bulk of their bodies now stretched on either side of the underworld god giving the appearance that he was standing in a cave with his right hand was curled around a staff with a two pronged head like the horns of a bull. His silhouette was not accented nearly as much as the other two, there were no lines of smiles, or beards, the only thing that shone from Hades were his eyes, bright and orange, and flickering as if in the wind cast by his mind.

Otto blew out the candle, banishing Hades' shadow from the Arts and Crafts area and the campers began to clap.

"Well done, Cabin 9, well done indeed" Chiron said with a smile. Ruby and Chiron both gave Cabin 9 a solid ten, while Mr. D gave his highest score of the day...a seven.

Hephaesteus' Cabin had just moved into a three way tie alongside the Cabins for Athena and Aphrodite, and it was time for the last event. All eight cabins moved to the edge of the lake where eight canoes waited.

"The final event is simple. A race, from the eastern edge of the lake to the west. The first canoe on the western shore shall be declared the winner! Participating campers, to your starting positions please!" Chiron called to his charges.

"Alright everyone, here's the plan!" Otto said, turning to his siblings. "Boys at the two ends, Tamra, you're at Brent's end-"

"Ugh, why do I always gotta be with this loser?" Tamra whined, giving Brent a shove.

"Because I'm the one keeping you in line!" Brent shot back.

"Jamie, you're at my end. Saph, you and Lex get the middle" Otto continues as if no had spoken. "We'll alternate each side, One, two strokes, then switch to the other side, got it?"

Everyone nodded and began to clamber into the canoe. Alexa took her spot in the center of the canoe and Otto took his spot at the back, still standing on the bank, ready to give the boat a starting push before hopping in.

"Campers, on your marks!" Chiron called. "Get set! And…!" He paused then brought the conch shell to his lips and blew. They were off! Hermes' cabin took an early lead, paddling like mad men, their canoe practically skipping across the water. Hephaestus' cabin trailed behind, their strokes smooth, and even; one, two, switch sides, one, two, switch sides. They were neck and neck with Athena's cabin, the wise goddess's children clearly saw the value of pacing just the same as they had.

For a while, they kept even with one another, but slowly, inch by inch, Cabin 9 began to pull ahead. Their arm strength, born from hours upon hours of forge work, began to pay dividends. One, two, switch, one, two, switch. They had pulled ahead of Cabin 6 seconds after they had both passed the exhausted Cabin 11. They were drawing close to the halfway point! Alexa's heart soared, they were going to win! Her first ever end of the summer games and Cabin 9 was going to win the whole thing! The Fates, as it conspired, had been waiting for that exact thought to cross through Alexa's head before it became time to dash her hopes.

There was a soft splash from somewhere to her right, that was quickly accompanied by a voice. "Stroke! And, stroke! And, stroke!" Alexa glanced to her right to find a canoe slightly behind their own and gaining. The little heart drawn at one end, and the teenager still covered in gold body paint told her which cabin had caught up with them. Sitting at the back of Cabin 10's canoe, holding a megaphone, was the young man she had heard.

Upon seeing him, Alexa felt her heart stop for a split second, then leap into her throat as if it wanted a closer look at him. Perfect bronze skin with dark blonde hair, perfectly styled. His face had a chiseled quality to it, sharp and angular, his deep brown eyes seem to sparkle with light, drawing her in.

When he caught her staring he smiled, a smile that made Alexa's heart attempt to beat her esophagus to death. Brilliantly white teeth showing through a set of parted lips that seemed sheepish and approachable. Alexa knew he was smiling at her, and only her, and she loved him for it.

He brought the megaphone to his lips, still with that smile on his face and he said something in a beautiful, melodious voice that made Alexa's heart melt.

"Paddle right!"

Alexa swapped sides and began to paddle. There was a frantic shouting from either end of the boat, but she didn't care. She was asked to paddle right and the idea just seemed to take hold! It was so amazing she wondered why she hadn't thought to do this sooner! She and, she was only dimly aware, four other sets of paddles cut through the water on the right side of the canoe, turning it nearly ninety degrees in a circle. Five heads all craned to keep the boy in sight while five paddles worked the water. Only two campers from Cabin 9 knew what was about to happen, only two campers could hear the frantic cries from the canoe they had passed meer moments before.

THUD!

The children of Athena found the prow of their canoe slamming into the side of Cabin 9's vessel, causing it to capsize. All seven campers were spilled into the water, as were two members of Athena's cabin.

Alexa sank beneath the waves and the moment her head went under something very strange began to happen; Her limbs began to grow heavy. Within a few seconds she could hardly lift her arms to scramble upwards. Alexa began to panic, bubbles issued from her mouth as she struggled to make any headway towards the surface. Despite her best efforts, she continued downwards, sinking faster, the light from above growing distant. Her vision began to swim in front of her, darkening as her desperate lungs forced her to inhale water.

As her vision began to tunnel she caught brief glimpses of things she had no context for; the deck of a ship, a city of cobblestone roads and white washed buildings, a green field where men ran at one another. Just before she lost consciousness two words rang in her ear, clear as a bell.

"Mountain Blood"

Alexa came back to the world of the living in a rather abrupt manner. One moment she was drifting away in a peaceful sleep that only the dead could really enjoy, the next she was on the banks of the canoe lake with someone jabbing their palms against her chest. Without a second's hesitation, Alexa gasped down a great lungful of air, rolled to one side, and promptly vomited.

"Thank the gods you're alright!" Jazz panted, giving Alexa a side armed hug as she wheezed and coughed up what felt to her like half the lake.

"What happened…?" Alexa whimpered as a blanket was wrapped around her shoulders. She looked at Jasmine, noting that she was also dripping wet.

"Well Cabin 6 hit you guys and you went under. We all realized something was wrong pretty quick when you weren't coming back up. And the nymphs…" Jazz's face suddenly hardened as she turned and glared at the lake.

"The naiads refused to help! I've never seen that happen before! They just watched while…" She fell silent, glancing at Alexa, her hand slowly pressing down on her shoulder. "But...are you alright? Are you okay?"

Shakily Alexa nodded, clutching her blanket a little tighter.

"Oh, lovely. Now that we've established that little Aurora isn't going to die on us, perhaps we should get on to more important business!" A voice said above the pair. Alexa glanced up to find most of the camp standing nearby, her brothers and sisters, all soaked to the skin, standing closest. A short distance away stood the Aphrodite campers, who were just as surprised as Alexa was to find laurel reefs appearing on their head.

"Dinner time! We have our winners and it's time to award the beads! The sooner we get this over with, the sooner most of you can get out of my hair for the year!" Mr. D continued, clicking his fingers and leading the way to the dining pavilion.

Alexa sat with Cabin 9, watching in a detached sort of way as the banners unfurled around them. A pink heart and doves set on a white background.

Chiron stood and began to speak, though Alexa tuned him out for the most part. She was too busy trying to figure out what had happened beneath the lake. She had almost drowned...but...it didn't feel right. The water almost felt, for lack of a better term, alive. Almost malevolent. It felt like the water had leached the strength right out of her in order to keep her down. The lake nymphs had refused to help her...did that mean it was they who wanted her dead…? Or was it something more than that?

Her thoughts were interrupted by movement all around her. The campers at their eight tables had lifted their hands to their necks, pulling off their necklaces, some more quickly than others. Alexa hastily grabbed her own, pulling the knot loose from behind her neck and letting the string fall into her palm. Otto walked from table to table with a small box, one she had seen him working with for several days now. He started with Demeter's cabin, and worked his way around the room, making sure everyone had one of the little clay beads he was passing out.

When it finally came to Alexa, the youngest of his sisters gasped; The bead was canary yellow, and showed a tiny black outline of the climbing wall, spewing tiny orange lava plumes like a mini volcano.

"By unanimous decision." Otto said with a little wink, then he moved on to continue passing out the bead. Alexa quietly pulled the string through the hole in the bead, keeping her head down so that her siblings wouldn't see the tears in her eyes.

The rest of the night passed in a blur; The feast, laughter, jokes, comissoration, and congratulations. Tomorrow, she knew, the camp would start to empty out. Most of the campers had families to go back to, only a small handful would remain with Alexa year round. But Jazz was one of them, and she supposed that would be enough. Besides, with her siblings gone, that made her the de facto head of the cabin, which meant she'd be able to set lights out whenever she wanted!

Finally, Chiron called an end to the feast and the campers began to trudge back to their cabins, exhausted. Alexa didn't bother with any of her projects left on the work table, she just made her way to the wall panel that hid her own bed. With a yawn she pulled the large lever, put in her combination, and jabbed her finger into a hidden button beneath the latch. The bed popped out of its alcove and she climbed in. After pulling her screen closed she changed into her pajamas and climbed under the covers. She had barely allowed her head to touch the pillow before she found herself falling asleep.

Almost no time later, she began to dream.