The Legacy of the Sky, Book 1: Chapter 3

I Enrol at Summer Camp
After everyone was healed enough and calmed down, we were all loaded into the chariot that had brought Arthur and Rebecca here. Along the way, they and Greg tried to explain things to us.

“We’re demigods, half Olympian god, half mortal. The Greek gods from the old myths are still around today, as they move around to where Western civilization is the strongest, and they will interact and have children with mortal men and women. I, for example, am a daughter of Nike, goddess of victory, and Arthur here is the son of Iris,” Rebecca explained.

“The rainbow goddess?” Elissa asked. He didn’t really look like the type for a son of the rainbow goddess.

“Yeah, my mom is Iris. We’ll have to wait to see who your parents are, probably by the campfire tonight. You get claimed, you see. Then we can assign you a cabin and you get to meet all of your new siblings!” Arthur said. I didn’t know how I felt about that. For most of my life, I had been alone; my father had left before I was born, and my mother had died when I was young. I was raised by foster families until I was old enough to be sent off to boarding school. I didn’t think I would know what to do if I suddenly had all of these brothers and sisters come randomly in my life.

“So where is it we’re going?” I asked, trying not to get too overwhelmed or fall out of the wide open back of the chariot.

“Camp Half-Blood, the only safe-haven for demigods. It’s on the coast of Long Island,” Rebecca said. Almost as soon as she said it, we started our fast descent and I could see a beach coming into view. In the water stood two Greek warships, and several teenagers stood on shore, like they were standing guard, though others were just lounging and having fun. We flew over the beach and over the trees and out before lay the camp in a huge valley, which held the strangest group of buildings I had ever seen. Closest to us, was what appeared to be an open roofed ancient Greek style pavilion of sorts, and then a string of very different buildings formed in the shape of the Greek letter omega: Ω. Across a river that ran through the valley and a lake was a climbing wall with what appeared to be lava spilling down the side and next to that was a Greek amphitheatre. Farthest away from us stood a large, baby blue coloured mansion, at least 5 stories tall. In between that and the pavilion thing was what looked like an ancient Greek fighting arena, horse stables, volleyball courts, an odd mash-up of a Greek temple and a steam-punk locomotive, and… strawberry fields? On the other side of the valley on top of hill, stood the tallest pine tree I had seen, with a large serpent or something curled underneath it. Right away, I could tell that Greece was key here. No duh.

“Welcome to Camp Half-Blood,” Greg said.

We came to a landing right outside the stables, which we found were not full of horses, but rather pegasi. The chariot was immediately swarmed with kids of all ages, from eight years old to twenty, all wearing the same orange t-shirt. The crowd eventually parted to make way for a man on horseback; or at least, I thought he was on horseback. As he drew nearer to us, I realised that he was actually part of the horse. From the waist down, he was a snow white horse, but from the waist up, he was a normal guy, bearded with curly hair and ancient looking eyes that looked like they had seen many things, though he did have a bow and quiver slung on his back…

“Arthur, Rebecca, Greg, I see you have returned with new recruits,” the horse-man said.

“Yes Chiron. This is Matthew, and this is Elissa. They were just attacked by Echidna and the Chimera,” Greg explained

“The mother of all monsters? Attacking untrained demigods herself? That is very unlike her, and rather disturbing,” said Chiron the horse dude.

“Chiron, that can’t be good. Echidna would never attack two defenceless demigods like this herself; she would send other monsters out to do it. She would think this would be beneath her,” said a blonde girl, maybe seventeen, at the front of the crowd. She had disturbingly piercing grey eyes that seemed to be analyzing me and Elissa, and she stood hand-in-hand with another seventeen year old guy, but he had windswept black hair and sea-green eyes.

“You’re right Annabeth, and that means there’s something we need to talk about, but we need to do it in private. I think it has to do with Rachel’s second prophecy,” Rebecca said. An uneasy ripple of murmurs went through the crowd around us.

“There’s something special with this kid, you should see-” Arthur started, but Rebecca cut him off.

“Arthur,” she said pointedly, “We need to talk about this in private. I say we call a war council.” The campers looked even more uneasy. Apparently, we weren’t being told everything, as I didn’t get anything that they were talking about.

“Shouldn’t we wait until these two are claimed?” asked the guy who was holding hands with the blonde girl, Annabeth.

“Percy is right. We shall wait until tomorrow for the proposed war council, though events are truly unfolding in a… in an interesting way,” Chiron hesitantly said. Everybody started to disperse, but they were all halted when they were all bathed in a golden yellow light. Everyone turned in alarm to stare at a spot right above Elissa’s head. A holographic symbol of a golden lyre shone above her.

“What is that?” I asked in astonishment, as Elissa stared up in awe.

“That is claiming,” Arthur murmured next to me. “Your friend was just claimed by Apollo, god of the sun, music, medicine, and prophecy.”

Arthur took me on a tour of the camp, but he seemed kind of distracted. He told me of all the awesome things they had and did, like monster fighting, pegasus riding, and magic weapon making for arts and crafts. He also took me for a tour of the cabins. They were all unique, some extravagant, like one that had a grass roof, another like Barbie house, one like a Las Vegas casino, while others were simple, like one like a normal log cabin, or another like an old prairie mud house.

“There’s one for each Olympian god. Twenty in all. When you get claimed, you’ll get assigned a cabin, but you won’t have to wait long. By campfire tonight, we’ll find out who your dad is,” he told me. I was still uncomfortable with the prospect of having all these brothers and sisters come out of nowhere.

“Chiron’s a centaur, right?” I asked him out of the blue.

“Yeah, he’s like, thousands of years old. He trained all of the famous heroes in Greek myths, like Achilles, Jason, and Heracles to name a few. Nowadays he’s our activities director here at camp.”

“Hmm. What was the prophecy that Rebecca was talking about?” I asked un-expectantly.

Arthur looked uneasy, but he was literally saved by the bell. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a conch horn blow, and everybody in their cabins rushed off to the Greek pavilion closest to the beach.

“Dinner time. After is capture-the-flag, then the campfire. Come on, you’ll be fine,” he said, clearly relieved that he didn’t have to answer my question, and then he led me off to the dining pavilion.