stollen things || c. stoll

3.1 ~ Dead Girl Walking

The next morning, I called my father from the camp phone and explained the whole situation to him. He was violently angry with Charles, but understood why I had to come back to camp.

Over the next two months, I spent most of my time training. All day, every day. I needed to be able to handle myself with hand-to-hand. So I practically lived at the arena, bouncing back and forth between sword and shield training and wrestling and hand to hand. I actually got quite good at it, defeating many of the year-rounders in minutes. Especially Connor. I was pretty sure he went up against me just to get pinned down and make a suggestive comment. I hated it, but not as much as I used to.

With my extra time, I hung out with Grover, considering the fact that none of my siblings were here. I didn't like Thalia much, which made Grover very very anxious when he had to be with both of us.

By the beginning of December, Thalia and I had silently agreed to just stay out of the others' way. She left to go on a few short quests (they were more like errands, if you ask me) and I stayed to train even more. My tracking skills had also improved. I was the new wrestling champion at the camp (at least until Clarisse arrived back from her oh-so-secret quest) and a satyr-level tracker.

Around three weeks into December, Thalia, Annabeth Chase, and Grover left to find two half-bloods Grover had sought out. They were going to pick up Percy Jackson and all return happy with the two half-bloods after their big trip. Well, guess what didn't happen? They arrived with the half-bloods, yes, but Annabeth had been replaced with about a dozen other teenage girls.

Oh.

The Hunters of Artemis had come to crash the camp.

•

It was barbecue for dinner, and I was all alone at my table. As I had been for the past few months. The older girl of the new half-blood siblings had apparently fit right in with the Hunters, but the younger one was sitting with the Stolls. I found myself staring at the boys, trying to cheer the new kid up by teaching him how to play poker. I slumped over. I loved the food, and I loved camp, but I really wished Katie were here. The only good part of dinner was the end of it, when Chiron announced the Hunters versus campers game of Capture the Flag for the next night.

I wandered back to my cabin, not bothering to shower. I'd shower in the morning, but I was too tired at this point. I fell into a dreamless sleep immediately.

It was a fantastic morning. I went to take a shower, but apparently all the Hunters had to shower first, and there were a lot of them. So I waited for about an hour before I could even get inside the bathroom. I had a wonderful argument with one of the biggest Hunters, towering above me by at least five inches. She really had something against plants or something, because she had quite a few things to say about Demeter and her children. It took all of my willpower not to clock her in the face right then and there.

I spent the rest of the day with the new younger boy, whose name I learned was Nico. He was an angry little boy, but if you catered to his interests, he was nice to you. I trained him with an easy hand-to-hand lesson and a bit of sword fighting training.
I even tried to see if he was maybe, just maybe one of my half-siblings. It would be nice to have someone else in the cabin. He killed the plants I tried to have him grow. No matter, I just fixed them. But I'd never met someone who could just kill plants with a glare. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and getting to know each other. He felt angry with his sister, and I wanted to be there for him when the Hunters left and took his sister with them.

That night after dinner, I was more fired up than normal. I'd had Hunters picking apart my every move all day, and I was ready to destroy the damn maidens.

There were thirteen Hunters and around fifteen campers. The Hunters all looked pretty miserable in comparison to the pure anger that was pushing the campers against them.

Thalia and Percy were the co-captains (terrible decision, really) and had put me, Beckendorf, Nico, and the Stoll brothers on guard duty. The brothers had become very fond and protective of Nico, as had I. He also seemed to be hitting it off with Beckendorf, but that wasn't uncommon. Beckendorf was pretty charismatic guy.

Percy joined us, and climbed up Zeus's Fist to get a good view of the forest. I could see the gears turning in his head as he took in the view of the scouts and such. He hopped down and looked at Beckendorf.
"Can you hold the fort?"

"Of course," Beckendorf snorted.

So we did. Well, kind of. It took about two minutes for the Hunters to burst through the trees, including their lieutenant, Zoë Nightshade. She scampered up Zeus's Fist like it was a staircase, and snatched the flag out of the top of it. Her lackeys came right for the guards to stop us from following Zoë.

"Beckendorf!" I called, while grabbing a Hunter with ivy vines and slamming her into a tree. He nodded, and gestured for Nico to come with him after Zoë.

Zoë kept firing arrows backwards toward us, each one hitting a mark in our armor. Connor caught two arrows in his helmet, and Travis got knocked down with a kick from Phoebe, the big girl who'd picked on me this morning. I'd taken my fair share of hits as well, sliced deep in the arm by a knife (no dessert privileges for that Hunter) and having my leg grazed by an arrow.

The horn blew, and I knew we'd lost. Chiron came by a few minutes later and put us on his back to bring us to the border. I slumped forward onto Connors shoulder the whole way back. We emerged from the woods to see Thalia and Percy beating the shit out of each other. It was only a matter of time. Percy had the entire creek funneled above him, but suddenly let it drop.

Our eyes followed his to see green mist flowing out from the tree line. It wrapped around our feet and covered the entire ground and snow.

It was the Oracle mummy. She was hobbling towards Zoë Nightshade.

Approach seeker, and ask. The voice said, it's (her?) dead eyes burning into Zoës.

"What must I do to help my goddess?"

The Oracle opened its mouth again.

Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,
One shall be lost in the land without rain,
The bane of Olympus shows the trail,
Campers and Hunters combined prevail,
The Titan's curse must one withstand,
And one shall perish by a parent's hand.

Well that was cheerful. It was the first time I'd heard a prophecy, and I sort of hoped it would be the last. Then, she sat on a rock and went completely still as if nothing had happened at all.

...

yuh welcome to book three also i am very tired also sorry it's been like a week since the last update i lost track of time