"No shadows," Chiron said.
It was Thursday night, an hour before sunset, and the whole camp was gathered at the edge of the woods in armor, buzzing like a kicked hive. Capture the flag. In his first life it had been a game. Fun, dangerous, the highlight of every week. In this world, Percy had learned, it was something else. It was the only real combat training most of these kids ever got, against opponents who weren't actually trying to kill them. Last summer, two campers had died during games when the barrier flickered and real monsters got into the woods.
"No shadows," Chiron said again, looking at Percy. "No summoned creatures. No wolf cub. Nothing from wherever it is you go at night." His eyes were steady. "The others need to learn to fight. They will not learn if a ten-foot Minotaur does it for them."
A few people laughed nervously. Percy didn't.
"That's fair," he said. "Sword and shield. That's it."
Chiron studied him for a moment, as if he'd expected an argument. Then he nodded and turned to the camp.
"Blue team," he called. "Led by Perseus Jackson. Cabins One, Five, Four, Nine. And the newly claimed."
Zeus, Ares, Demeter, Hephaestus. And behind them, crowding up uncertainly, the thirty-one kids who'd gotten symbols over their heads at lunch that week. Children of Nike and Iris and Hypnos and Hecate and Nemesis and the river naiads. Kids who'd never been on a real team before. Who'd always been the extras, filling out the back ranks of Hermes cabin's line.
They looked at Percy like he was going to tell them they were too small to matter.
"Red team," Chiron called. "Led by Annabeth Chase. Cabins Six, Eleven, Seven, Ten. And Ezra Coleman."
Athena, Hermes, Apollo, Aphrodite. The brains, the thieves, the archers. And Ezra, still unclaimed, standing next to Luke in brand-new armor with his chin up and a celestial bronze sword at his hip. A sword Percy recognized with a cold jolt.
Riptide. In its sword form. Chiron must have given it to him, the way he'd given it to Percy once, in another world.
It's his, Percy told himself. It was always going to be his here. It's just a sword.
It didn't stop him from looking at it a little too long.
Across the clearing, Annabeth was watching him with her gray eyes narrowed. She'd been watching him all week. Every time he did something, every time he said something in a council meeting, he'd look up and she'd be studying him. Like a puzzle she couldn't quite crack.
"Jackson," she called across the field. "You're going down."
Percy grinned at her. He couldn't help it. "We'll see, Wise Girl."
She went very still. Her face changed, just for a second. Wise Girl. He'd called her that a thousand times in another life. She'd never heard it in this one.
She turned away fast, back to her team.
"Okay," Percy said. "Listen up."
They were gathered in a clearing on the blue side of the creek, sixty campers in mismatched armor, with the blue flag on a pole beside him. The light was going gold through the trees. Clarisse was on his right with her electric spear. Beckendorf was on his left with a hammer as big as Percy's head. Katie Gardner and her siblings were at the front. And behind them, in a nervous cluster, were the new kids.
"Red team's going to win this the way Athena always wins," Percy said. "With a plan. Annabeth's the best planner in this camp. Probably the best planner I've ever met. She's already figured out what she thinks we're going to do, and she's built her whole strategy around beating it."
"Great pep talk, Prissy," Clarisse said.
"So we're not going to do what she thinks we're going to do."
He crouched down and started drawing in the dirt with a stick.
"Here's what she thinks. She thinks I'm the threat. Mortal kid, killed the Minotaur, runs the camp now. She's going to put her best people on me. Luke and the Hermes cabin, probably. Stealth fighters. She'll make me fight them and use me up while her thieves go for our flag."
"So what do we do?" Katie asked.
"We let her."
They stared at him.
"I go over the creek, loud, right where she expects me," Percy said. "I keep Luke and his best fighters busy as long as I can. That's my whole job. I'm the bait." He looked at Clarisse. "And you, and the Ares cabin, you do the thing you're best at. You go straight up the middle, as loud as you possibly can. Make so much noise she has to pull her archers off the flag to deal with you."
Clarisse's grin was terrifying. "Now you're talking."
"Beckendorf. Your cabin stays on our flag. I want traps. Nets, snares, trip wires, anything you can build in ten minutes. The Hermes cabin is going to come for it, and they're going to be quiet. Make them loud."
Beckendorf nodded once.
"Katie, Demeter cabin, you hold the creek line on the left. The ground there's soft. Make the plants grab anybody who tries to cross."
He turned to the new kids. Thirty-one of them, staring at him, waiting to be told to stay in the back.
"And you guys," Percy said, "are going to win this."
Dead silence.
"Clovis." He pointed at the big sleepy boy, the son of Hypnos. "Annabeth's going to leave guards on her flag. Probably two or three Athena kids. I need you to get close enough to make them yawn. That's it. Just yawn." He pointed at the Hecate boy. "Lou Ellen's brother. Alabaster. Can you make it look like there's more of us than there are? Like, ten more people coming through the trees?" The boy nodded, eyes huge. "Iris kids, Butch, you can bend light. Can you make a rainbow so bright it blinds somebody for a second?" A nod. "And Nadia."
The girl whose mother was Nike stepped forward. She was twelve, wiry and fierce and sunburned, and for the first time since he'd known her she didn't look angry. She looked terrified.
"You're the fastest kid in this camp," Percy said. "I watched you on the running track this morning. You beat three Apollo kids and you weren't even trying. When the flag guards are yawning and blinded and everyone's looking at Clarisse and me, you grab the red flag. And you run. And you don't stop running until you're over the creek."
Nadia stared at him. "Me?"
"You."
"Why me?" Her voice cracked. "I've never won anything. I've been here two years and I've never—"
"Your mom's the goddess of victory," Percy said. "I think it's about time."
Nadia stared at him for a long moment. Then her chin came up, slowly, and her eyes went bright and hard.
"Okay," she whispered.
The conch horn blew.
Percy went over the creek like a freight train.
He didn't sneak. He didn't hide. He splashed straight across the shallow water at the widest, most obvious point, banged his sword on his shield, and yelled, "HEY, RED TEAM! COME AND GET ME!"
And they did.
They came out of the trees on the far bank, eight of them, Hermes kids in dark armor. And at the front of them, walking, not running, with his sword already drawn, was Luke Castellan.
"Jackson," Luke said. He was smiling, but it was a fighter's smile. "Annabeth said you'd come here. She said you'd be loud about it."
"She's smart," Percy said.
"She's the smartest person I know." Luke shrugged, loosening his shoulders. "She also said you'd be bait. That you'd try to keep us busy while your team did something clever." He spun his sword, once, a lazy flourish. "So here's what I figure. I'll beat you fast. Then we'll go deal with whatever clever thing you've got going."
"You can try," Percy said.
Luke came at him.
In his first life, Luke Castellan had been the best swordsman Percy had ever fought. Better than Ares. Better than the Titans. Luke had taught him the disarming move, the one Percy had used a hundred times since. He'd trained with Luke, fought Luke, watched Luke die.
In this world, Luke was just as good. Maybe better. He'd grown up in a dying camp with no Fleece and no safety, fighting real monsters in the woods every summer. He moved like water. He struck like a snake. And he was smiling the whole time, like it was the most fun he'd had in years.
Percy loved it. Gods help him, he loved it.
They went at it in the shallows of the creek, bronze on bronze, the sound ringing off the trees. Luke's Hermes kids circled them, waiting for an opening, and Percy kept moving so they never got one. Shield, xiphos, footwork. Every trick from the Loom. Every lesson the wolves had taught him. Keep a tree at your back. Listen for the step before the strike.
"You're good," Luke said, breathing hard, after the first minute. "Who trained you?"
"You did," Percy said, before he could stop himself.
Luke's eyebrows shot up. His sword wavered.
Percy took the opening. He went for the disarm, the twist-and-pull, Luke's own move, the one Luke had taught him on a summer afternoon a lifetime ago. It was perfect. It was flawless. Luke's sword spun out of his hand.
And Luke caught it in midair with his left hand, rolled, and came up with the point at Percy's throat.
They froze there, in the middle of the creek, both breathing hard.
"Nice move," Luke said slowly. "That's my move. I've never shown that to anyone but Annabeth." His eyes were very sharp. "Where'd you learn it?"
Percy didn't answer. He was watching the trees over Luke's shoulder.
Because from the far side of the woods, over on the red team's side, there had just been a scream. Then another. Then a sound like a dozen people yelling at once, and the crack of a net springing, and Clarisse La Rue's voice rising above all of it in a roar of pure, delighted violence.
Luke heard it too. He turned his head, just a fraction of an inch.
It was all Percy needed. He dropped under the sword point, hooked Luke's ankle, and put him down on his back in the creek with a splash that soaked everyone within ten feet.
Luke lay there in six inches of water, staring up at the sky. Then, unexpectedly, he started to laugh.
"Okay," he gasped. "Okay. You got me. What did you do?"
Percy held out his hand to help him up.
"Nothing," he said. "I was just the bait."
Here's what Annabeth Chase saw, from the hill above the red flag, where she was coordinating her team with a map and a set of Apollo-cabin signal mirrors.
She saw Percy Jackson go over the creek, loud, exactly where she'd said he would. She saw Luke and the best Hermes fighters go to meet him, exactly as she'd planned. She smiled.
Then she saw the Ares cabin come up the middle of the field.
They came up the center of the woods all at once, every one of them, screaming like a horde of Visigoths and banging their shields with their spears. Clarisse La Rue was in front, with her electric spear crackling blue-white, and she wasn't trying to be subtle. She wasn't trying to be anything. She just came, straight at the heart of the red team's line, like a battering ram.
Annabeth had planned for that too. She signaled the Apollo archers on the flag hill to pull back and cover the center.
That was when she saw the second wave behind Clarisse. Ten, fifteen, twenty more blue team fighters coming through the trees, shields up.
Her eyes went wide. Where did those come from?
She signaled more archers to the center. Then more.
The flag hill was emptying out behind her. She knew it. She did the math and decided it was worth it. Twenty extra fighters coming up the middle was a real threat. Two Athena guards on the flag would be enough.
What she didn't know was that fourteen of those twenty fighters weren't real.
They were illusions, cast by a terrified eleven-year-old son of Hecate named Alabaster, standing behind a tree with his eyes squeezed shut and sweat pouring down his face, holding the image of an army in his head with every ounce of his strength.
The two Athena kids guarding the red flag were named Malcolm and Sophie, and they were very good at their job.
They were standing back to back at the base of the flagpole, swords drawn, scanning the trees. They heard the battle down in the center of the woods. They saw the archers pulling away. They stayed alert. They didn't take their eyes off the treeline once.
Then Malcolm yawned.
It was a huge yawn, an enormous jaw-cracking yawn that he couldn't stop. And then Sophie yawned too, and her eyes got heavy, and her sword dipped. And somewhere in the bushes thirty feet away, a big sleepy boy named Clovis was lying on his stomach in the leaves, humming a lullaby under his breath and trying very, very hard not to fall asleep himself.
"What's..." Malcolm mumbled. "Why am I so..."
Then the world went bright.
A rainbow exploded out of the trees in front of them. Not a gentle rainbow. A blinding, dazzling, full-spectrum blast of colored light, like staring straight into the sun through a prism, cast by a boy named Butch who was one of Iris's sons and had never been allowed to use his powers in a game before. Malcolm and Sophie both threw their arms over their eyes and staggered back.
And past them, quick as a deer, light as a breath, ran a small sunburned twelve-year-old girl.
Nadia snatched the red flag off its pole without breaking stride.
Then she ran.
She ran down the flag hill and through the trees and past the fighting. Past the Apollo archers, who saw her too late and fired, and missed, because she was the fastest kid in camp and her mother was the goddess of victory and nothing was going to stop her. Not now. Not after two years at the back of the line.
She ran past Clarisse, who saw her and let out a whoop that could be heard in Manhattan.
She ran past Percy and Luke, standing in the creek, Luke still dripping wet. Luke's eyes went wide. He took one step after her, and then stopped, and watched her go, and something strange and soft came across his face.
She hit the creek at a dead sprint and splashed across it in four strides and came up the other side, and the red flag in her hands turned blue.
The conch horn blew.
The game was over.
And for one long second, the whole camp was dead silent. Every camper in the woods turned to look at the small sunburned girl standing on the blue bank of the creek with the flag in her hands.
Then the blue team went insane.
They came out of the trees screaming. Ares kids and Demeter kids and Hephaestus kids and all thirty-one of the newly claimed, and they swept Nadia up off her feet and carried her on their shoulders. And she was crying, and laughing, and holding the flag over her head with both hands.
Above her head, faint and gold, a pair of wings shimmered in the air and glowed brighter than they had at lunch. Like someone, somewhere, was very, very proud.
[FAITH EARNED: The Host led the forgotten to their first victory.]
[+260 Faith Points.]
[Vessel Rank Progress (E → D): 951 / 2,000.]
Percy stood in the creek and watched them, and his eyes were stinging.
"That," Luke said quietly, beside him, "was the best thing I've ever seen in nine years at this camp."
Percy looked at him. Luke was watching Nadia with an expression Percy had never seen on his face. Not in either life. It was hunger, almost. And grief. Like a man watching something he'd wanted his whole life happen to somebody else.
"You could have that too," Percy said. "Your whole cabin could. Every kid in it."
Luke's face closed up, fast, like a door slamming.
"Nice game, Jackson," he said, and walked away.
That was when Percy heard the shouting from downstream.
It wasn't celebration. It was angry, and close, and it came from the creek bend about fifty yards down, where the bank was steep and rocky.
He went running.
Three Ares kids had Ezra Coleman backed up against the rocks at the edge of the creek. Not Clarisse. Three of her younger brothers, big and mean and pumped up on the win, with their spears leveled. Ezra was down on one knee, bleeding from a cut on his arm, with Riptide in his hand, glaring up at them.
"Thought you were the big hero," one of them sneered. "Thought you killed the Minotaur. Come on, hero. Show us."
"Hey!" Percy yelled. "Game's over! Back off!"
They didn't hear him. Or didn't care. The biggest one jabbed his spear at Ezra, and Ezra stumbled back into the creek, into the water up to his ankles.
And the creek moved.
It rose around Ezra's legs in a sudden swirling column. The cut on his arm closed, right there, in front of everyone. The water climbed up over his shoulders and swept outward in a wave that knocked all three Ares kids flat on their backs in the mud.
Ezra stood in the middle of the creek with the water spinning around him like a whirlpool, breathing hard, sea-green eyes blazing.
And above his head, glowing in the twilight, a green trident appeared.
It hung there, burning bright. The whole camp had come running at the noise. They stood frozen on both banks of the creek, staring.
"Poseidon," Chiron said softly. He'd galloped down from the hill in his true form, his bow in his hand. "Earthshaker. Stormbringer. Father of Horses." He bowed his head. "Hail, Ezra Coleman. Son of the Sea God."
And one by one, all along the banks of the creek, the campers went down on one knee.
Ezra stood in the water and looked around at them. At a hundred and forty kids kneeling to him. His face, which had been white with fear a minute ago, slowly changed. The fear went out of it. Something else came in. Something bright and fierce and hungry.
Then his eyes found Percy, standing on the bank, still on his feet.
The only one standing.
They looked at each other across the water.
Kneel, Ezra's eyes said.
Percy didn't.
He couldn't. His legs wouldn't do it. He stood there on the bank of the creek with the green trident burning in the sky over the boy who'd drowned his mother in another world, and he felt the old cold come up in him, up from the black shore, and he held onto it with everything he had and didn't let it show.
He hasn't done it, he told himself. Not here. Not yet.
Not yet.
That was when the hellhound came out of the trees.
It came from the north, from the edge of the woods where the barrier was weakest, where the thin gold dome flickered and guttered against the darkening sky. It was the size of a truck, black as a hole in the world, and it didn't hesitate. It didn't even look at the kneeling campers.
It went straight for Percy.
[WARNING: Hellhound — Lv 34. Summoned. Target: the Host.]
Summoned, Percy thought, and he had about half a second to think by who? before it hit him.
It bowled him off his feet and into the creek and pinned him there under the water with its massive paws on his chest. Its jaws snapped at his face. He got his shield up, barely, and its teeth closed on the rim and tore it half off his arm.
[-210 HP]
Someone screamed. Someone was yelling his name. Chiron was raising his bow, but the hellhound was on top of Percy, and he couldn't get a clear shot.
No shadows, Percy thought, underwater, with the hound's weight crushing his chest. I promised. It's still the game. I promised Chiron.
Fine.
[ACTION SURGE!]
He brought his knee up into the hellhound's stomach. Twisted. Got his sword arm free. Drove the xiphos up under its jaw, into the soft place, the way the wolves had taught him, the way the Alpha had taught him on the ice.
The hellhound reared back, howling. Percy came up out of the water with it, still holding the sword, and drove it in again, deeper, and held it there.
The hellhound burst into yellow sulfur smoke. It drifted away across the creek on the evening wind.
Percy stood in the water, soaked, bleeding from a long scrape on his chest, breathing hard. He looked north, at the edge of the woods where it had come from. At the flickering barrier.
And then at the line of campers on the far bank. At the Hermes cabin.
Luke Castellan was standing at the front of them. His face was perfectly calm. Perfectly blank. He met Percy's eyes across the creek for one long second.
Then he looked away.
Summoned, Percy thought again. You did that. Didn't you, Luke? In my world, you sent one after me too.
You already started.
And the sky split open.
It happened so fast nobody had time to scream. One second the twilight sky over Camp Half-Blood was purple and calm. The next, every cloud for a mile in every direction had turned to boiling black thunderhead. Lightning was crawling across them in sheets, and the wind was howling down off the hills, and the air smelled like ozone so thick you could taste it.
The thunder came. It wasn't a rumble. It was a crack, so loud it knocked half the campers flat. So loud the windows of the Big House shattered, the way they had once in another world, on another night.
And above Percy Jackson's head, standing alone in the middle of the creek, a symbol appeared.
It wasn't faint, like the minor gods' symbols had been at lunch. It wasn't a gentle glow, like Ezra's trident. It was blazing. A lightning bolt of pure white fire, ten feet long, crackling and spitting sparks, so bright it turned the twilight to noon. So bright it threw every shadow in the valley straight out behind the campers like long black arrows.
The trident over Ezra's head flickered. And went out.
The lightning bolt over Percy's didn't.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Then Chiron, very slowly, lowered his bow. His face was white. His hands were shaking. He looked up at the blazing bolt, and then down at Percy, and his voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper.
"Zeus," he said. "Lord of the Sky. King of the Gods." He swallowed hard. "But you're— that's not— you're mortal—"
And from somewhere very high above, from inside the boiling black clouds, a voice spoke. Deep as thunder. Old as the sky. Every single person at Camp Half-Blood heard it, and would remember it for the rest of their lives.
MINE.
That was all. One word.
Then the clouds rolled back as fast as they'd come, and the stars came out, and the lightning bolt over Percy's head faded slowly into the night air like the afterimage of a flash.
And all along the banks of the creek, a hundred and forty campers went down on their knees again.
Not to Ezra this time.
Percy stood in the water with his hand pressed to the cut on his chest and stared up at the empty sky.
Mine, he thought.
He'd heard that voice before. In the throne room, pronouncing his doom. Every hero turns, eventually. Cold and certain and merciless.
It hadn't sounded like that tonight. Tonight it had sounded like a father who'd seen a monster pin his son under the water, and had come tearing out of the sky in a fury before he even knew why.
Percy didn't know how he felt about that. He didn't know if he'd ever know.
[DIVINE PARENTAGE CONFIRMED: Zeus has claimed the Host before witnesses.]
[FAITH EARNED: +500 Faith Points.]
[Title acquired: Son of the Sky. (Replaces: Adopted Son of the Sky.)]
[Note: The Host's dormant bloodline has been struck by its source. It is no longer stirring. It is waking.]
[Estimated time to awakening: Unknown. Great Sage recommends Floor 6.]
On the far bank, Ezra Coleman stood alone in the shallows, his trident gone, staring at Percy. His face was completely white. His hands were shaking. A hundred and forty kids had knelt to him for less than a minute. Now they were all kneeling to somebody else.
The look in his sea-green eyes wasn't humiliation anymore. It was something much, much colder.
And up on the hill, under the dead pine tree, where nobody else was looking, Grover Underwood's mouth fell open.
Because on one gray, dead branch of Thalia's pine, for the first time in four years, there was a single green needle.