Here is something nobody tells you about being a leader.
It is TERRIBLE.
I walked into the dining pavilion and seven people looked up and I thought yes good I called this meeting I am in charge I will now say the leadership things —
And immediately had absolutely no idea what to say.
Fortunately Malcolm had a notebook.
Malcolm ALWAYS had a notebook.
"Right," I said. "Situation."
They all started talking at once.
"The tree is getting worse every day—"
"Tantalus cancelled the night watch—"
"A HELLHOUND got into my FIELDS—"
"The healing supplies got REDIRECTED—"
"BORDER PATROL," Marcus said, at volume, "is apparently NOT A PRIORITY according to—"
"OKAY," I said.
Silence.
Seven people looking at me.
Say the leadership thing, I thought. You called this meeting. You have a plan. What is the plan.
I did not have a plan.
I looked at Malcolm.
Malcolm was sitting with his notebook open, pencil ready, three pages of notes already written, the expression of someone who had done all of this two days ago and had simply been waiting for someone to give him a room.
Oh thank god, I thought.
"Malcolm," I said. "Go."
Malcolm went.
"The boundary is thinning fastest on the north-eastern section — directly around the tree, where the roots are worst hit. That's where the breaches have been happening."
"We know," everyone said. More or less simultaneously.
"What we don't know," Malcolm continued, unbothered, "is what pattern they follow. Which means we can't predict when the next one comes. Which means we need people physically there. All night. Every night."
He looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked back.
"Ares cabin covers the north-eastern section," Malcolm said. "Rotation. Two-hour shifts. Two people minimum."
"No," Marcus said.
Everyone looked at him.
"Ares cabin doesn't do rotations," he said. "We respond. We engage. What we SHOULD do is put the whole cabin at the breach point and when something comes through we DESTROY it immediately instead of — what — standing in a field for two hours waiting?"
"And leave the eastern approach completely open," Malcolm said.
"Nothing's coming through the eastern approach."
"Not yet."
"If we're RIGHT THERE when it comes—"
"You'd have your entire cabin in one spot and whatever is probing would simply go around you."
Marcus opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Looked at me.
I looked at Marcus.
He had thirty pounds on me and three days of pent-up frustration and the full weight of Ares cabin honour sitting on his shoulders.
I kept looking at him.
Five seconds.
Ten.
He looked at the table.
"Two hours," he said. Like the words physically hurt. "Fine."
"Thank you," Malcolm said. Small tick in the notebook. "Beckendorf — the nymphs. The ones near the northern tree line. Can we get them watching that section at night? They're already there, they'd notice—"
"No," Beckendorf said.
"The nymphs are spooked," Beckendorf said. "Whatever venom is in the roots, they can feel it. They've been avoiding that section for two weeks. I already asked." He looked at Malcolm. "Physical patrol only."
"Of course," Connor said.
"Naturally," Travis said.
"Moving on," Malcolm said. "Will—"
"Medical kit at each patrol post," Will said. "Already doing it."
"Katie—"
"Watching my fields since Tuesday." Flat. "I know."
"Stolls — information network, anything changes—"
"Five minutes," they said together.
"Silena—"
"The younger scared campers," Silena said. "I know." She looked at me. "You were going to phrase it nicely."
"I was going to phrase it exactly like that," I said.
"Mm." She sat back. "Fine."
"And Tantalus," Katie said. "What happens when he tries to shut this down. He already cancelled the night watch once. What stops him from—"
I smiled.
Not a particularly nice smile.
The room went slightly quiet.
"I think," I said, "Tantalus is going to be very occupied for at least a few days."
Connor: "The three feet of floor will do that."
Travis: "And the wallpaper."
Connor: "Both sides.""
Travis: "We have questions."
Connor: "We're not asking them."
Travis: "Deeply not asking."
"Good," I said.
"The guard post nearest the tree," I said. "Every night. That's me."
Nobody argued.
Which was either a vote of confidence or nobody wanted to sleep next to a dying magical pine in the dark.
Probably both.
"We're done," Malcolm said and closed the notebook. "Get to work."
They got to work.
Beckendorf was gone before most people stood up. The Stolls disappeared — not walked, disappeared, their specific talent. Will was already making a list. Marcus left with the energy of someone converting three days of frustration into a patrol schedule through sheer force of will.
Silena stopped at the door.
"You handed it to him the second you sat down," she said.
"He had the plan," I said.
"I know," she said. "That's what I mean."
She left.
Malcolm was still writing. He didn't look up.
"Thank you," I said.
A pause.
"You would have gotten there eventually," he said.
"I really wouldn't have."
"No." He turned a page. "You would have tried to make a speech. It would have been motivational. Marcus would have interrupted to propose a frontal assault. The Stolls would have turned it into a bet. Will would have quietly started doing the right thing anyway and said nothing. Katie would have been doing it since Tuesday. You would have mistaken the resulting chaos for leadership and felt good about it."
He looked up.
"You made the correct call in approximately four seconds," he said. "That is the only thing you did right in this meeting. But it was the right thing."
He went back to writing.
"You're welcome," he said.
He closed the notebook. Left.
I sat alone in the pavilion for a moment.
The tree on the hill. Shimmer thin. Fighting.
I got up and went to find the guard post.
TWO DAYS
The camp was actually running.
Marcus's cabin on rotation. Will's people at every post. The Stolls appearing from nowhere every time something moved and vanishing before you could ask how they knew.
Me at the guard post. Northeast section. Every night.
No sword. Arm at seventy percent. Dhanush needs both arms and one bad pull means fifty percent for the rest of the night.
So. The only viable option--Fire.
Night one.
1 AM.
Three dracaenae came out of the tree line. Moving like things that expected to find a dying boundary and nobody home.
They found me.
The first had her spear up before she saw what I was.
I threw.
The construct hit the gap at her throat — not the scales, between them, the exposed skin where the armour didn't cover — and detonated.
CRACK.
She dissolved mid-lunge.
The second came from the left. Fast.
Too fast for a proper construct.
Didn't matter. I threw it half-formed. Caught her shoulder joint on the way to me.
BOOM.
The detonation spun her. She hit the ground and didn't get up.
The third stopped.
Looked at the smoke where the other two had been.
Looked at me.
Made a decision.
Smart, I thought, watching her go back into the tree line.
Good. Go tell whatever sent you exactly what's here.
Four minutes. The arm was fine.
Irritating, I thought. But fine.
Night two.
The hellhound came at 2 AM.
Massive. Moving quiet the way things that size sometimes did when they were focused on a specific target. It wasn't hunting the patrol. It wasn't hunting me.
It was heading straight for the tree.
Directed, I thought.
I stepped into its path.
It stopped. Did the threat-assessment thing — very still eyes, reading the situation.
I manifested eight constructs and held them.
It charged.
Three constructs thrown in a line ahead of it — not at it, in its path.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Three sequential detonations. It hit all three running and came through the smoke and fire still moving. Slower. Burning across the chest and forelegs.
Still coming.
Of course.
Five constructs simultaneously. Face. Chest. Both forelegs. Throat.
CRACK — BOOM — CRACK — BOOM — BOOM.
Five points of impact in half a second.
The combined force knocked it backward ten feet.
It dissolved.
I looked at the scorch pattern on the grass.
Messy, I thought. That was messy.
Then the two skeletons came out of the tree line.
I stared at them.
They stared back with the eyeless attention of things that didn't have eyes.
Skeletons, I thought. The boundary doesn't catch reanimated. They're not monsters. They're technically dead people who decided to walk.
Of course they found the loophole.
Twelve constructs. Overkill. I did not care.
BOOM. CRACK. BOOM. CRACK. BOOM — BOOM — BOOM.
Three minutes. Two piles of ash. A stretch of scorched grass that was going to be a conversation.
I sat back down at the guard post.
The arm was fine. Seventy percent, holding.
Irritating, I thought again, at nothing in particular.
I looked at the tree. Shimmer thinner than yesterday.
Percy, I thought at the empty Sound. Whatever you're doing out there. Speed it up.
Day one afternoon Tantalus came up the hill.
Orange jumpsuit. The walk of a man who had made a decision.
I watched him come.
Still cold from the hallway. Three days hadn't changed that. The specific cold of something that sits behind the ribs and doesn't move.
"You are not authorised to be here," he said. "This is not a designated station. You will report to the Big House immediately."
I didn't say anything.
He mistook this for consideration.
"I am the director of this camp," he said, louder. "That is a direct order—"
"The tree is dying," I said. "Something tried to reach it twice last night. I'm the reason it didn't." I looked at him. "No."
One word.
His composure went.
Not the king-contempt from the hallway. Something underneath that. Rawer. The fury of someone who had been obeyed for a very long time and wasn't being obeyed now.
"You will LEAVE this post," he said, stepping forward, "or I will PHYSICALLY—"
The construct appeared in my hand.
I looked at him.
He kept moving.
I threw it between his feet.
THOOM.
The detonation blew a smoking hole in the grass. The heat wave hit him in the face. He scrambled back three steps, caught himself, stood there breathing hard.
He looked at the hole.
At me.
At the hole.
I had not moved. Had not changed expression. The cold from the hallway was still there, sitting exactly where it had been sitting.
Say it again, I thought. I dare you.
"I will report this," he said. His voice had gone high. Tight. "I will tell Dionysus — I will have you expelled — you will lose—"
"Go ahead," I said.
He stopped.
"Walk down that hill," I said. "Find Mr D. Tell him, word for word, that a fifteen-year-old with no cabin and no title threw one fire dagger near your feet and you came running." I looked at him. "Tell him exactly how your afternoon went. I'll be here."
Silence.
The smoking hole between his feet.
The tree behind me. Shimmer thin.
Tantalus looked at me for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked down the hill.
I watched him go.
Sat back down.
Made a new construct, slow and deliberate.
Watched the tree line.
Come on, I thought.
THE CONFESSION
Day three the sap was running properly.
Dark trickle down the bark. The shimmer barely there.
Three hellhounds in Katie's fields before dawn. Something large at the tree line that Marcus's rotation faced at 2 AM — looked at two Ares kids with spears and made a sensible decision.
I was at the Hermes table eating dinner.
Then the rainbow appeared.
No warning. No build-up. Just — Iris deciding, the colours forming from nothing above the pavilion, and in the light of it:
Percy Jackson.
And Luke Castellan.
On a ship somewhere. Both of them with swords out. Both of them actively fighting — and it was immediately obvious that Percy was losing.
Not badly. Not immediately. But losing.
Backbiter came down hard — CLANG — and Percy caught it on Riptide but the impact drove him back two steps, boots scraping the deck. Luke pressed forward. Another slash — CRACK — Percy barely got his sword up in time, the force of it spinning him sideways.
Luke was faster. Crisper. The training I'd watched him do every morning in the arena distilled into something colder and sharper than it had been then.
Percy kept getting back up.
That was the thing. He kept getting hit and kept getting back up and kept asking the same question.
"Who poisoned Thalia's tree, Luke."
CLANG. Percy stumbled. Caught himself on the railing.
"Tell me."
CRACK. Backbiter clipped his arm. Percy hissed. Kept his grip.
"Who did it."
Luke, frustrated, pressing harder now — "You already know who did it, stop asking—"
"I want to hear you say it."
BOOM. Luke drove his shoulder into Percy and Percy hit the deck hard, leg catching the wrong way on the boards. He got up slower that time. The leg wasn't right. You could see it — the way he was favouring it, putting less weight on it, the small flinch every time it took impact.
Still asking.
"Who poisoned the tree, Luke."
Luke, snarling now — "Oh for— I DID. I used elder python venom, straight from Tartarus itself. A pit scorpion to deliver it. No witnesses. Are you satisfied? Does that—"
He stopped.
Looked past Percy.
At the rainbow.
At the camp.
At all of us sitting at dinner with our food going cold.
Percy, breathing hard, one hand on his knee, leg bleeding — grinning.
The full Percy Jackson grin. The one that had no business being on the face of someone who had just taken that much damage.
"You just confessed," Percy said. "To everyone."
Luke's face went through several things very fast. His hand tightened on Backbiter.
Hearing and seeing Luke accept in front of everyone made my blood rage in response and--
BOOM
It was the Kavach.
ALL of it. Every piece. Simultaneously. The full manifestation — chest piece, greaves, shoulder guards, bracers, kundala, EVERYTHING — blazing so bright that half the dining pavilion went white. The light cast hard shadows across every face turned toward me. Solar fire burst off the armour in waves, actual flames rolling off the shoulder guards like the sun had decided to take it personally.
The Hermes table on either side of me — Connor and Travis — both got hit by the first wave.
FWOOMPH.
Connor's face: ash. Both eyebrows: ash. The tips of his hair: singed.
Travis: identical. The piece of bread he'd been holding: gone. Just gone.
They sat there.
Blinking through the black smoke rising off their faces.
The whole pavilion was looking at me.
I was standing.
I didn't remember standing up.
The flames off the shoulder guards intensified.
The table in front of me was scorched.
Connor turned his head very slowly toward me. Ash falling off his face in small flakes.
"...Mate," he said.
I breathed out.
Once.
Twice.
The Kavach didn't go away. Not fully. But the flames pulled back. The blazing dimmed to a hard persistent gold. I sat back down. The scorched table. The singed Stolls.
I stared at the rainbow.
At Luke's face.
Not here, I thought. Not like this. Not at a dinner table.
But somewhere. Eventually.
Luke slashed through the rainbow from his side.
The image cut.
Gone.
The camp erupted — cheering, shouting, the specific chaos of people who had been holding something in for three days and had just been given permission to release it.
Mr D was already looking at Tantalus.
A plate appeared on the table beside Tantalus.
Cheeseburger. Real. Present. Not moving.
Tantalus stared at it.
His hand reached out. Slow. Careful. The reach of ten thousand failures and one very uncertain moment.
Fingers closed around it.
It didn't move.
He stared.
He lifted it.
His face did something that had a lot of old things in it.
"We are no longer in need of your services," Mr D said pleasantly. "Back to the Underworld."
"But I—" Tantalus was still staring at the cheeseburger. "I finally have it—"
Ground opened.
Gone.
Cheeseburger hit the empty seat.
"Good riddance," I said.
Behind me — Connor and Travis, still ash-faced, conferring in low serious tones.
Connor: "Never. Ever. Joke about his mother."
Travis: "Or insult her."
Connor: "He will eat us alive."
Travis: "Confirmed."
Malcolm, walking past, not looking up from his notebook: "Perhaps you two not me. I have brains."
Connor, deeply offended: "Excuse me—"
Travis: "That's RUDE—"
"Statistically accurate," Malcolm said, and kept walking.
The Kavach finally, slowly, went back in.
I sat in the noise of a celebrating camp and looked at the space where the rainbow had been.
Somewhere, I thought. Eventually.
THE TREE
The Party Ponies arrived like a natural disaster wearing Hawaiian shirts.
I heard them before I saw them — hoofbeats from three directions at once, someone playing a guitar at full gallop, whooping that had no business being that loud at sunset. They came over the hills and immediately started raiding the camp stores and the whole thing had the energy of an event that was definitely happening and nobody was going to stop.
Percy got deposited at the bottom of the hill by a centaur who gave him a cheerful pat on the head and galloped away.
He looked like he'd been through the Sea of Monsters. Leg wrapped. Moving carefully. The specific expression of someone alive and slightly surprised about it.
Annabeth beside him. Grover behind. Tyson— enormous, openly crying — somehow already holding a donut.
I was at the guard post.
I had been at the guard post for three nights.
Percy looked up the hill and saw me.
"You waited for us," he said.
"I was guarding the tree—"
"Uh-huh," he said.
"The northern boundary—"
Clarisse came over the hill.
She had taken a plane from Miami. She had the Golden Fleece under one arm like it was the weekly shop and the expression of someone who had done the impossible and was furious about how long it took. She walked up the hill, clocked the scorched grass, the ash patches, the ichor stain from night two.
Looked at me.
"You—" she said.
"Guard duty—"
"It's heroically stupid," Percy said.
"There's no such thing," Clarisse said.
"There is," Percy said. "He does it constantly. Goes into situations with half his equipment and absolutely refuses to leave." He gestured at me.
Clarisse considered this. "Heroically stupid."
"Exactly."
"I was doing the job—" I started.
"You couldn't do anything without us," Clarisse said. "The tree needed the Fleece. We had the Fleece. So you sat up here for three nights waiting."
"The boundary needed covering—"
"You missed us," Percy said.
"I did not—"
"He missed us," Percy said to Clarisse.
"Obviously," she said.
"I was guarding—"
"You sat up here alone" Clarisse said, "waiting for us to come back and actually fix it."
A pause.
"...The tree needed covering," I said.
"You missed us," they said together.
I looked at both of them.
Two people who had survived a Cyclops, the Sea of Monsters, a sword fight on a cruise ship, and a transatlantic flight respectively. Battered. Limping. Covered in things I was not going to ask about. Standing on a hill at sunset, united in the sole purpose of making this worse.
"Are you going to drape the Fleece," I said, "or are we doing this forever."
Clarisse looked at the tree.
She walked up to it, reached up, draped the Golden Fleece over the lowest branch, and stepped back.
For a moment: nothing.
Then the light.
Golden — not burning, filling. Blazing outward from the Fleece through the branches. The sap stopped. The bark lightened. The needles going green from the base upward faster than anything had a right to. The shimmer coming back — thin to full to more than full, the Fleece too powerful to just restore, going past healed into something else entirely—
The camp held its breath.
The tree went still.
The golden light softened.
Done.
The camp erupted.
Even Clarisse looked satisfied in the way that was Clarisse's maximum possible emotional display. Grover was crying. Tyson had somehow obtained a second donut. Percy was grinning the relieved grin — the one that had no business being that wide on a face that looked like it had been through all of that.
I looked at the tree.
Healthy. Solid. The shimmer warm and full and radiating properly for the first time in weeks.
Finally, I thought.
I went to bed not knowing my life was about to become significantly much much harder.
END CHAPTER