Mythologically speaking, there are some things you prefer to avoid. For Y/N, it was snakes. Last year, he'd had what you'd call a hard time on top of Half-Blood Hill with the Amphisbaena—his right palm still had the brand the venom of its fang had marked on it. For Percy, it certainly was bulls he hated, since the Minotaur had tried to kill him.
So coming back to camp surely wasn't what you'd call a nice beginning of holidays for Percy.
Up on Half-Blood Hill were two bulls. And not just regular bulls—bronze ones the size of elephants. And naturally, they breathed fire, but this goes without saying.
As soon as they exited the taxi, the Gray Sisters peeled out, heading back to New York, where life was safer. They didn't even wait for their extra three-drachma payment. They just left them on the side of the road, Annabeth with nothing but her backpack and knife, Tyson and Percy still in their burned-up tie-dyed gym clothes, Ethan with his eyes still slit-pupiled from the ride, and Y/N his sword in hand.
"Oh, man," Annabeth said, looking at the battle raging on the hill.
What worried Y/N the most weren't the bulls themselves. Or the ten heroes in full battle armor who were getting their bronze-plated booties whooped. What worried him was that the bulls were ranging all over the hill, even around the back side of the pine tree. That shouldn't have been possible. The camp's magic boundaries didn't allow monsters to cross past Thalia's tree. But the metal bulls were doing it anyway.
One of the heroes shouted, "Border patrol, to me!" A girl's voice—gruff and familiar.
Border patrol? Y/N thought. But the camp doesn't have a border patrol.
"It's Clarisse," Annabeth said. "Come on, we have to help her."
Normally, rushing to Clarisse's aid would not have been high on Y/N's "to do" list. She was one of the biggest bullies at camp. She was also a daughter of Ares, and he had had a very serious disagreement with her father last summer, so now the god of war and all his children basically hated his guts.
Still, she was in trouble. Her fellow warriors were scattering, running in panic as the bulls charged. The grass was burning in huge swatches around the pine tree. One hero screamed and waved his arms as he ran in circles, the horsehair plume on his helmet blazing like a fiery Mohawk. Clarisse's own armor was charred. She was fighting with a broken spear shaft, the other embedded uselessly in the metal joint of one bull's shoulder.
"Tyson, stay here," Percy said. "I don't want you taking any more chances."
"No!" Annabeth said. "We need him."
Y/N stared at her. "Um . . . Annabeth, he's mortal. He got lucky with the dodge balls but he can't—"
"Y/N, do you know what those are up there? The Colchis bulls, made by Hephaestus himself. We can't fight them without Medea's Sunscreen SPF 50,000. We'll get burned to crisp."
Knowing that there was a Sunscreen SPF 50,000 was useless, but oddly enough, Y/N knew it would stay in his head for life.
"Look, I don't know what you're talking about," Percy said, "but I'm not going to let Tyson get fried."
"Percy—" Annabeth started to say.
"Tyson, stay back." Percy raised his sword. "I'm going in. Y/N, let's go."
Tyson tried to protest, but they were already running up the hill toward Clarisse, who was yelling at her patrol, trying to get them into phalanx formation. The few who were listening lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, locking their shields to form an ox-hide–and-bronze wall, their spears bristling over the top like porcupine quills.
Unfortunately, Clarisse could only muster six campers. The other four were still running around with their helmets on fire. Annabeth ran toward them, trying to help. She taunted one of the bulls into chasing her, then turned invisible, completely confusing the monster. The other bull charged Clarisse's line.
The bull moved deadly fast for something so big. Its metal hide gleamed in the sun. It had fist-sized rubies for eyes, and horns of polished silver. When it opened its hinged mouth, a column of white-hot flame blasted out.
"Hold the line!" Clarisse ordered her warriors.
Whatever else you could say about Clarisse, she was brave. She was a big girl with cruel eyes like her father's. She looked like she was born to wear Greek battle armor, but Y/N didn't see how even she could stand against that bull's charge.
Unfortunately, at that moment, the other bull lost interest in finding Annabeth. It turned, wheeling around behind Clarisse on her unprotected side.
"Behind you!" Percy yelled. "Look out!"
He shouldn't have said anything, because all he did was startle her. Bull Number One crashed into her shield, and the phalanx broke. Clarisse went flying backward and landed in a smoldering patch of grass. The bull charged past her, but not before blasting the other heroes with its fiery breath. Their shields melted right off their arms. They dropped their weapons and ran as Bull Number Two closed in on Clarisse for the kill.
At that moment, Ethan planted himself in front of Bull Number Two, holding his T-shirt out, as if he was a toreador. And he managed to grab the monster's attention. It charged at his T-shirt, and he stepped aside at the last moment. He had waited so long, now you could see shreds of clothing on the bull's horn.
Y/N heard Clarisse shouting, "Percy, curse you!"
But he didn't care. Bull Number One was back, and judging by the flames in its ruby eyes, it was after him. He gripped his sword tighter.
The bull charged at full speed, lowering its head, its horns glimmering dangerously. Two options: either he dodged and hit it on its side, or it crushed him. I'll go with option one, he thought.
Too late. The bull was on him, flames coming out of its nostrils. So he did the only thing that could possibly guarantee his life a little longer.
He leaped over the bull's horn at the last moment. His legs still got hit by the monster's bronze skull, and he spun in the air before landing heavily, face down on the ground. At least he was still in one piece.
He picked his sword up and looked around. Uh oh.
Bull Number One, which seemed to have taken his case personally, and Bull Number Two, which was breathing flames in all directions, were coming at him at once.
He lunged at Bull Number One, but Bull Number Two blew flames at him. He rolled aside as the air turned to pure heat. All the oxygen was sucked out of his lungs.
Not wasting a moment, he got up and faced Bull Number One again. This time he dodged in time and hit the bronze armor of the beast. It was so hot it could have cooked a frozen pizza in a second. His blade barely scratched it.
Looking around again, Y/N saw Percy holding his ankle on the ground. Bull Number Two charged straight toward him. No way could he crawl out of its path.
Annabeth shouted, "Tyson, help him!"
At the crest of the hill, where was supposed to be the invisible boundary line, Tyson wailed, "Can't—get—through!"
"I, Annabeth Chase, give you permission to enter camp!"
Thunder shook the hillside. Suddenly Tyson was there, barreling toward Percy, yelling, "Percy needs help!"
He dove between Percy and the bull just as it unleashed a nuclear firestorm.
"Tyson!" Percy yelled.
The blast swirled around Tyson like a red tornado. Y/N could only see the black silhouette of his body. The certainty that he was watching a thirteen-year-old boy being turned into a column of ashes struck him.
Yet, when the fire died, Tyson was still standing there, completely unharmed. Not even his grungy clothes were scorched. The bull must've been as surprised as Y/N was, because before it could unleash a second blast, Tyson balled his fists and slammed them into the bull's face. "BAD COW!"
His fists made a crater where the bronze bull's snout used to be. Two small columns of flame shot out of its ears. Tyson hit it again, and the bronze crumpled under his hands like aluminum foil. The bull's face now looked like a sock puppet inside out.
"Down!" Tyson yelled.
The bull staggered and fell on its back. Its legs moved feebly in the air, steam coming out of its ruined head in odd places.
Annabeth ran over to Y/N and held out her canteen of Olympian nectar.
"I'm okay, Annabeth."
"You mad?" she retorted. "Look at you."
He looked down and realized that, indeed, he wasn't okay. His jeans didn't cover his right leg anymore, exposing burned skin. Now that he was aware of it and that the adrenaline in his body dropped, he felt the pain getting worse and worse. So he happily drank in Annabeth's canteen. Immediately he felt much better. His leg didn't look so bad anymore. There was a scorching smell in the air that came from him. The hair on his arms had been completely singed off.
"The other bull?" he asked.
Annabeth pointed down the hill. Clarisse had taken care of Bad Cow Number One. She had impaled it through the back leg with a celestial bronze spear. The cow was sprawled on the ground, and Ethan was jumping happily on its corpse.
Clarisse pulled her helmet off and marched toward Y/N, Annabeth, Percy and Tyson. A strand of her stringy brown hair was smoldering, but she didn't seem to notice. "You—ruin—everything!" she yelled. "I had it under control!"
Annabeth grumbled, "Good to see you, Clarisse."
"Argh!" Clarisse screamed. "Don't ever, EVER try saving me again!"
"Clarisse," Annabeth said, "you've got wounded campers."
That sobered her up. Even Clarisse cared about the soldiers under her command.
"I'll be back," she growled, then trudged off to assess the damage.
Percy turned to Tyson. "You didn't die."
Tyson looked down like he was embarrassed. "I am sorry. Came to help. Disobeyed you."
"My fault," Annabeth said. "I had no choice. I had to let Tyson cross the boundary line to save you, Percy. Otherwise, you would've died."
"Let him cross the boundary line?" Percy asked. "But—"
"Percy," Annabeth said, "have you ever looked at Tyson closely? I mean . . . in the face. Ignore the Mist, and really look at him."
The Mist makes humans see only what their brains can process. . . . Y/N knew it could fool demigods too, but. . . .
He looked Tyson in the face. It wasn't easy. Everything seemed to be trying to distract him. He forced himself to focus at his big lumpy nose, then a little higher at the eyes.
No, not eyes.
One eye. One large, calf-brown eye, right in the middle of his forehead, with thick lashes and big tears trickling down his cheeks on either side.
"Tyson," Percy stammered. "You're a. . . ."
"Cyclops," Annabeth offered. "A baby, by the looks of him. Probably why he couldn't get past the boundary line as easily as the bulls. Tyson's one of the homeless orphans."
"One of the what?" Y/N said.
"They're in almost all the big cities," Annabeth said distastefully. "They're . . . mistakes, Y/N. Children of nature spirits and gods. . . . Well, one god in particular, usually . . . and they don't always come out right. No one wants them. They get tossed aside. They grow up wild on the streets. I don't know how this one found you, Percy, but he obviously likes you. We should take him to Chiron, let him decide what to do."
"But the fire. How—" Percy started to say.
"He's a Cyclops." Annabeth paused, as if she were remembering something unpleasant. "They work the forges of the gods. They have to be immune to fire."
Y/N was pretty shocked. He had a baby Cyclops in front of him.
But he didn't have much time to think about it just then. Clarisse came back over and wiped the soot off her forehead. "L/N, move. We need to carry the wounded back to the Big House, let Tantalus know what's happened."
"Tantalus?" he asked.
"The activities director," Clarisse said impatiently.
"Chiron is the activities director. And where's Argus? He's the head of security. He should be here. He came with Chiron to get Ethan and me out of my orphanage."
Clarisse made a sour face. "Argus got fired. You have been gone too long. Things are changing."
"But Chiron. . . . He's trained kids to fight monsters for over three thousand years. He can't just be gone. What happened?"
"That happened," Clarisse snapped.
She pointed to Thalia's tree.
Every camper knew the story behind the tree. Thalia, a daughter of Zeus, had made her last stand here to give her friends time to reach safety. As she was dying, her father, Zeus, took pity on her and changed her into a pine tree. Her spirit had reinforced the magic borders of the camp, protecting it from monsters. The pine had been here ever since, strong and healthy.
But now, its needled were yellow. A huge pile of dead ones littered the base of the tree. In the center of the trunk, three feet from the ground, was a puncture mark the size of a bullet hole, oozing green sap.
A sliver of ice ran through Y/N's chest. Now he understood why the camp was in danger. The magical borders were failing because Thalia's tree was dying.
Someone had poisoned it.
"Y/N," Ethan called. He had finished jumping on Bad Cow Number One's corpse and walked up the hill. "What're you looking at?"
His eyes fell on Thalia's tree, and he couldn't hold back a cry, gripping his sunhat like it was going to fly off.
"B-but . . . why didn't Chiron and Argus told us anything?" he murmured.
"Chiron and Argus have been fired," Y/N said coldly.
He was so shocked he couldn't show any emotion.
"Wh-what? They can't do this! Chiron's trained heroes for—"
"Three thousand years," Y/N cut him short. "Yeah, I know. But he's been replaced by Tantalus."
Walking down Half-Blood Hill, Y/N had a strange feeling as he saw the camp.
On the surface, things didn't look all that different. The Big House was still there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered around the valley—the amphitheater, the combat arena, the dining pavilion overlooking Long Island Sound. And nestled between the woods and the creek were the same cabins—a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing a different Olympian god.
But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong. Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counselors and satyrs were stockpiling weapons in the tool shed. Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like ugly scars.
As they made their way to the Big House, Y/N recognized a lot of kids from last summer. Nobody stopped to talk. Nobody said, "Welcome back." Some did double takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried on with their duties—running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school.
None of that mattered to Tyson. He was absolutely fascinated by everything he saw. "Whasthat?" he gasped.
"The stables for pegasi," Percy said. "The winged horses."
"Whasthat!"
"Um . . . those are the toilets."
When they got to the Big House, they found Chiron in his apartment, listening to his favorite 1960s lounge music while he packed his saddlebags.
As soon as they saw him, Tyson froze. "Pony!" he cried in total rapture.
Chiron turned, looking offended. "I beg your pardon?"
Annabeth ran up and hugged him. "Chiron, what's happening? You're not . . . leaving?" Her voice was shaky. Chiron was like a second father to her.
Chiron ruffled her hair and gave her a kindly smile. "Hello, child. And Percy, my goodness. You've grown over the year! Hello again, Y/N, Ethan. Seems you weren't left alone for too long."
Y/N swallowed. "Clarisse said you were . . . you were. . . ."
"Fired." Chiron's eyes glinted with dark humor. "Ah, well, someone had to take the blame. Lord Zeus was most upset. The tree he'd created from the spirit of his daughter, poisoned! Mr. D had to punish someone."
"Beside himself, you mean," Percy growled.
"But this is crazy!" Annabeth cried. "Chiron, you couldn't have had anything to do with poisoning Thalia's tree!"
"Nevertheless," Chiron sighed, "some in Olympus do not trust me now, under the circumstances."
"What circumstances?" Y/N asked. "And why didn't you tell anything to Ethan and me, before leaving us in Manhattan?"
Chiron's face darkened. He stuffed a Latin-English dictionary into his saddlebag while the Frank Sinatra music oozed from his boom box.
Tyson was still staring at Chiron in amazement. He whimpered like he wanted to pat Chiron's flank but was afraid to come closer. "Pony?"
Chiron sniffed. "My dear young Cyclops! I am a centaur."
"Chiron," Y/N said. "What about the tree? What happened? And why did they fire Argus, too? Wasn't enough to fire you?"
Chiron shook his head sadly. "Argus was fired for not preventing this disaster. The poison used on Thalia's pine is something from the Underworld, Y/N. Some venom even I have never seen. It must have come from a monster quite deep in the pits of Tartarus."
"Then we know who's responsible. Kro—" Percy started to say.
"Do not invoke the titan lord's name, Percy. Especially not here, not now."
"But last summer he tried to cause a civil war in Olympus!" Percy said. "This has to be his idea. He'd get Luke to do it, that traitor."
"Perhaps," Chiron said. "But I fear I am being held responsible because I cannot cure it. The tree has only a few weeks of life left unless. . . ."
"Unless what?" Ethan asked.
"No," Chiron said. "A foolish thought. The whole valley is feeling the shock of the poison. The magical borders are deteriorating. The camp itself is dying. Only one source of magic would be strong enough to reverse the poison, and it was lost centuries ago."
"What is it?" Y/N asked. He didn't want to see Half-Blood Camp torn apart. It had to be saved. It was where his family lived. "We'll go find it!"
Chiron closed his saddlebag. He pressed the stop button on his boom box. Then he turned and rested his hand on Y/N's shoulder, looking him straight in the eyes. "Y/N, you must promise me that you will not act rashly. I already have Zeus against me, and I hope to stay in your mother's good graces for many more years. Train hard. Learn to fight. But do not leave."
"Why? I want to do something! I can't just let the borders fail. The whole camp will be—"
"Overrun by monsters," Chiron said. "Yes, I fear so. But you must not let yourself be baited into hasty action! This could be a trap of the titan lord. Remember last summer! He almost took your lives."
It was true, but still, Y/N wanted to help. He also wanted to make Kronos pay. A pit scorpion had nearly killed Percy last year, and Y/N would never forget Luke for that, much less the titan lord who pulled the strings from the shadows.
The poisoning had to be his doing. Who else would be so low as to attack Thalia's tree, the only thing left of a hero who'd given her life to save her friends?
Annabeth was trying hard not to cry. Chiron brushed a tear from her cheek. "Stay with Y/N and Percy, child," he told her. "Keep them safe. The prophecy—remember it!"
"I—I will."
"Um. . . ." Percy said. "Would this be the super-dangerous prophecy that has me in it, but the gods have forbidden you to tell me about?"
Nobody answered.
"Right," Percy muttered. "Just checking."
"Chiron. . . ." Annabeth said. "You told me the gods made you immortal only so long as you were needed to train heroes. If they dismiss you from camp—"
"Swear you will do your best to keep Percy and Y/N from danger," Chiron insisted. "Swear upon the River Styx."
"I—I swear it upon the River Styx," Annabeth said.
Thunder rumbled outside.
"Very well," Chiron said. He seemed to relax just a little. "Perhaps my name will be cleared and I shall return. Until then, I go to visit my wild kinsmen in the Everglades. It's possible they know some cure for the poisoned tree that I have forgotten. In any event, I will stay in exile until this matter is resolved . . . one way or another."
Annabeth stifled a sob and Ethan shiver from head to hooves. Chiron patted their shoulders awkwardly. "There, now, children. I must entrust your safety to Mr. D and the new activities director. We must hope . . . well, perhaps they won't destroy the camp quite as quickly as I fear."
"Who is this Tantalus guy, anyway?" Percy demanded. "Where does he get off taking your job?"
A corn horn blew across the valley. Y/N hadn't realized how late it was. It was time for the campers to assemble for dinner.
"Go," Chiron said. "You will meet him at the pavilion. I will contact your mother, Percy, and let her know you're safe. No doubt she'll be worried by now. Just remember my warning! You are in grave danger. Do not think for a moment that the titan lord has forgotten you! You too, Y/N. He's not your only enemy. Some gods want your hide—and I think you understand really well who I'm referring to."
Ares and Zeus, Y/N thought.
With that, Chiron clopped out of the apartment and down the hall, Tyson calling after him, "Pony! Don't go!"
He started bawling almost as bad as Annabeth.
"Everything. . . . It'll be okay," Ethan murmured.
He didn't seem to believe it himself.