Percy's POV
I was underwater. Which, actually wasn't that weird for me. I have dreams that I'm underwater all the time. But in this instance, there was someone very...strange with me.
He was easily close to seven feet tall. He wore an orange T-shirt that read Camp Halfblood. The big guy carried a giant club in one hand, but that wasn't the most disturbing part about him. Everything else went into the background when I zeroed in on his face. There was one giant eye, right in the middle of his forehead.
"A cyclops," I muttered, "Why am I dreaming about a cyclops?"
The poor guy seemed to be struggling against the current. He didn't seem to be in danger of drowning, but was looked like he was trying to swim to the surface. Unfortunately, something--I don't know if it was the water or something...else--kept solidifying around him and pulling him down every time he made it more than ten feet.
"Okay..." I said.
He heard me. The cyclops stopped fighting and turned to look at me. "Percy! You have to help me! Brother!" He made another attempt to swim upwards. "I can't get back to camp to see my brother!"
I woke up in a cold sweat, the word, brother, echoing in my thoughts. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes.
Sun was filtering through the cabin windows. The clock on the wall told me breakfast was in ten minutes. I quickly changed, tidied up the cabin a bit so I wouldn't have to do it after breakfast, then left.
With everyone still half asleep, breakfast was always kind of quiet. I got my breakfast burrito and sat at the Poseidon table. The next table over was Zeus's, and Jason already sat there, eating his burrito with a fork. Who does that?
He caught me watching him and waved cheerfully, the sunlight glinting off his glasses. I rolled my eyes and took a bite.
"Hey Percy!" Jason said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "You want to help me with the rock wall today? Show the new kids the ropes?"
I glared at him. I hated doing the rockwall. I mean, it was fun the first three hundred times, but then it started getting a little too terrifying. Jason, for some reason, seemed to enjoy getting blasted with fiery-hot elements, or rocks slipping mechanically out of his grip. Me? I'd rather go swimming. And of course Jason knew that. And of course, he had to ask me where everyone could hear.
"Fine," I groaned. Great. More quality time with the new kids. Maybe I could hang out with Annabeth though, she was alright. And Frank.
Jason left while I was still eating. "Ten minutes, Perce," he called.
Gradually all the new kids got up and followed him. I finally decided I should stop trying to procrastinate, and get down to the climbing wall. I chucked my plate and made my way down to the climbing wall.
The thing was huge. At least ten stories high, with scraggly rock faces, smooth metal faces, boiling lava faces, freezing water faces, and a lot of terrified faces of campers as they struggled to dodge obstacles.
Jason had already started lessons. He was holding the rope to Luke's harness as Luke struggled up the vertical cliff face.
"Finally," Jason said, without taking his eyes off of Luke, "You can help me belay these campers while they climb the first time."
"We're using harnesses?" I asked hopefully.
With a chuckle, Jason said, "It's required for first timers to use harnesses, which you would know if you spent more time around here. However, you and I will be going after they try it out as kind of a demonstration, sans harness."
I had never mentioned to Jason that the real reason I hated the climbing wall was that I always got nightmares about it afterwards. I would dream I was in a dark cavern climbing endlessly downward, my fingers aching, my stomach growling, the taste of fire in my mouth. My hand would slip and I would wake up feeling like I was falling.
My throat constricted nervously, but I grabbed another harness and pulley-system, beckoning to Annabeth first. She stepped eagerly into it, and helped tighten the straps. The climbing wall didn't have a chance against her. Annabeth scrambled up the vertical rock face like a freaking monkey.
"Have you done this before?" I called up to her. She paused her ascent and looked down, grinning.
"Hey Jason!" she said, "You two should go next."
I scowled at her.
Annabeth easily avoided a spout of lava, an avalanche, a falling camper, and two rattlesnakes that had been sunning themselves on ledges.
When she was back on the ground, she crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows like, "Beat that."
Jaw working in irritation and nervousness, I dug out some chalk from the basin and spread it all over my hands. Jason and I stepped up to the wall. Frank and Annabeth chorused, "Three! Two! One!"
I jumped up and jabbed my fingers in the crack I'd been eyeing. My feet scrabbled for purchase, and I hoisted myself up. Now, despite all my complaining, I'm not terrible at rock climbing. You have to be at Camp Hero, unless you want to spend the next three days in the infirmary with half your face melted off. It's just really hard to climb up a wall with fingers shaking, bleeding, and possibly getting crushed.
I was ahead of Jason at the moment, but not by much. He had run into a pack of scorpions early on and had to take a less direct path. Up ahead, I noticed a grouping of familiar rocks. They were mechanical and tended to roll exactly where you had just put your hand.
Screwing up my face in concentration, I moved slowly closer to them. They quivered innocently. I pried off a loose pebble and tossed it into the midst of the mechanical rocks. Two of them hopped on top of it like cats chasing a laser. I raised a hand and tapped a ledge. Another pounced. I withdrew my hand so fast I almost slipped.
While attempting to calm my palpitating heart, I put my hand down next to the nearest boulder. Another one rolled down to crush my fingers, but I just managed to pull away. I breathed in heavily hand put a hand on one of the rocks and heaved myself over them, keeping a wary eye out for any more rocks that might try to attack me.
So close. I was so close. The top was right there, just passed the moat of lava.
Behind me, I heard a skidding of rocks, then a scream. I looked down to see Jason tumbling through the air.
"Jason!" I yelled, frantically trying to retrace my steps, despite the rational part of my brain telling me there was no way I was going to catch him.
For one horrible moment, Jason plummeted earthward. We were too high up for him to not break several bones, at least. But then...he stopped falling.
I stared. Jason looked just as surprised as I did. He sort of just floated somewhere around ten feet off the ground, like he was sprawled on a couch. His hair ruffled with a breeze and then he lowered slowly to the ground.
I scrambled down after him.
By the time I reached the ground, Jason was pacing back and forth and obviously doing some serious thinking. Annabeth was watching him. She hadn't uncrossed her arms, but now she appeared to move an invisible Oreo from her forehead into her mouth because her face was screwed up and twitching.
"What--" I panted, "What was that?"
"Says the kid who moved a river to keep from losing a game," Piper said scornfully.
Annabeth shot her a look. "Thalia's told me strange things have happened around her recently too. What is too much of a coincidence to not mean something is that all of the strange things have been related to the cabin you all live in."
"What do you mean?" I asked, wanting some explanation besides me being unnatural for the way the water had acted.
"Well, Thalia told me she was doing archery late one night, when everyone was at campfire, and when she got frustrated at a bent arrow, lightning sizzled out of the sky, and struck a tree around the archery pit. Her cabin used to be Zeus, right? Before she joined the Hunters Club?
"And Percy is in Poseidon. The water, grabbing Frank like that. And Jason, also in Zeus, who was the god of the sky, just flew! Has no one else noticed?" Annabeth broke off, looking around at them all.
"But what does it mean?" Jason asked. He seemed a little hysterical after his fall.
"I-I don't know," Annabeth admitted, glancing back at her friends, "I'm going to talk to Malcolm about it later. Maybe if all of us look for answers, they'll turn up."
She sounded so confident, I didn't try to argue with her. But the fact remained, what kind of answer could there be? These incidences that keep happening...they seemed like something crazy. Certainly there couldn't be a simple explanation. They seemed more like something out of the myths Chiron always made us study.