Chapter Text
There was a new camper in cabin eleven.
He was the first new arrival to camp since Will had come that past summer with a few other kids, each of them around ten or eleven years old. Most of the others were still lodging with the Hermes kids, like the new guy. Will had gotten lucky, as he was told, in that his godly parent had claimed him almost immediately after he’d crossed the boundary into Camp Half-Blood. A shimmering golden lyre, accompanied by an ethereal chord out of nowhere, had appeared over his head at dinner that evening, and the Apollo cabin had eagerly taken him in. Everything had changed so quickly, and at the time he didn’t really understand how his life could be so fundamentally transformed literally overnight. Sometimes it still seemed too weird to be real.
For the first few months he spent at Camp Half-Blood, Will felt like he had been placed into a class in the middle of the semester and had to catch up to his peers, who all seemed to understand what was going on better than he did. Once September hit, the camp became far quieter, since only about a third of the campers stayed year-round. Before sending him away a few months ago, Will’s mom assured him that this would not be the case for him. She had decided that Will’s first stint at camp would be longer than those to come, because he would need time to learn about the new world he inhabited and train for the dangers it contained. Next year, Will would spend his summer vacation at camp and return in the fall to start seventh grade. But this year, he was settled in until December twenty-second, when his mom had promised to come pick him up for Christmas.
He was glad that he wouldn’t have to move away from his mom permanently before he was ready, but…the thought of going back to middle school at the start of the new year after all of this was jarring and strange. It made about as much sense to him as Luke Skywalker going back to farming moisture after learning his father was Darth Vader. But he figured that if other half-bloods could balance it, he would manage it fine.
The new unclaimed kid was named Nico, and he’d arrived one late December morning in a blaze of light over the lake. Will later heard from Lee Fletcher, his older half-brother and head counselor, that it was the sun chariot of their father that had brought Nico and his sister here. Lee’s tone was saturated with bitterness that Apollo had actually been at camp in person and hadn’t said hi to his kids, but Will was too stupefied by the mere notion that the actual chariot of the sun had crashed into the canoe lake to feel slighted by his dad. The novelty of this mystical world was still fresh to Will, leaving him starry-eyed and awestruck at every fantastical circumstance. Being Apollo’s son meant something different to Lee than it did to his newly-claimed brother.
While cleaning up after dinner that night, though, it was still at the forefront of his siblings’ minds. “I just can’t believe he would let a demigod drive after what happened with Phaethon,” grumbled Michael, another older camper. His pinched scowl and brooding demeanor contrasted so strongly with Lee’s; where Lee had all the gentle patience characteristic of a head counselor, Michael was more intimidating. Lee assured Will he was a great guy, brave and reliable, and probably their best archer. But it was still hard for Will to accept he was just as much his brother as Lee was.
Behind him, with a stack of dirty plates in his arms, Nico gasped. “Phaethon! Son of…Helios, right? He totally blew it when his dad let him drive the chariot!”
Michael frowned at him. “Yeah. Zeus blasted him out of the sky. You’re lucky he didn’t do the same to you.”
Nico tilted his head, seemingly undisturbed by the notion. “Not if Apollo was with us, though. Zeus wouldn’t do that to his own son, right?”
Michael looked away. Lee shrugged and answered for him. “Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been the first time the Lord of the Skies took his fury out on Apollo.”
No one knew what to say to that.
☀
During the first game of capture the flag that Will was present for, back in September, he’d been allowed to sit the game out. He was new, and young, and didn’t have the same archery prowess that most of the other Apollo campers possessed. The game was dangerous, and there had been enough campers around that Will’s absence from the field didn’t make much of a difference. But when the Hunters came that week in December, the camp needed as many teammates as possible if they wanted to stand a chance against Artemis’s elite platoon of eternal warriors.
Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace argued over where to station Will — Thalia wanted more numbers for her offensive squadron, while Percy thought Apollo campers were better suited to defense — but in the end, Will ended up standing guard over the flag at the base of Zeus’s Fist while his more seasoned brothers ran off with Thalia’s group. He had a bow in his hands and a quiver of arrows at his hip, but he knew he had a fart’s chance in the wind in an archery standoff against a Hunter. He was as good as unarmed, an easy target. It didn’t bother him much. He wasn’t interested in winning for glory, and he doubted that the Hunters would actually attack him.
Percy ditched them only minutes after the conch horn sounded, leaving Will lingering around with the imposing Hephaestus head counselor, those Hermes boys that Lee had warned Will against trusting, and the new kid.
Nico gravitated toward Will, probably since he was the closest to his age. He was toting a two-handed sword that was comically oversized for him, but Nico didn’t seem to care. “This is totally sweet,” he commented.
Will squinted. “The game?”
“Yeah!”
Will shrugged. “I guess.”
Nico eyed him. “What, you don’t think so?”
“Battle’s not really my thing,” Will admitted.
“Ohh,” Nico said, nodding slowly like it was all coming together. “You must be a child of one of the gods with low attack power. Demeter, maybe? Wait, no.” He snapped his fingers. “Aphrodite.”
Will blushed, indignant for no reason he could name. “…Low attack power?”
“Yeah,” Nico confirmed. “Like, no one comes close to Zeus, obviously, because he’s the king of the gods. But Ares and Athena have three thousand five hundred attack power each because they’re really good at war and stuff. And Aphrodite’s really important for, like, support and passive effects but her player phase attacks only inflict two hundred damage.”
Will stared at Nico like he was watching a dog recite Shakespeare. “Are you talking about some kind of video game?”
Nico waved his hand dismissively. “Never mind. I’m sure your mom gives you lots of other helpful abilities besides fighting.”
“Aphrodite isn’t my godly parent,” Will finally corrected him. “My father is Apollo.”
Nico smacked his forehead like he should’ve known that sooner. “Oh! Duh, because you have a bow and everything. Hey, if your dad is Apollo, are you really good friends with the Hunters of Artemis then?”
Will shook his head. “I’ve never met them before.”
Nico absorbed this. “Can you sing, though?”
“What?”
“I bet you’re really good at singing because your dad’s the god of music.”
Will looks aside. “Uh, not really.”
“I don’t believe you. Sing ‘Ave Maria,’” Nico demanded.
The heat in Will’s cheeks intensified. “Trust me, you do not want that.”
Before Nico could insist further, Will saw a shining projectile zoom through the air out of the corner of his eye and strike Connor Stoll in the head. Connor tipped over like an empty milk bottle in a carnival shootout game, and when he sat up, Will saw a silver arrow sticking out of his helmet. At the sight, Will felt his mind recalibrating the stakes involved in this game. If someone would shoot Connor in the head, Will definitely wasn’t as safe as he thought.
“Hunters!” shouted Travis, and he and the Hephaestus boy sprung into action right as three maidens emerged from the trees, their metallic parkas gleaming in the moonlight and bows drawn and loaded.
Panic coursed through Will’s chest and rooted him to the spot as Nico leapt into the fray, half-dragging his enormous sword. He was keenly aware of how unhelpful his presence was, the bow in his hands as useless as a soggy cardboard tube. He wished Lee or even Michael were here to direct him as he watched one of the Hunters nimbly ascend the rock formation and snatch the flag from its peak, powerless to do anything about it.
He was about to at least give chase with his teammates when he heard a cry from his left. “Medic! We need a healer, now! Camper down!”
Will searched the dim foliage, his eyes catching on the sight of two Ares half-bloods stumbling downhill from where he was standing. One was shouldering the weight of the other, who had a long gash on his gut from a hunting knife. Even in the dim light, Will could see the streak of red staining the boy’s orange camp T-shirt. Instantly, he threw down his bow and abandoned the flag to rush to their side.
Just as he reached them, Chiron appeared from the woods with Connor Stoll on his back and bandages ready in his hands. He bent his forelegs to get a closer look at the boy’s injury, and shook his head. “This is too serious to patch up here,” he decided. “We must get to the Big House immediately.”
Chiron’s head snapped up at the sudden flash of lightning illuminating the sky near the border creek for a split second. “Di immortales,” he cursed. “That’s going to need my intervention. Mr. Solace, I am trusting you to tend Sherman’s wounds.”
It took a few seconds for Will to realize that was directed at him. Surely Chiron misspoke. “Wait, me?”
Chiron nodded, setting down his first aid saddlebag. “Pray to your father. If you can stop the bleeding, I will take care of the rest once the game is over.”
Will started to protest, but Chiron bounded away before he could utter a word. Distantly, Will heard the sound of rushing water competing with the crackle of lightning. He shook his head, took a deep breath, and turned his attention to Sherman and the other Ares camper. He could barely even grasp that someone was this badly hurt during a game of capture the flag in the first place, and now he had to contend with being tasked with taking care of him. His heart fluttered in his chest, and he swallowed to steady himself. “Okay, uh…I guess, help me lie him down on his back.”
The girl, an older camper with a strong build and a hard face, nodded, apparently not questioning a kid’s medical authority, and together they gently helped Sherman into lying down. The boy’s helmet was gone, and judging by his grimacing face, he didn’t seem much older than Will. “Came out of nowhere,” he grunted through his pain. “Left myself open…”
“It’s fine, Sherman,” said his cabin mate. “Warriors of Ares are no strangers to injury. You were brave, and sometimes bravery gets you hurt.”
“…Thanks, Clarisse,” said Sherman.
She nodded gruffly. “Now be quiet and let the medic work. What’s your name, new kid?”
Will startled. He instantly decided he didn’t like having this girl’s scrutiny on him, and he wasn’t sure about being designated as “the medic,” either. “Uh, Will,” he said.
“This your first time treating battle wounds, Will?”
Will fidgeted. “Um…”
Clarisse rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, “Figures. Jackson throws a tantrum and Chiron immediately decides that’s a bigger deal than helping the Ares cabin.” She looked Will in the eyes, her expression fierce and authoritative. It reminded Will of sports coaches that always pushed their team to the limit, despite the complaints. Clarisse was the type of counselor who cared more about achieving results than being popular. “Listen, I’ve had my own wounds like this patched up before. It needs to be cleaned and bandaged right away. What would really help is ambrosia, but we’ll have to wait for that. You know any hymns to Apollo?”
“Hymns?”
“Prayers, poems, songs, anything,” she said.
“I — I don’t —”
Clarisse groaned, cutting him off. “Okay, whatever. Just make something up. Now hurry and get the supplies out of Chiron’s bag,” she ordered.
Will pulled the bag over while Clarisse worked on unbuckling Sherman’s armor to expose his injured belly. After digging out a box of gauze strips, a bottle of alcohol, and a roll of bandages, Will knelt down at Sherman’s side. The gash was deep, and bleeding so much that it was hard to discern the edges of the cut. Will felt his heart racing, knowing that the sight of gore should terrify him. But as he wet the gauze with alcohol and began to clean the wound, a profound serenity pulsed through him, a distinct sense of purpose that he had never felt before. His uncertain anxiety gave way to clarity as tangibly as if he’d just removed a blindfold. He saw the pain on Sherman’s pale, sweaty face and knew that he could fix it, as surely as he knew that the sun would rise in the east.
Clarisse talked to Sherman as Will cleaned and dressed the injury, keeping him calm and lending him strength. Will wondered if Ares could impart an aptitude for rousing people’s courage to his children, because it seemed like Clarisse was really good at that.
When the bandages were in place and blood still rapidly seeped through, Will took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He’d never prayed before, to any god, and didn’t quite know how to start. He’d been raised non-religious, which now struck him as strange considering his mom knew from experience that gods were real. He couldn’t be sure that Apollo would hear him if he prayed now, but he knew he had to try.
Um, Dad? he thought. …Apollo? It’s me, Will Solace, your son. You claimed me a few months ago, so I’m hoping you remember me. Listen, I don’t have any beautiful hymns to offer you right now, but I really need your help. Someone is hurt and depending on me to heal them. I did the best that I could, but he’s still in trouble. You’re the god of medicine, and I ask you to stop his bleeding. Please. If you help, I promise I’ll learn how to pray to you properly after this. So…yeah. Thank you?
It was an exceedingly awkward and informal petition to a glorious deity, but it was the best Will could do right now. When he opened his eyes, he felt a little lightheaded, the ground beneath him tilting for a split second before he shook his head and dispelled his dizziness. He returned his attention to Sherman, and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the spread of blood across the white bandages had stopped.
He met Clarisse’s eyes across from him, and she wasn’t smiling, but the set of her gaze told Will that she approved. “Nice job, newbie. He’ll be okay now. Do me a favor and help me carry him to cabin five, and Ares will owe you one.”
☀
The night following capture the flag, the campfire was especially quiet, even with the sparse attendance. Apparently, Will had missed quite a scene at the border creek after Chiron ran off and left him with Sherman last night. Michael told the Apollo kids the story when they all gathered in cabin seven that evening. He described the anticipation racing in his chest when he witnessed an argument between the son of Poseidon and the daughter of Zeus escalating into an epic clash of water and lightning. But that, dramatic as it was, wasn’t unexpected at a camp for powerful heroes. The real jaw-dropper was when the Oracle mummy shambled through the frozen woods to deliver a prophecy to the lieutenant of the Hunters, Zoe Nightshade. Reanimated corpses were always startling, but the Oracle had never left the attic before on its own. The prophecy she spoke wasn’t any cheerier than her haunting approach, either. Zoe had received a quest that foretold the deaths of two companions, one by the hand of their own parent.
She’d left at first light the next morning along with Thalia, a satyr, and Nico’s sister Bianca. Percy Jackson hadn’t been invited along, but he’d also been missing since they left. Michael hadn’t been surprised when they couldn’t find Percy anywhere. “Like Jackson’s going to take no for an answer when Annabeth’s in trouble,” he’d scoffed at dinner.
Now, the flames of the campfire burned low and weak. They were dark red, almost burgundy. Will tried not to think of them as resembling the color of blood. A handful of kids sat around, many deep in thought. Quests didn’t get handed out every day, and no one liked the idea of Artemis needing mortals’ help. Will and his siblings watched the Hunters anxiously — Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, his equal in power. If she could be abducted and tortured…well, they could understand why Artemis’s Hunters were so restless and morose.
Even Nico di Angelo was quiet where he sat alone on a log near the fire, chewing his lip and shuffling his holofoil trading cards. The Stoll brothers had tried to humor him with a game of Mythomagic earlier, but they kept making up their own rules, obstinately making Hermes the strongest card in every play, and Nico got frustrated and went off to sit by himself.
Will watched him for a moment, deliberating, then sighed and stuck a couple of marshmallows on a stick. He had to lean forward pretty far to toast them over the small flames, but after a few minutes he had squished some perfect golden brown marshmallows between a pair of s’mores. He set them on a paper plate and crossed over to Nico.
Nico looked up when he approached. “Oh. Hey, Apollo’s son,” he mumbled.
Will snickered. “My name’s Will. Can I sit with you? I brought s’mores.”
Nico frowned, puzzled. “What are those?”
Will took that as an invitation to sit down. “You’ve never had one? It’s chocolate and a roasted marshmallow between graham crackers. They’re a campfire staple.”
Nico took one in his hand and looked at it. “This is my first campfire.”
“Ever?”
Nico nodded. “Well, I guess there was one when the Hunters set up camp outside Westover Hall. When…When Bianca…” he trailed off, kicking a stone in the dirt.
“When she joined the Hunt?”
Nico sighed. “Yeah.”
“I guess Artemis is too serious for marshmallows,” Will said. He picked up the other s’more and bit into it, crunching loudly. He felt the warm marshmallow ooze out the side and stick to his face, pulling into a long string. He tried to wipe it away, but only made it messier, his fingers sticking together like he’d dipped them in a bucket of glue.
“Ugh,” Will complained. “So delicious, but so, so treacherous.”
Nico laughed at him, and Will was so glad to see him smile after looking glum all night that he wasn’t offended. The other boy ate his own s’more with about the same level of poise, but he seemed to like it. “If Artemis is too serious for these, I bet my sister would’ve changed her mind about spending eternity with her.”
“Did she tell you why she did it?” Will asked.
Nico shuffled his cards, staring down at his hands. “She said we would have to part ways sooner or later. One day we’ll have our own lives, and she won’t be looking after me all the time. She said I’d be safe at Camp Half-Blood without her.” Nico sniffed. “It sounded like she just wanted to get rid of me.”
Will hesitated. He could understand why Nico had been so pensive all day — that was a lot to take in. “How long had you two been on your own?”
“We never knew our parents, just that there was a trust fund set up for us that paid for school and stuff. It was just me and Bianca for a few months at Westover, and before that we were in this cool hotel for a while.”
“What about when you were little?”
Nico shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”
Will blinked. “You don’t remember anything?”
Nico shook his head.
That seemed weird. It was expected that memories became foggier the further back in time he thought, but Will still had plenty of recollections of growing up in Texas with his mom. “Do you have like…amnesia?”
Nico considered this. “I don’t think so. Would I know if I did?”
“Good question,” Will admitted. “But if it’s been just the two of you for as long as you can remember, this could be a chance for you to…you know, go your own way.”
“Maybe for Bianca. She got to go on a quest the day after we learned we were half-bloods.” Nico stared at the fire, and the red flames were starkly reflected in his wide, dark eyes. “I just get to stay behind and wait for her to come back.”
“Hey, camp’s not so bad,” Will said. “You could make friends here and, I don’t know, learn how to sail a trireme. You and your sister can each figure out what kind of heroes you want to be.”
“I guess,” Nico said. The edge of one of his cards caught the light and glinted for a second, and Will looked at it. It seemed like it was supposed to be Poseidon, judging by the giant glowing trident.
He smiled at Nico. “You know what else you could do?”
Nico met his eyes. “What?”
“You could teach everyone to play that game you keep talking about,” Will said, nodding to the cards in Nico’s hands.
Nico’s eyes lit up, his face glowing with sudden exuberance. He shifted to face Will on the log, and immediately started rattling off the rules of Mythomagic. Will only understood about twenty percent of them, but he was a quick learner, and by the end of an hour he was having a blast playing round after round with his new friend.
☀
The next week passed with hardly any word from the quest. Will tried to put it out of his mind; between his siblings anxious for Artemis and Nico thinking about Bianca, there was little talk around camp of anything else. He began learning medicine from Chiron, which provided a fascinating distraction. He had a natural aptitude for it, even for Apollo’s children, according to the old centaur. During that week, Will was often absorbed in textbooks, tracing anatomical diagrams with his fingertips. He picked up a medical vocabulary pretty quickly, since the inborn demigod ability to understand ancient Greek came in handy with all the terms rooted in the language.
The more he learned about all the ways the body can come to harm, the fact that life managed to persist at all became more astonishing to Will. It seemed to him that scrapes with death were almost guaranteed in everyone’s lifetime, even without the added dangers of monsters and swordfights.
On the evening of the winter solstice, Will was in cabin eleven, playing Mythomagic with Nico to occupy his attention. Nico was so excited to see his sister — and Percy Jackson, apparently, whom he gushed about only slightly less — that he was bursting with nervous energy. Today was the deadline for their quest, and they all knew that they had to be back any minute.
The Hermes cabin gave the boy a wide berth, and Will could probably guess why. Zoe’s dark prophecy cast a shadow over the mood at camp, dampening the sense of anticipation for the quest’s end. Five heroes set out a week ago, and only three of that group would be returning home. More than wanting to see the safe return of their friends, everyone dreaded finding out which of them hadn’t made it back.
Nico either didn’t know about this prediction, or he was pointedly ignoring it. “I can’t wait for Bianca to tell me about all the gods she met,” he remarked. He was sitting opposite Will on the floor of the cabin, setting down their cards on the lumpy bedroll between them. “And I want to hear about the monsters Percy fought! He was so brave against the manticore. You should’ve seen it!”
Will played a card. “I’m sure you’ve been really worried about them,” he said.
Nico made a face and shook his head. “Nah. Percy’s a hero. Well, I know we’re all supposed to be heroes here, but I mean a real hero.”
“I guess I’ve never seen him in action.”
“Someday you will,” Nico said. “And you’ll understand what I mean.”
“What about your sister? Did she fight much before this?”
“I’m not concerned about her either,” Nico insisted. Will wondered how he could seem so sure.
Will looked at him, trying to discern the subtleties of his expression and try and figure out if there was anything he wasn’t saying. “You know…we just met and all, but you can tell me if there’s anything —”
A chilly gust of wind cut him off as the door to the cabin burst open and the Stoll brothers stumbled through. Everyone stopped to stare at them while they huffed for breath.
“They’re back!” wheezed Travis, and a frantic commotion exploded. Nico leapt to his feet, grabbed his scarf, and was out the door before Will even stood up. Will pushed his way to the window and watched Nico di Angelo run off, stumbling through the snow up the hill to the Big House.