I was more than thankful when the first thing Chiron did was lead us past the volleyball courts, muttering something about 'hating the game', though I knew he was just saying that so Johnny and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable after the whole Vandari incident.

Instead, he led us to the equally-vacant strawberry fields. I remembered Johnny telling me earlier that this was their source of income. Some bushes were already blooming with the red fruit, but nobody was there to pick them.

"Go ahead," Chiron said, trotting closer to the bushes.

"What?" I asked.

"Have one."

He bent down and picked one off the bush, and threw it into my open hands. I took a bite and closed my eyes in joy. Never had I tasted anything so sweet and fresh - the only strawberries I had were ones from the freezer back at home.

"Mmmmmm..." I muttered, realizing I had finished it already. Chiron was laughing, amusement crossing over his features.

"Yes, yes. It is good. It was better, I'll say, when Dionysus was running the camp with me. It was a punishment to him, yes, but the strawberries were always sweeter then..." He sighed dreamily. "Come on, now."

Another strawberry in hand, I followed Johnny and Chiron towards the woods. The trees here were undecidedly different from the trees in the forest back at school. Suffice to say, I wouldn't be avoiding these woods like I would be the volleyball court - the latter being until I got over my recently developed fear of them and their associated balls.

"In these woods lie the sacred grove of Dodona, which is our secondary camp Oracle. The Apollo campers go there regularly, and they record prophecies or random phrases the trees say. They help give us insight about the future, or issue quests."

I held back a few burning questions about talking trees, and I let the centaur talk.

"It's also home to many entrances to the labyrinth, though we have enough of those scattered around camp. Yes, the labyrinth as in the maze from the Minotaur story."

"Oh, and the woods are loaded," Johnny added. "Like, with monsters. Not really bad ones, but we use them for training purposes and for our games like Capture the Flag - which you'll get to play every Friday until the end of summer. You can try your luck, if you're feeling up to it. Once you've had training, I mean, and you can go in and fight whatever you find to earn skills in real-world application."

I tried to follow what he was saying, but he was talking far too fast for me to comprehend. He did that sometimes, not for any particular reason, he just had a lot on his mind and would speak it all at once in a flurry of jumbled up sentences.

After that lecture was over, we went by the empty archery range, the empty canoeing lake (though it would be empty, because it was muddy brown and closed off by police tape and do not enter signs), the empty Long Island Sound and Fireworks Beach, and the stables (Chiron didn't looked too enthusiastic about them), which was full of very unfit horses of varying colour. I inspected a brown one a little closer.

No, that wasn't extra fat at their sides. They were...

"Pegasi," Johnny said. "You'll get to learn how to ride these along with horses too."

It wasn't until we got to the empty javelin range that I decided to put my foot down.

"Alright. Where are all the kids?"

"The other campers, you mean?" Johnny asked.

"Yeah. Where are they? Why aren't there loads of kids running around the place?"

"It's still the school year; summer doesn't start for another two and a half weeks." Chiron answered briskly. "I'm sure Johnny has told you that this is a summer camp? We do have year-rounders, those who have nowhere else to go, attract too many monsters outside camp boarders, or chose to stay over the course of the school year. We also have a few 'rushed' demigods - demigods like yourself who had to come early because it wasn't safe for them anymore. I'm sure they're all at Tuesday-morning training in the arena. We'll meet them soon."

And we did.

After briefly checking out the sing-along amphitheater, we found about sixteen kids in the arena. The first thing I noticed, was that they were all older than me, and the two satyrs accompanying the campers were both very different from Johnny - dark skin and eyes and hair (legs included), and they were both stronger-looking. The only resemblance my blond-haired, scrawny satyr had with these boys was the orange camp shirts they were wearing.

The second thing I noticed was the sport they were practicing.

Every demigod (besides a boy fascinated by a mirror sitting in the stands) was having what appeared to be a battle. Like, a real battle. With swords and spears and shields. They were dressed in Greek armour, with helmets that had blue or red plumes of hair. I easily picked out two other kids who must've been 'rushed'. I could tell because they lacked the experience the others had as they stayed to one corner of the war going on around them. The third either had more skill, or he was the one sitting on the stand. Campers were screaming war cries in every direction. I watched as one girl cut into another's armour.

"This is training?" I asked Chiron incredulously.

"Campers!" The centaur banged his hoof against the floor and immediately the exercise halted. A few kids took off their helmets and looked me up-and-down before returning their attention to their camp director.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Sure, the attention was cool, but I felt like they were sizing me up and deciding I wasn't much to look at.

"This is Y/N. I expect you to get acquainted with her after your training session. All Hermes campers are to proceed to their cabin immediately following this activity, and wait until we arrive at the end of her tour, where you will then be responsible for giving her her timetable, and her most-likely temporary bunk."

I watched as two boys groaned and looked at each other. Both had curly brown hair and were scrawny and untrustworthy-looking. One had brown eyes, and the other more extraordinary - with one eye brown and the other a startling blue. They smiled at me when they saw me looking, and one had an adorable set of dimples.

Because of the groan, I didn't smile back.

"As you were." Chiron announced and our little group left. Johnny turned to me to give me more information, like:

"That's not usually how we train. I mean, that's just how we do it in the summer with the few campers all together, and then when we have the sword or spear fights. But in the summer when the camp is full, cabins train individually, and with dummies and stuff."

And...

"Those three rushed campers came in yesterday, Chiron told me. By that satyr, Toby. Two were claimed last night, and the agreement that we have with the gods is that their children have to be claimed within twenty-four hours of passing into camp boarders, so we expect he'll be claimed tonight - the gods usually claim at night, I think it's just to make it more spectacular looking - so you'll probably be claimed tonight, too."

But before he could spew more facts in my direction, we got to the mess hall - a large, open-air pavilion with no roof, Greek columns bordering the side. Up the white-marble steps and on the marble floor were twenty long picnic tables adjacent to the longer sides, with a head table being opposite to them. In the centre of the pavilion, was a fire pit.

"Each table represents a cabin and this a god. The hearth will be explained at dinner tonight. Moving on to the cabins."

~

Cabins one and two made up the head of the omega shape the cabins were in, with odd numbers on the left and even on the right. Four cabins on either side made up the tails of the omega, but they didn't follow that same right/left rule, and from left to right went from cabin thirteen to cabin twenty.

The main twelve cabins faces a soccer-field-sized commons area, where Greek statues stood in front of their cabins, flower beds lined fountains, and - despite it being almost summer and the middle of the day - a hearth blazed in the centre of the field, being tended to by a young girl I couldn't make out too clearly from this distance.

The first cabin was the largest of them all. It resembles a marble mausoleum, and had grand bronze doors that shimmered with sporatic lightning. The closer we got, the more sure I became of the thunder sounding from the cabin itself, and the more sure I became that this cabin belonged to...

"Zeus." I whispered.

"Yes, Zeus." Chiron agreed. "And this is Hera,"

Cabin two was a more graceful version of cabin one; exactly the same but smaller, with slimmer columns garlanded with flowers and pomegranates, and peacocks on the door where Zeus's lightning would have been.

That was about where the similarities ended between the cabins.

Cabin three, was a long and low building made from rough sea stone embedded with water-related stuff like coral and seashells. The bronze number above the door was engraved in a big trident. Every cabin we passed, Johnny told me the patron god belonging to it. Cabin three was Poseidon.

Cabin four, Demeter, looked like Lowe's Garden Centre threw up on it. The walls were alive with flowers and tomatoes and the roof was like a private garden.

Cabin five, Ares, was an ugly red colour with an even uglier large boar's head hanging over the door. The roof was lined with barbed wire. The porch held multiple weapons stabbed trough it like a chopping block. Despite its emptiness, annoying rock music blared from it.

Cabin six, Athena, was a total library knockoff. It was a grey building with white curtains (one window was drawn, so I could see the rows of bookshelves inside). Above the brass number hanging above the door was an intricate design of an owl.

Cabin seven, Apollo, was made of gold that reflected the sunlight so strongly that I was instantly blinded until I looked away.

Cabin eight, Artemis, was the yin to cabin seven's yang, being simple and silver, decorated with paintings of wild animals, mostly stags.

Cabin nine, Hephaestus, was the most exciting by far. Resembling a factory, it was a brick-made hut with too many smokestacks, and gears strategically placed around the entrance. The bronze number nine above the door looked almost melted.

Cabin ten, Aphrodite, was my least favourite. The outside was nice enough, being simply wooden with a blue painted roof and pillars, grey walls, and having a black-and-white checkerboard deck. And then there was the smell. Heavy perfume burned my nostrils and I gagged until we passed.

Cabin twelve, Dionysus (we decided to skip eleven for the sake of the tour), was just a small wooden cabin covered completely in blooming grape vines.

Cabin thirteen, Hades, gave me the chills. It was made of what looked like obsidian, had no windows, and a large human-looking skull hung over the door. Torches hung off of heavy columns, but there was something off about the fire.

"Why is it green?"

"It's called Greek fire," Chiron explained. I nodded like that cleared it up.

Cabin fourteen, Iris, had white reflective walls that shimmered with rainbow colours. Wind chimes danced in the breeze, making soft melodic tunes. A small fountain caused mist to envelope us, and rainbows blared to life around me.

By now, I saw campers leaving the arena. Most went to a rock-climbing wall beside the archery range, some went to the canoeing lake, but the two Hermes boys I'd seen earlier walked back to their cabin.

Cabin fifteen, Hypnos, reminded me of an old-fashioned prairie house, with inviting poppies over the door. I didn't know if it was because of my lack of sleep from the night before, or the sweet smells from the poppies replacing the harsh perfumes from Aphrodite's cabin, but I was tempted to go inside and crash on a bed for a while.

Cabin sixteen, Nemesis, had a broken chariot-style wheel above its door. It, like several other cabins, simply looked like a run-down, wooden shack.

Cabin seventeen, Nike, was something to look at. Gold columns accented the white marble building, and a small laurel tree grew in the front. The bronze number above the door was adorned with golden wings. Instead of a window, this cabin had a display case with awards of all kinds. One trophy was for winning "Harley's First Annual Three-Legged Death Race".

Cabin eighteen, Hebe, was unnaturally purple. Growing in front of the cabin was, for some reason, lettuce, and the walls were covered in ivy.

Cabin nineteen, Tyche, was covered head-to-toe in good luck charms and totems - rabbits feet, four-leaf clovers, Chinese coins. I saw random cornucopias here and there as well.

Cabin twenty, Hecate, was normal enough, made from blocks of stone with illegible writing on them. I took a step forward to try and decipher what I could, but Johnny held me back.

"I wouldn't do that."

"Why? I'm just trying to read--"

"If one block falls, a curse will be released." Chiron told me, steering me back towards cabin eleven. "Once, every camper in a mile radius got turned into trees."

Cabin eleven, the Hermes cabin, had been freshly painted brown, and a hospital symbol - a caduceus - hung above the entrance.

Two-eyed boy opened the door, and Johnny stepped in first. I doubted Chiron could make it through the door, and he didn't try. I followed Johnny.

The inside of the cabin was similar to the outside, brown walls, plain and simple. About twenty or so bunk beds were positioned around the room, each with two small chests at the foot for occupants to hold keepsakes and personal items. A few chests had locks on them, and I assumed it was because of Hermes's notorious ability to steal - his kids must have inherited that.

"My name is Thomas Rubare," two-eyed boy told me. Then, he motioned to the dimpled-boy. "This is Frederick Taykes - cabin councillor."

"Freddy," Freddy corrected. "Call me Freddy."

Thomas was taller, but he looked almost a year younger than Freddy. Both, I saw now, had upturned eyebrows and pointy noses. Their mischievous smiles made me trust them even less, but because I had nothing for them to steal except the clothes on my back I shrugged the feeling off.

Thomas scratched the back of his neck. "Look, about the whole groaning thing back at the arena...it's not because we don't like you or anything, it's just that you're the fourth kid in two days we've had to go over this with."

"It's cool." I replied, the colour instantly returned to their cheeks. "As I'm sure you heard Chiron say, my name is Y/N L/N. Speaking of being the fourth kid, Johnny told me one of the other three wasn't claimed. Why isn't he here too, if Chiron called for the Hermes kids to go back to their cabin."

Freddy smiled like I asked the important questions. "Perceptive kid," he muttered, "Athena, maybe. Anyway, Lee's just in the bathroom. Poor kid, we slipped him cursed pellets from the Hecate cabin at breakfast, and they've just kicked in. He'll be living in the bathroom for days!"

Freddy and Thomas fist-bumped and cracked wild grins. I managed one myself. I think I liked these boys.

Johnny shifted his hooves to get attention. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Ah," Thomas smiled and disappeared between the rows of bunk beds. He returned with his hands behind his back. "We've got a present for you."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Will I be living in the bathroom for days if I accept it?"

"No, we've sworn an oath not to prank campers on their first day - which is why we slipped Lee the pellets today and not yesterday at lunch."

"Alright." I agreed, and held out my hands.

Thomas dropped a panda pillow pet into my hands. My raised eyebrow did not lower.

"A pillow pet?"

"Tradition." Thomas said.

"To honour a legend." Freddy added.

"...Right. So where am I sleeping?"

_________
Questions: