Daniel's POV

Daniel was having a bad day. First, one of the pegasi had a little accident all over his new pair of Reeboks, then he had tripped over a loose tile in the dining area, spilling his food all over the elaborately tiled floor. Usually Daniel was quite nimble-footed, but not today apparently.

Now Daniel stood on Half-Blood Hill, leaning on Thalia's tree, and looked out over Camp Half-Blood. He could see the strawberry fields way back by the woods where the satyrs were playing on their magical reed pipes that made the plants go crazy. Daniel loved satyrs. They appeared to be human from the waist up, except for small horns growing out of their head, but the satyr's legs were covered in the thick curly hair that covered their heads followed by cloven hooves for feet, similar to the legs of a mountain goat.

Daniel then lowered his gaze to the large ring of cabins on the west side of the valley. Each cabin represented a god. Not a capital "G" god, but an ancient Greek god. It may be hard to imagine but the Greek gods did exist. The ancient Greeks weren't stupid, you know. And what did the gods do in ancient Greece? They went around mingling with mortals and bearing forth kids, half mortal, half god. They were known as Demigods, or Half-Bloods. Daniel focused in on the Apollo cabin. Its gold outside gleaned in the sunlight. He watched his half-siblings playing basketball behind the cabin.

Yes, the Apollo cabin was his cabin and he was the son of Apollo, the god of music, poetry, and the sun. Daniel had never actually met his dad, but one day he hoped to. If your part god, you may be asking, does that mean that you get to look all big and buff and godly? Unfortunately, no. Daniel was rather skinny. He had blue eyes, lightly tanned skin, and short blondish hair. He did receive one trait from his dad however, and that was archery. Daniel was great at archery.

"Hey!" said a voice from behind him.

Daniel whirled around. "Oh, hi Clara." Daniel replied. Clara was another one of Daniel's half-siblings. They had the same father, Apollo, but different mortal mothers. She had light brown hair, brown eyes, a relatively light complexion, and kind of a strange personality. Sometimes she could be extremely chatty, but sometimes she would become more somber and not talk at all. Right now Clara was in chatty mode.

"So what do you think of Connor and Katie?" That was totally like her. Gossip all around.

"Umm..." Daniel didn't really know what to say, never really being the gossipy type.

Clara didn't wait for an answer. "Hey, isn't it your birthday tomorrow? Sweet sixteen, right? Are you excited?"

"Oh, right." Daniel had completely forgotten about his birthday in all of the confusion of today. "Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I mean... yeah! Awesome! Well I'm going to go now! Bye!"

And with that Daniel jogged down the hill towards the combat arena, leaving a dumbfounded Clara behind.

*****

The fighting arena was small. Just a walled-in circle with a sand floor. There was a row of training dummies on one end of the arena and some targets for archery practice. That was where Daniel was heading now, over to the targets. Archery had always helped calm him down, even before he realized that he was the son of Apollo. Before he came to Camp Half-Blood, Daniel had been in a ton of archery school tournaments and even some state tournaments too.

Daniel grabbed his favorite bow, a mixture of mahogany and celestial bronze, and a quiver of celestial bronze tipped arrows off the rack of bows before entering the arena. When he entered he saw his best friend Jackson Ridder over by the dummies, hacking away at them with his favorite sword, Apergos, which simply meant "Striker" in Greek.

"Hey, Jackson!" Daniel yelled. No response.

He tried again. "JACKSON!"

"Huh? What?" Jackson turned around. He had dark hair, kind-of a blackish-brown color. His skin was also tanned from all the time he spent outside training or in the forge, him being a son of Hephaestus. "Oh, hi Daniel. I guess I didn't hear you there. Too busy training against those dummies."

"Yeah, I could tell. How about you face a more worthy opponent." Daniel said, gesturing to himself. He had always been a decent sword fighter, but his skills with a sword went nowhere close to his skills with a bow.

Jackson glanced around. "I don't see a worthy opponent," he said with a faint smile.

Daniel pushed Jackson's stomach a bit less gently than he should have.

"Ow!" Jackson exclaimed, then laughed. "Fine. All right, I'll sword-fight you, but don't expect me to go easy on you!"

Jackson handed Daniel one of the wooden training swords from the weapons rack and replaced his own with a wooden one too. They circled each other for a few moments, but then Daniel lunged, his blade aiming for Jackson's chest. Jackson blocked the sword and the fight was on. Jackson went for a blow to the legs. Daniel nimbly leaped out of the way.

"You're going to have to try harder than that!" Daniel yelled as he scampered across the arena.

Jackson chased him but at the last second Daniel sidestepped and swung his sword. Jackson blocked it again and instead tried to back Daniel up against the wall. Daniel leaped up onto the weapons rack, balancing precariously.

"Come at me, bro, or are you chicken?" Daniel teased.

Jackson rushed forwards. Daniel jumped up and used the wall to propel himself towards Jackson. Jackson was expecting that and dropped to the ground. With nothing in his path, Daniel flew over Jackson, crashed into one of the archery targets and fell down to the sandy ground. Jackson put the wooden sword to Daniel's throat.

"You, my friend, are dead." Jackson said, but then took his sword away and reached out his hand. Daniel took it and Jackson pulled him up.

Just then the horn sounded that alerted everyone for dinner.

"You know," Daniel began. "Let's go from something you're better at to something I'm better at."

"What do you mean?" Jackson asked.

"Race you to the dining pavilion!" shouted Daniel as he started sprinting in that direction.

*****

Thump thump thump thump.

The sound of pounding feet rang through their ears. Breathe in, breathe out. They ran through the ring of cabins in the center of the valley, dodging past kids and jumping over various obstacles. Breathe in, breathe out. They ran up towards the dining pavilion. Breathe in, breathe out. Up the steps. Over the crack in the elaborately decorated tiled floor of the pavilion, made by a certain child of Hades.

"And Daniel is victorious once again!" shouted Daniel as he leaned up against one of the stone pillars surrounding the pavilion. Daniel never really understood what the point of them were, the dining area having no roof and all. He guessed it was just for decor, to made it feel more Greek or something.

Jackson came panting up to him. "Uhhh..." he groaned in between breaths. "Why... do we... have to run so far?"

"It wasn't even that far." Daniel smiled. Although he tried his best to hide it, he was also tired, but he couldn't look weak in front of his best friend right? "Anyway, let's get some grub."

"Sounds like a splendid idea."

Jackson walked away, over to the Hephaestus table where the rest of his siblings were chowing down on every assortment of meats. Daniel passed by the Hades table, then turned around, noticing something.

"Will, shouldn't you be over at our table?" Daniel asked his half-brother, Will Solace.

"Uh, well, I was just kinda talking to Nico here. Is that not okay? Chiron hasn't said anything..."

Daniel glanced over at the head table, at one end of the pavilion. Chiron was looking his way, and winked. Even he had noticed that Will had been spending an awful lot of time around Nico.

Daniel looked back over at Will and Nico. Will was giving Daniel a look that was awfully close to puppy-dog eyes.

"Well, I guess it's okay. See you!" Daniel said. Then he walked over to his table to eat.

Near the end of the hour, when most of the campers had finished their meal, Chiron gave a troubling announcement. He stood up and clinked his never-ending goblet with his spoon, very noble, until everyone had quieted down.

"There has been news of a new threat rising. The gods have heard that there had been a great stirring of the mist over by Mount Othrys, or its more common name, Mount Tamalpais."

Shouts of "I thought we would finally get a break!" rang out of the camper's mouths and the talking and shouting commenced again.

"SILENCE!" Chiron roared. "Let me continue. Thank you. Now, gods have asked us to send a few demigods to check things out over there. They say it is probably a false alarm, sometimes the mist just likes to act up, who knows why, but we have to check, just in case. I have already picked a couple of half-bloods to undertake this quest. Could Daniel Summers, the son of Apollo, please step forwards."

Daniel's heart picked up its pace as he stood up and began to walk slowly towards the head table.

"Good job, Dylan." said Dionysus, the head of the camp, as Daniel walked behind the head table to stand behind Chiron.

"We have chosen Daniel for his heroic actions during both the Titan War in Manhattan and the Battle against Camp Jupiter here at our camp. We have also chosen him because of his skill with a bow, which will come in handy during his quest." Chiron announced. "And for our second hero, we have Jackson Ridder, who also showed heroism and bravery at both of the battles I mentioned earlier, and for his skill with a blade."

Clapping arose at the Hephaestus table as Jackson stood up and came over next to Daniel.

"You know," he began. "I'm kinda excited! This would be my first real quest and I hope we find some real monsters to go along with it.

"Suit yourself." Daniel whispered back. "I'd rather just stay here and train than risk my life out in the wild, especially over in San Francisco. They say that there are monsters everywhere you look down there and I'd rather not see for myself whether that's true or not."

Jackson looked like he was about to come up with a clever comeback but he was interrupted by a dryad, arriving from the direction of the forest.

"Sir, sorry to bother you, but the naiads just pulled a boy out of the sea. They think he might be a demigod!"