I disappeared for a week like a responsible author, did not update at all, fully regret my life choices—please forgive me, drop Power stones and reviews, I am back and pretending this was part of the plan.
THE MOST UNEVENTFUL CAB RIDE IN HISTORY
Subway to Penn Station.
Penn Station to the Long Island Rail Road.
LIRR to a cab outside Montauk.
I had the Isfet mark burning low on my shoulder, a recently-knitted broken arm, no sword, and enough accumulated bad luck sitting on me to qualify as a beacon. I was an anomaly with a chaos brand travelling through Long Island. If anything was going to happen, it was going to happen now.
I stayed alert the entire ride.
Dhanush ready to manifest. Eyes on every car that pulled alongside us too long. Tracking the tree line when we hit the more rural stretches.
The driver talked about traffic on the I-495.
Nothing happened.
Ten minutes. Twenty.
The driver switched to the Yankees bullpen situation. I watched a van that had been behind us for two exits and then it turned off and it was just a van.
Thirty minutes.
Come on, I thought. I am RIGHT HERE. I have a chaos mark and a healing arm and no sword. This is the easiest target you will ever get. Any time.
The cab pulled up at the end of the dirt road.
"Here you go, buddy."
I paid. Got out. Stood on the road.
Looked at the tree line.
Looked at the sky.
Nothing.
I picked up the duffel.
Fine, I thought. The universe wins this one too.
I started walking.
The boundary hit me wrong.
Not broken. Still up. But thin — stretched at the edges, the specific quality of something operating below capacity. Like the signal was still broadcasting but the source had weakened.
Hm, I thought.
I pushed through it.
Looked up at the hill.
Thalia's pine.
Still there. Still standing. Still giving off the faint golden shimmer of the camp's northern anchor doing its job.
Except.
The needles. Tips browning, working inward. The bark at the base gone dull in a way that wasn't weather. The shimmer — present, but fighting. Not radiating the way it should be radiating.
Something's wrong with the tree.
I almost stopped.
Almost.
Trees go through phases, I thought. It's been a long summer. Could be anything. Don't catastrophise.
I walked past the hill toward the main camp.
Big mistake.
I got forty feet before I saw Beckendorf.
He was crossing the yard toward the forge carrying what looked like an extremely large crate with one arm and a bundle of bronze rods over the other shoulder, moving with the focused efficiency of someone who had calculated the most direct route and committed to it.
He looked up.
His whole face changed.
He set the crate down — carefully, with the specific care of someone putting down something important — and waved me over with one massive hand.
I walked over.
"You're back," he said.
"I'm back."
He looked at the arm. At the shoulder. At the mark at my collar — dark hieroglyphs cooling into the skin, faintly visible. His expression asked a question his mouth didn't.
"Long story," I said. "What's happening to the tree."
"Elder python venom," he said. Flat. The flat of someone who had been saying this for days and hated the answer each time. "Chiron identified it. Somebody got venom from an elder python into the roots. We don't know how. We don't know who." He picked up the crate again. "Walk with me."
I fell into step.
"Monster attacks have been worse," he said. "Night mostly. Things getting through the gaps at the northern border that couldn't have gotten through before." He pushed the forge door open with his shoulder.
"Where is Chiron," I asked.
He set the crate down inside.
Looked at me.
"The Olympians blamed him," he said. "For the tree. Said he should have detected the venom earlier, should have had better wards, should have caught it before it took hold." He said the next part like it tasted bad. "Fired him. Pending review. He's gone."
I stood in the forge doorway.
Chiron, I thought. Gone.
"There's someone new in the Big House," Beckendorf said. "You'll meet him. You'll wish you hadn't."
"What about the tree," I said. "What's the plan."
"Quest." He moved to the workbench. "The Golden Fleece. Somewhere in the Sea of Monsters — basically the Bermuda Triangle but older and worse. Texts say it can heal any poison, restore any magical corruption. Place it on the tree and the boundary restores."
"Who's on the quest."
"Clarisse."
I looked at him.
"Ares cabin got the quest," he said. "Olympians assigned it. Clarisse leads it solo."
"And Percy," I said.
Beckendorf's mouth did something.
"Percy, Annabeth, and Grover went after her," he said. "Without authorisation. Tyson is involved — Percy's half-brother, long story — they found another way in. They're in the Sea of Monsters now. Racing Clarisse to the Fleece."
I stood there.
Percy was in the Sea of Monsters.
Annabeth was in the Sea of Monsters.
Grover was in the Sea of Monsters.
Clarisse was in the Sea of Monsters.
The camp was running on with a dying tree and a thinning border and someone new in the Big House.
"Right," I said.
"Yeah," Beckendorf said.
A beat.
Then he reached over and pulled a cloth off something on the far workbench.
"Come here," he said.
I walked over.
And stopped.
Five feet of celestial bronze.
That was the first thing. The length of it — longer than anything I'd held before, longer than made immediate sense, five feet of blade laid out on the cloth with three inches of uniform width the entire length. No taper. No theatrical narrowing toward the tip. Just — five feet of celestial bronze that said exactly what it intended to do and did not feel the need to elaborate.
The metal caught the forge light and held it. Not reflected it — heldit, the way celestial bronze did when it had been worked properly, when the forge had done something right to it, like the metal itself had been convinced of something.
I reached out.
Picked it up with my good arm.
Heavy.
Not unwieldy. Balanced — unnervingly, perfectly balanced, the weight distributed across the full length so the blade sat in the hand like it knew where it wanted to be. But heavy. Twice what the old one had been. Maybe more.
I looked at Beckendorf.
He had his arms crossed. The expression of a craftsman watching someone hold his best work and waiting for the correct response.
"Charles," I said.
"Yes."
"Charles, this is the greatest thing I have ever held."
He nodded once. Minimum viable response accepted.
"I may actually cry," I said.
"Please don't."
"I'm not going to cry."
"Good."
"I'm just saying it's a possibility."
"It's not a possibility."
I turned it. The forge light moved across the flat of the blade and did things. The balance shifted perfectly with every angle — not compensating, just there, like the sword was paying attention.
"How," I said.
"Very carefully," Beckendorf said. "And for a very long time. And with significantly more cursing than I anticipated."
"Charles."
"Yes."
"You are a genius."
"I know."
"An absolute genius."
"I know."
"The greatest smith of this generation—"
"Also the handle isn't done," he said.
I looked at where the handle would be. Raw tang. Functional but unfinished. Then the crossguard — present but not shaped into its final form. And the sheath: a rough wooden form leaning against the wall, waiting.
"How long," I said.
"Ten days," he said.
"A week," I said.
"Ten days."
"A week."
"Ten."
"Seven."
"TEN," he said.
I set the blade back down. Carefully. The way you set down something that matters.
"The finished parts are perfect," I said.
"The unfinished parts will also be perfect," he said. "When they're finished." He picked up a rag. Wiped his hands. "Which brings me to the other thing."
"What other thing."
He looked at me.
"Labour," he said.
I looked at him.
"And material procurement," he said.
"Charles—"
"I spent three weeks sourcing material." he said. "I had three apprentices on rotation. The crossguard alone took two full days. And the blade—" He pulled out a small notebook. Opened it to a page. Turned it to face me.
I looked at the number.
"Four thousand dollars," I said.
"Labour and material procurement fees," he said. "This is a bargain. Do you know what Hephaestus charges?"
"I don't have a direct—"
"Considerably more. Four thousand."
I looked at the sword.
At Beckendorf.
At the sword.
"I have a debit card," I said.
Beckendorf stared at me.
"Bank account," I said. Casually. The way you say things that are entirely normal and routine.
He looked at the ceiling. Then at me. The expression of a man updating his understanding of who he was dealing with.
"Ten days," he said. "Come back in ten days and collect it."
"A week to check on progress," I said.
"Ten days to collect it," he said.
"We'll see," I said.
I picked up the duffel. Headed for the door.
"Hey," Beckendorf said.
I looked back.
He was already back at the workbench. Not looking at me.
"Go tell Mr. D you're back," he said. "And meet the new director." A beat. "And make sure not to roast him." He picked up his hammer. Back to work.
I went.
MR. D AND THE NEW DIRECTOR
The Big House porch had a chair.
The chair had Mr. D.
Mr. D had sunglasses, a Diet Coke, and was sitting in what was technically shade — the specific narrow strip of shadow cast by the porch overhang — in a way that suggested he had identified the exact position where the sun would not touch him and had placed himself there with mathematical precision.
It was the shade of someone who had decided to be outside while also refusing to participate in outside.
He did not look up when I came up the steps.
"Arjun," he said.
"Aditya," I corrected.
"Right." He took a sip.
"I'm back."
"Mm." He considered his Diet Coke.
"The tree is dying."
"I know and it is Not my problem."
"Okay."
"The quest is ongoing."
"I heard."
"There's a new director." He took another sip. "He's in the Big House."
"I know. Beckendorf told me."
"Beckendorf," Mr. D said, "is an optimist. He said you wouldn't like him." He paused. "I'm telling you it's worse than not liking him."
He went back to his Diet Coke.
Conversation apparently concluded.
I went inside.
My room was the same as I left it . Bed, desk, window overlooking the strawberry fields. I dropped the duffel on the bed.
The mark burned low on my shoulder.
The arm ached.
No sword yet. Ten days.
I turned to head back downstairs.
And nearly walked into the man standing in the hallway.
He was — I stopped.
Gaunt. Not thin — gaunt. The structural hollowness of a body that had been in deprivation so long it had become the shape of him. Sunken cheeks. Deep blue shadows under the eyes. Badly-cut grey hair. Dirty fingernails. An orange jumpsuit that had been issued to someone who had not been given the opportunity to decline it.
And his hands.
His hands were doing this thing — small, constant, almost imperceptible — reaching. Toward things that weren't there. The gesture of someone whose most fundamental reflex had been denied for so long it had become involuntary. Permanent. Like breathing.
He looked at me.
His eyes moved down. Face. Jacket. The mark at my collar.
His nostrils moved.
The reaching in his hands got slightly more urgent.
"You," he said. Very quietly. To himself almost. His eyes going slightly unfocused. "You would be... very tasty."
I took one full step backward.
"...I'm sorry?"
He blinked. The unfocused quality snapped back into studied composure. A man remembering he was in charge of something.
"Nothing." He straightened. The jumpsuit tried to cooperate. "You're the absent one. I've been reviewing the records." He drew himself up to full height. "I am Tantalus. Acting director of Camp Half-Blood. And you and I need to have a conversation about accountability."
I looked at him.
At the jumpsuit.
At the hands still doing their small reaching thing.
Right, I thought.
"Sure," I said. "What conversation."
He stepped back. I walked out. He followed.
"Your records show an extended absence."
"I was delayed. I'm back now."
"Delayed." He tasted the word. Slowly. Like he was deciding whether it was worth keeping. "You were delayed. As if the camp was a dinner engagement you simply couldn't fit into your schedule."
I kept walking.
"What cabin are you in."
"I'm not in a cabin."
He stopped.
I kept walking.
"Every camper is in a cabin," he said behind me.
"I have a room."
He caught up. "In the Big House." Something had entered his voice. The quality of a man who had been a king for a long time and had learned that the most effective way to diminish someone was not volume but precision. Describe them. Accurately. Let the description do the work. "I reviewed the records. A room that should belong to someone of consequence, extended to you by a centaur who apparently felt—" He paused for the word. "—charitable." He said charitable the way other people said pathetic. "Chiron is gone. I am here." He moved ahead. Turned to face me in the corridor. The blocking of someone who had used doors and hallways and the placement of bodies to establish hierarchy ten thousand times before. "I will be reviewing every arrangement this camp has extended to people who haven't earned it. Including yours."
"Okay," I said.
He blinked.
"Which tent should I move to if you reassign the room," I said.
The composure flickered. He'd wanted pushback. Something to resist. Compliance disoriented him.
"That will be determined," he said. "After the review."
"Fine."
I started walking.
"The mark on your shoulder."
I stopped.
"An injury," I said. Without turning.
"That is not an injury." He walked around to face me. Looked at the Isfet hieroglyphs at my collar. His eyes moved slowly. Taking inventory. "Egyptian markings. You have been in their territory and returned bearing their brand." A pause. "What were you doing in Egyptian territory that warranted a brand."
"Nothing that concerns this camp."
"Everything in this camp concerns me." Flat. Certain. "I am the director. And I do not enjoy demigods who disappear into foreign magical territories, return branded by foreign traditions, and present it as irrelevant." He looked at me.
"Then concern yourself with the dying tree"
"Tell me—do you imagine I don't see those things? That I require a fifteen-year-old with a foreign brand on his shoulder to point out that a tree is dying?" The contempt was precise. Unhurried. "I have governed people. I have led armies. I have sat at tables with gods. I was a king. I do not require instruction from—" His eyes moved across me once, top to bottom. "—whatever this is."
The king had arrived.
Not the orange jumpsuit. Not the studied composure. The thing underneath all of that—the ancient contempt of someone who had ruled and been unmade and come back with the specific bitterness of a man who believed the world had been wrong about him and would prove it.
"You demigods," he said. Slowly. Like each word was a door he was opening one at a time. "You arrive here from whatever broken circumstances produced you and immediately behave as though something is owed to you. A home. A purpose. A place at the table." He looked at the mark. At the room. At me. "In my day, demigods were forged. Not accommodated. They earned their place or they didn't. They were not handed rooms in the Big House because a centaur felt sorry for them."
"Your day ended when Zeus killed you," I said.
The smile didn't move.
"And yet," he said pleasantly, "here I am. And there you are. No cabin. No confirmed lineage. No one who will say plainly what you are or where you came from. Branded by a tradition that isn't yours. Walking around this camp as though it belongs to you when you can't even tell me which god to address for the insult of your existence." He looked at me with the patience of something that had been in Tartarus a very long time and had learned that patience was the sharpest tool available. "Whatever made you—whatever divine blood you carry—it hasn't claimed you. Won't claim you. You are simply here. Appearing. Expecting to matter."
I didn't say anything.
He took that as permission to continue.
"The gods make children," he said. "Then they lose interest. It is an old story. Most of the children in this camp at least know which god lost interest in them. You don't even have that. You have a room and a mark and a duffel bag and the baffling confidence of someone who has mistaken tolerance for belonging." He tilted his head. The small tilt of a man selecting his next instrument. "Your divine parent won't come for you. Your mother never came for you. Perhaps she couldn't. Perhaps she simply chose not to." The smile thinned. The precise thin of someone who has found the exact nerve and is pressing it now with both thumbs. "Or perhaps she was simply that kind of whor—"
BOOM.
The floor went.
Three feet in every direction. Instant. Not gradual — INSTANT. Floorboards blackening and splitting, smoke rising, the heat of it hitting the walls and the ceiling simultaneously.
The Kavach erupted.
All of it. Every piece. At once.
Chest piece. Greaves. Shoulder guards. Bracers. Kundala. EVERYTHING — blazing gold so bright the hallway had no shadows left, the light casting hard edges on every surface, the divine armour of Karna's bloodline filling the corridor like a second sun.
Tantalus hit the wall.
I hadn't moved.
I was standing in the middle of the burning floor looking at him. The Kavach blazing. The smoke rising around me. Not moving.
So.
Let's assess.
Fifteen years old. Indian. Someone said something about your mother. You are currently ON FIRE in a hallway.
Bro.
BROOOO.
This is the most desi thing that has ever happened in the history of demigods. Percy Jackson fought a GOD. You set a BUILDING on fire because a man from TARTARUS implied your mother was a—
You know what? Valid. Completely valid. Zero notes. Karna himself would understand.
Your mother — wherever she is — is either extremely proud right now or she's looking down at this hallway going "son what are you DOING" and honestly. Same.
The rest of me: are you DONE—
The calm part: almost—
The rest of me: WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING—
The calm part: I just want to acknowledge that we confirmed every single stereotype about Indian boys and their—
ACKNOWLEDGED. MOVING ON.
"Say that again," I said.
Quiet.
The quiet after calm is gone and something older is standing in its place.
"Say. That. Again."
I stepped forward once. The burning floor didn't stop me.
"I dare you."
Tantalus was flat against the wall.
The reaching thing his hands did — that constant unconscious reaching — had stopped completely. For the first time since I'd walked into this building he was not reaching for anything.
He was very still.
Smart man.
The floor between us was still smoking. The boards charred black in a perfect circle. The wallpaper on either side had started to brown at the edges.
Somewhere downstairs a door opened.
"WHAT," Mr. D's voice floated up, profoundly unconcerned, "is burning."
I held Tantalus's gaze for three more seconds.
Then I breathed out.
The Kavach didn't go away immediately — it faded slowly, reluctantly, like something that wanted to stay out and was being convinced otherwise piece by piece. The floor stopped burning. The smoke was still there. The char was still there. Three feet of destroyed floorboards in a perfect circle.
I stepped over the edge of it.
Walked past Tantalus.
He pressed himself flatter against the wall as I passed. Not quite flat enough.
I stopped at the top of the stairs.
Didn't turn around.
"There is a beautiful thing called karma," I said. "What goes around comes around." A pause. "You'd know."
I went downstairs.
Mr. D was standing at the bottom looking up at the smoke drifting from the hallway ceiling with the expression of a man who has seen everything and rates this somewhere in the lower third of interesting.
"Andrew," he said.
"Aditya," I said.
"There are scorch marks on my floor."
"Yes."
"Did you do that."
"Yes."
He looked at me.
Looked at the smoke.
Took a sip of his Diet Coke.
"Try not to do it again," he said. "The harpies will complain for weeks."
He walked back to his chair.
I picked up my duffel from where I'd dropped it.
Walked out of the Big House.
Beckendorf was waiting at the bottom of the steps.
He looked up at the smoke drifting from the second floor window. At me.
He sighed.
The long sigh of a man who had known this was going to happen and had simply been waiting for the specific form it would take.
"How bad," he said.
"Three feet of floor," I said. "Wallpaper on both sides."
He looked at the window.
"Malcolm owes me twenty dollars," he said.
I looked at him.
"He said you'd last until dinner before burning anything." He started walking back toward the forge. "I said within the hour."
From somewhere across the yard: Connor Stoll's voice, loud and aggrieved: "—PAY UP, I said within the HOUR, I SAID IT—"
Travis, pained: "—you said he'd burn it DOWN, not just the floor—"
"—CLOSE ENOUGH—"
"—there are RULES, Connor—"
Silena Beauregard came around the corner of the Big House, looked at the smoke, looked at me.
"That was faster than I expected," she said.
"How fast did you expect," I said.
"The chariot race," she said. "I gave you until you saw the chariot race."
Malcolm walked past with his notebook. He looked at the smoke. At me. Wrote something down. Kept walking.
Probably documenting the incident. Probably with a timestamp.
The camp spread out in front of me. The dying tree on the hill. The thinning border. The kids drilling in the arena.
I was still angry. The specific hot angry of someone who has been hit in a place they don't talk about and hasn't had time to put it away yet.
I picked up my duffel.
Started walking toward the northern perimeter.
Got about thirty feet.
"ADITYA."
I turned.
Travis and Connor were right there. Had apparently not actually left during the betting argument, just shifted position.
They were both talking at once.
"—Tantalus cancelled the night watch rotations—"
"—said it was demoralising, like, what does that even mean—"
"—and he's reinstated the chariot races, the CHARIOT RACES, while the border is—"
"—and he told the Ares cabin stand-in that border patrol wasn't a priority because the barrier would hold—"
"—THE BARRIER IS NOT HOLDING—"
"—three breaches last night, THREE—"
"—a hellhound got to the strawberry fields—"
"—Katie is FURIOUS—"
"—and he docked Will's healing supplies because apparently the infirmary budget is being redirected to the race track—"
"WHAT," I said.
They stopped.
Both of them. Simultaneously. Like someone had hit pause.
Looked at me.
"Yeah," Travis said. "That's what we said."
"We've been saying that for three days," Connor said. "Nobody's listening because he's the director and Chiron isn't here and Mr. D—" He gestured vaguely at the Big House. "—is Mr. D."
"We need someone to do something," Travis said. "Like actually do something. Because the way this is going—" He looked at the tree on the hill. At the browning needles. At the thinning shimmer. "—we're not going to have a camp to come back to when Percy gets here with the Fleece."
I looked at the tree.
At the border.
At the kids drilling in the arena who were drilling harder than they should have to because the gaps in the northern perimeter were real and they knew it.
I was still angry.
I breathed out through my nose.
Slowly.
"Get me the counsellors," I said.
Travis and Connor looked at each other.
"All of them?" Connor said.
"Everyone who's left. Beckendorf, Silena, Katie, Malcolm, Will, whoever Clarisse left in charge of Ares. Everyone." I looked at the tree one more time. "Dining pavilion. Half an hour."
The Stolls' expressions did the thing where something complicated happened very fast and resolved into one simple thing.
"Yeah," Travis said. "Okay."
"On it," Connor said.
They left at a run.
I stood there for a moment.
Still angry.
I picked up my duffel.
Went to drop it in my room-- AGAIN.
Then went to find the dining pavilion.
END CHAPTER 32