Chapter Text
Owen knew his life was weird when he wasn’t even fazed by a summer camp of half-gods.
His morning had already been crazy even before the person with twirling ram horns had found him scavenging for food in the New York subway.
They had unruly, curling red hair with streamers of coloured fabric braided through. They looked a little wild, like one of those weird cultists you see in horror movies.
They weren’t even the first weird person she had seen. There had been the woman with snakes for hair that always wore sunglasses in the cafe he had slept near that morning, and the boy with teeth slightly too sharp who had smiled at him when Owen tried to avoid giving him money.
But for some reason, this person stood out more than the others. She wasn’t sure why, but something about them made him pause.
He had been trying to muster enough courage to try and talk to them, just watching from across the train platform when they spotted him staring, coming over on their own.
“You were staring at me,” The ram person spoke plainly, their voice a little high pitched, their tone questioning.
“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just haven’t seen anyone with-” he indicated above his head, not sure if he was being impolite, “before.”
The person in front of him blinked owlishly. “You can see them?”
Owen nodded, confused. “Am I not supposed to?”
The ram person sighed, “I really wasn’t planning on dealing with a halfblood today.”
What had they just called him? Was it some insult he didn’t know?
“A halfblood, what does that mean?” His tone was defensive, distrust woven into every syllable.
“I’ll explain later,” they answered simply, “are your parents around anywhere?”
She shook her head, she hadn’t had parents for a while now. “I don’t… my mom’s not around anymore.”
“Oh, well that makes this a little easier. Come on then, I’m going to show you something cool.” She smiled a little bit now, Owen assumed she was trying to be comforting. It was not working.
There was about a 60% chance of this being something that could get him killed, but he was a little too curious to care, choosing to follow the mysterious person.
A few hours later he found himself in a large, blue, four-story farmhouse that overlooked what the ram person, whose name he had discovered was Cleo, had explained was a summer camp for people like him.
People like him, she had learnt, meant people who were half-mortal and half-god, so that sure was something. Learning that the Greek gods were real had been quite the experience and she was mentally prepared for someone to tell her this was actually a mistake and that she had to leave. The chance of actually having somewhere to call home felt far too good to be true, no matter how outlandish the entire ordeal had felt.
Owen was now waiting for someone who Cleo had referred to as Mr D, who was apparently the head of the camp. It had been about ten minutes, and he was still sitting alone on the slightly lumpy couch that was in a strange place that felt like both a living room and war room.
Large maps of what she could guess was New York were plastered haphazardly across the walls and a large wooden table with papers scattered across the entire surface took up most of the space.
A sound caused him to look up as a short, portly man walked through the doorway, followed by a… Horse-man? He looked like a middle aged man, with thinning brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard, but what stood out most to Owen was the fact his lower half was a white horse. Well, that was certainly something new.
“Is this the new camper?” The shorter man asked, his tone uninterested and maybe even a little hostile.
Owen shrunk into himself, trying to avoid his sharp gaze.
“That is what Cleo said.” The horse-man, centaur, right, that’s what they were called, the centaur replied, his tone slightly exasperated. “Hello there child, what is your name?”
“I’m Owen,” he said carefully, trying to avoid eye contact. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Well then Owen, do you know why you're here? The centaur asked.
“I… no, Cleo just said this could be somewhere I could be safe.”
He nodded, “Well, I can tell you what you want to know, but yes, that is a good description of where you are.”
“Who are you?” His voice was still soft as he spoke, her eyes finally finding the centaur’s.
“Of course, I should introduce us. My name is Chiron, I am the activities director here at Camp Half-Blood, and this is Mr D, or Dionysus, the camp director.” Chiron smiled, gesturing to the other man as he spoke.
“Dionysus, like the god?”
“Yes, I am a god.” The short man huffed, obvious annoyance on his face.
“Oh.” She responded simply, not really sure how you were meant to act when meeting a literal god.
“Come this way, child,” Chiron indicated to the door. She blinked a couple of times before standing and following the pair out the door and on to a large wrap-around veranda.
The view was breathtaking, a large valley with hills on all sides, a series of buildings with both ancient Greek and camp cabin-style architecture. There were kids, everyone from every age, some as young as six around people who were probably adults.
“Camp Half-Blood is a safe haven for people like us, those who have divine blood in their veins.” Chiron began, it felt like a speech he had given a thousand times as he gazed out across the valley.
“Here we train and protect future heroes, so that monsters aren’t as much of a threat as they would be if we left them unprotected.”
It was silent for a couple of seconds, Owen not sure how to respond. “You… you said half gods, which. Which god is my parent?”
The centaur sighed. “That is the tricky part, it's not something we can just know, although there usually are signs as most demigods take after their godly parents, such as Athena’s kids being highly intelligent.”
He nodded, “So… how do I find out?”
“Well it's fine if you don’t know just yet, but if you really want to know, is there anything you're exceptionally good at, anything slightly magical or inhuman you can do?”
“Well, sometimes I know things before I’m meant to.” He answered with as little detail as possible, he wasn’t going to tell someone he had just met that sometimes he saw things happen before they did, or that he could fix a broken object within seconds. Those were not things she wanted to even think about.
“That could be many things, it's hard to tell just yet. But you will find out, that is a promise.”
Owen gave a small nod, fiddling idly with his fraying jumper.
“Well then, I do believe it's about time you had a look around. Head over that way and Cleo will give you the grand tour.”
Chiron indicated around the side of the farmhouse as he spoke, a warm smile on his face, the kind a teacher gave when trying to get a kid to do something.
Owen followed his direction silently, wandering over to where he spotted Cleo to be standing.
She gave him a wry smile. “Come on, this way.”
***
The summer sun shone brightly over the cool azure of the ocean that seemed to stretch out to infinity before him.
Owen stood near where the Apollo kids had set up the archery range, holding a sword in his hand as a very cheerful Nikos tried to teach him some basics.
“No, no, you must hold the sword like this, too easy to steal if you hold it like that.” His thick (Greek?) accent cutting through any kind of zone he had been in, a large gruff hand coming to move his fingers along the scabbard.
He gave a small nod, before beginning his drill from the start. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. He counted his steps in his head, trying to drown out the noise of the landscape around him.
Nikos didn’t say anything more, which he assumed to be a sign that he was doing something right.
He kept going, minutes bleeding into each other as his arms began to burn from exertion. Snapping out of his trance, he heard a large uproar over in the direction of the archery range, turning his head just in time for someone to shout “WATCH OUT!”
Suddenly everything turned to silence, the air itself stilling around him as he saw an arrow arcing its way through the air at speed, right towards him.
And then it just. Stopped.
The arrow was seemingly paused in time, just a foot away from his face, inching ever so slowly towards him. She blinked, shock echoing deep in her body, before stepping back a step. The arrow did not follow. She took another.
She kept going, until, about three feet away from where she stood originally, the arrow began to move again, launching itself hard into the ground where he had previously stood.
“What the fuck,” a camper near him breathed, startling her back into remembering there were people nearby.
Looking up, Owen finally realised everyone around had stopped their own activities and were now staring, very intently, at the new camper, frozen in terror.
A strong hand came to rest on his shoulder, startling Owen. It was only Nikos.
“Are you okay small child? That looked like quite the shock.”
“I… I, yeah I’m fine.” He couldn’t speak, he was in complete shock. How did that happen. What on earth happened?
A tallish girl ran over, a brown, medium-length plait swinging behind her, sun-yellow scarf tying the rest of her hair out of her eyes.
“Are you okay, it didn’t hit you did it?” Her voice was bright and melodic, like someone had bottled up the sound of sunshine. She seemed genuinely concerned.
Owen shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
She paused her fussing, sighing in relief. “Okay good, I was really worried there for a second.”
She turned towards Nikos, who was still watching the arrow stuck into the ground with a curious expression. “Do you know what happened?”
He shook his head. “No, little one, I did not.”
She nodded, taking in the information. “I should probably go tell Chiron then, he’ll want to hear about this.”
She then turned towards Owen, a warm, glowing smile spread across her face. “You should probably come as well, he’ll want to hear your side of the story.”
Owen nodded wordlessly and followed the new girl towards the looming blue farmhouse, a sense of dread settling in his stomach.
This could only end badly.