Chapter Text
Stede was running as fast as his legs would take him, but the leathery bat things were gaining on him. Furies, he thought they were, based on descriptions and pictures in his old storybooks. Shadows darkened the grass in front of him, following him as if they were his own image reflected.
The branch he had picked up from a tree wasn’t the best weapon, but it was all he had, and he was grateful for even that as he swung up in an arc towards the swooping figure of the monster. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and blood pounded in his ears, and he couldn’t decide if he was excited or terrified at this turn of events. Probably more on the side of terrified.
His branch/stick/club connected with the demon’s cheek and sent her spiraling away, propelled by her own momentum, and in the second it gained him, Stede sprinted toward the top of the hill.
Now, the shadow was behind him, but he could feel the monster’s gaze on him, could feel the phantom sting of her claws on his now-bleeding chest, his swelling calf. The hill was so close, but his lungs were burning, his legs aching, and he didn’t know how much longer he could fight her off. Especially when he thought he heard another set of wing beats approaching from the southwest, or even two.
“Buttons!” Stede yelled, whipping around to search for his guide as he ran, but the mad satyr was nowhere to be found. “Where did you go?”
“Right ‘ere, kid,” the heavily accented voice called out from somewhere he couldn’t trace. His eyes scanned the area, but he didn’t see the half-goat-man anywhere.
That was until the first fury (the one he had so valiantly knocked down) came soaring towards him, and the satyr leapt out of the brush, higher than should have been possible, and landed on the hag’s back, pulling her down with his weight. Stede saw a glow of gold in the sunlight shining through the heavy treetops before it and the rest of Buttons’ face descended on the fury’s throat. Blood exploded from the monster before it vanished into a puff of yellow, sulfuric vapor.
Buttons pushed himself up and spit black blood onto the grass, wiping his drenched mouth with the back of his hand. His gold teeth were stained. “Monsta blood. Gross.”
“Why the hell did you bite it, man?” Stede questioned before he realized he was wasting precious time in the asking.
“Neva good wif a blade,” Buttons responded simply. “Celestial bronze teef are betta.”
“Nevermind that,” Stede muttered and turned again to flee from the other set of wings that was growing steadily closer. He was glad for his adrenaline, or he wouldn’t have made it anywhere near this far, but even that was wearing off. He had been running for a long, long time.
Stars were appearing in his vision, whether from shock or something worse, and he thought he was dreaming as a deep voice to his right said, “Look out!”
Stede veered left and ducked, having no other ideas of how to respond to that vague command, and when he looked to find the source of the words, he saw a heavy-set boy wielding what looked like a bronze machete, a thick beanie on despite the May heat. Next to him stood to a twig of a kid, poised as if they’d thrown an axe–or, he realized, as he followed the line of their aim, a dagger–straight at the fury. The fury that was inches away from his head. The monster roared in agony and disappeared in a puff of vomit-colored mist, and Stede thought he felt the vapor fall on his forehead.
“That was impressive,” Stede yelled, and the knife-thrower grinned.
“Catch,” was the boy’s response, and he threw Stede a metal rod the size of his hand. Stede didn’t have much time at all to wonder what it was, as it expanded into a blade the second it landed in his hand. “Two o’clock.”
Stede swiveled at the boy’s words and looked between his new blade, his new companions, and the third fury that flew towards him.
“Do something, man!” the boy yelled, running toward Stede with sword held high.
Before the boy reached Stede, however, he threw up the blade, turning his head and squeezing his eyes shut out of instinct.
Silence.
Then, the smell of sulfur burned his nose, and he opened his eyes, tracking the length of his arm to the end of the blade, where that same mist hung, then evaporated into thin air.
“Come on,” the boy urged, wrapping a firm hand around Stede’s outstretched arm and pulling him backward, toward the crest of the hill. He began to run, dragging Stede into a similar pace. The knife-thrower had to catch Stede’s other arm and wrap it around their shoulder as Stede stumbled toward the hill, then nearly fell over his own feet as they passed through what could only be some kind of forcefield, some kind of magical barrier.
He dropped the sword and leaned his hands on his knees, desperately trying to pull air into his lungs. At the loss of skin contact, the blade shrank back into the hilt and clattered to the grass, the sound of the metal hitting the ground almost as jarring as the warm hand on his shoulder.
“You did good,” the boy said, patting Stede’s shoulder. Then, to someone else, he said, “Guys, don’t crowd him.”
Stede looked up, breathless, and took in the ring of kids and teenagers surrounding them. They all wore assaultive orange t-shirts with the words Camp Half-Blood spelled out over a picture of a pegasus.
Stede wanted to say something about where was he and why were ancient Greek monsters following him and does half-blood mean what he thinks it means but he was suddenly feeling very hot and very cold at the same time, and his head didn’t feel so good, and the grass beneath him was growing really fast, or maybe he was falling into it.
“Shit,” the boy muttered, his hand on Stede’s shoulder tightening into a protective grip. “Roach, Jim, let’s get him to the infirmary.”
Someone surged out of the crowd, but Stede was already falling over onto his side, his vision going dark. Distantly, he thought he felt the kid shaking him and saying something, but even the sounds of the world around him were fading away until he was in darkness and silence.
Stede came back to his body in pieces. First, there was the scratchy sheet on his back, clinical and uncomfortable. Then, the sound of hushed voices. He thought he heard someone say, Buttons was with him . Then, a deeper voice, Buttons doesn’t go into the field. He was on patrol. He must’ve made it to Half-Blood Hill himself. Then the first voice again: How in Hades did he manage that?
His nostrils flared at the smell of sanitary chemicals, sharp and cutting, then something else, something more deep and soft, something like smoke.
Where his vision had been black, now his eyelids were stained with a red glow of light, and his eyes darted back and forth, trying to open, trying to find the source. His eyelashes felt glued together, and it took him a few tries to open his eyes, only to find he was quite crowded by people.
He flinched back ever so slightly, not having expected anyone to be waiting by his bedside, much less a group to rival the circle from before.
“Guys, piss off,” the boy said to the crowd, leaning back into the chair beneath him. The crowd scattered, save for the boy and his knife-wielding friend from before. “Sorry. We didn’t expect you to wake up so soon.”
Stede instinctually scanned the room, noting the torch lights above him, the cots that lined the back wall, the tables of gauze and medical tools. His gaze naturally fell back to his visitors—and saviors, he supposed––who looked at him, one with concern, one with boredom.
“How long have I been out?”
The boy turned to look out the window, but Stede’s impulse drew his attention to the clock on the wall opposite him. “A few hours.”
“Where am I?” Stede asked, planting his arms on his sides to push himself up into a sitting position. He felt surprisingly well, given he’d been nearly torn open a few hours ago.
“Woah, woah, relax. Take it easy.” The boy gestured for Stede to lay down, and he conceded back into the mattress. “We sewed you up, and gave you ambrosia and nectar, but it can be tricky, sometimes. We need to be careful.”
“He’ll be fine, Roach did it,” the other teenager said, spinning a dagger between their fingers.
“That’s why I’m kinda concerned, to be honest,” the boy said, not looking at Stede.
A million questions flooded Stede’s mind. Was that the same dagger that killed the fury? Who were these people? Where was he? The one he went with was, “Who’s Roach?”
“Son of Asclepius.”
Knife-kid added, “He also cooks sometimes. Roach, not Asclepius.”
“Son of… Asclepius? The medicine god?”
“Bingo.”
“Should I be concerned about Roach’s work?” Stede asked, looking between the two.
“No, Olu’s just being dramatic,” the knife-thrower said, then stabbed their blade in the wooden armrest of their chair and lifted their shirt to reveal jagged scars on their chest. “He cut my tits off for me, and I’m fine.”
“Yeah, that shouldn’t have happened, Jim,” Olu responded. “He’s trained for first aid and some stitches, not top surgery.”
Jim shrugged and let their orange t-shirt fall back down.
“Half-bloods,” Stede muttered amidst the banter, glancing at Jim’s shirt. “Demigods.”
“Yep.” Jim nodded. “Who filled you in?”
“Demigods are real? Gods are real?”
Olu gestured at the three of them. “We’re real. So, yeah.”
“You mean… You’re… I’m…”
Olu nodded. “Only way you could get through the treeline is if you’ve got the blood of a god.”
“He could be a satyr,” Jim pointed out.
“Do you see any hooves? Any furry legs?” Olu shot back.
Jim shrugged. “No, but the mist can fuck even us up sometimes.”
Olu ignored the comment and turned back to Stede. “You’re a demigod.”
Stede couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto his lips. “Cool.”
“Never seen someone so excited to hear the news,” Olu said, sounding a bit mystified, a bit dubious.
“Really?”
“What, are you a Greek myth nerd?” Jim asked. “Most kids run away screaming. Throwing up. Passing out. Pissing themselves. That type of thing.”
“I mean, a bit,” Stede responded shyly. It was an understatement. He had read every book there was to read about the Greek and Roman myths. He’d read Homer by sixth grade, both The Iliad and The Odyssey . Hesiod’s Theogony by seventh. “Perseus and Achilles have always been cool to me. You’re saying I’m like them?”
Jim winced a little. “Yeah, sort of. But lamer, and life sucks.”
Stede ignored the last part. “Cool.”
“I’m Oluwande, son of Athena,” the boy told Stede. “This is Jim, child of Nemesis.”
“Stede Bonnet,” he responded, extending a hand to shake. Oluwande took it hesitantly, and Jim looked him up and down before shaking their head and continuing to twirl their knife. Stede felt sort of stupid asking, but he did anyway: “Do we know who my parent is?”
Olu and Jim exchanged a glance, and the latter said, “Nope.”
Olu asked, “Which parent do you have at home? Mom or Dad? Most of us have single parents or stepparents. The biological parent can usually tell us something, at least.”
“Mom. I’ve never met my father.”
“Okay.” Olu nodded. “That narrows the field by 50%.”
“Probably not a big three kid,” reasoned Jim. “The monsters would’ve come for you much earlier.”
Stede furrowed his brows. “Big three?”
“Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.”
“Right.” Stede looked straight out the door to the camp beyond. The sun was beginning to set. “That’s too bad. It’d be cool to have Poseidon or Zeus as a dad. Like Heracles.”
Olu shook his head. “Yeah, no. Stede, I think you misunderstand. You don’t want to be one of theirs. It’s really dangerous. Monsters are always on your tail, the gods usually have it out for you. You’re always sent on the worst quests. You don’t want that.”
“Some of us were born for that kind of adventure,” Stede responded in earnest. “A quest sounds fun.”
Olu and Jim were exchanging a lot of glances, this time one of disbelief. Jim raised their brows. “Yeah. Right.”
“Maybe we’re wrong,” Olu responded indulgently. “You’re starting to look better. Should we take a tour?”
Stede perked up. “Absolutely!”
Olu brought Stede around to see the sights: the training arena, the pegasus stables, the docks of the Long Island Sound, the Big House, the strawberry fields. Jim joined them as far as the training arena and then split off towards what looked like a garden shed, but upon further inspection, clearly had a cache of weapons inside.
In this walk-through, Stede met Chiron, the teacher of the demigods, and Dionysus, the god of wine. Stede was rather starstruck to be in the presence of the man (could centaurs be called men?) who trained Achilles, as well as one of the Olympians themselves. However, his excitement at meeting the god quickly became embarrassment as the god called him “Steve Vomit” and told him to get lost.
“He does that to everyone,” Olu muttered as they walked on. “Don’t take it personally.”
When Stede raised his brows in question, Olu answered, “He calls me ‘Moscow Molu’, which, granted, is pretty creative for him. But he likes to call Jim ‘Sam’, which is so far off that I question his hearing.” He turned them towards a U-shaped collection of buildings.
“I guess I imagined more people here,” Stede said as they headed towards the horseshoe collection of cabins that Olu explained were for each of the gods. “I thought there’d be more of us.”
“There are,” Olu responded. “Over the summer, there’s loads. Now, we’ve got the off-season crowd, which is much smaller. You’ll see in a few weeks when everyone starts trickling in.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Stede pointed to the first cabin. “Who’s this for, then?”
Olu pointed out the cabins of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Artemis, and when Stede nodded, they continued on. “Then we’ve got Athena, my mom.” Olu pointed to a cabin across the way. “Across the way we’ve got Ares. The heads are the Badminton twins. They’re real assholes. Not much going on there during the off-season, but their guy Pete is fun to have around sometimes.
“Then we’ve got Apollo, then Hephestus. Their head is this giant named Wee John.”
“He’s a giant? You have a giant here?”
Olu sputtered a laugh. “Oh. No. Sorry. He’s just normal tall.”
Stede tried to disguise his relief. “Oh. Right. Good. Interesting name.”
“We love nicknames around here.”
“I can see that.”
“Then we have Hermes. You’ll be there until your godly parent claims you. It’s usually pretty crowded. Don’t worry, though. Frenchie’ll help you out.”
Stede took a long look at the Hermes cabin. Voices echoed around inside, and someone ran past the door, quickly pursued by someone with a thick tree branch.
Stede tilted his head in consideration. It looked fun, to be honest, though a bit chaotic. Still, he began to follow his guide, eyes torn away from the spectacle inside his new cabin. “So who are the big ones for?” He pointed to the large, ornate cabins at the center of the U, then to the cabin in front of them with black shingles and crumbling Greco-roman columns. “The big three, I’m guessing?”
Olu explained that one was for Hera, but the other three largest cabins were indeed the big three gods. The only one that was occupied in recent years, however, was Hades.
“Looks like Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” came a voice from behind them, interrupting Olu’s monologue. Behind them stood a boy, maybe 12, wearing the camp t-shirt tucked into lightweight, baggy sailor pants. It looked utterly ridiculous, but also somehow, kind of stylish. He was so pale that Stede wondered how often he went outside, and then Stede thought that maybe the same could be said about himself. The kid smirked. “I’m Lucius.”
Stede introduced himself, then turned to Olu, who said without verbal prompt, “Aphrodite.”
“Ah,” Stede breathed as Lucius nodded with pride.
“I was just explaining to Stede that he does not want to be a child of the big three.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lucius grimaced. “No fun down that road, trust me. Better to be the son of Aphrodite or Dionysus. Better to pick strawberries here all day than get pulled apart by cyclopes out there.”
Stede contemplated this. Part of Stede found some truth in that. He could read and pick strawberries and swim in the Sound forever. But a bigger part of him wanted to go out and fight monsters and have adventures and make a name for himself.
Lucius seemed to read Stede’s expression a bit too accurately. “I’m telling you. Our Hades kid is cool, sure, but he’s seen some shit.”
Olu nodded, lips pursed. “Yeah. They call him the Hellhound. He kinda went crazy a year or two back. One too many quests.”
“It was not pretty,” Lucius muttered to Stede.
“Yet Mr. D keeps sending him on quests.”
“Cause he knows he’ll come back alive.”
“I guess,” Olu said. “The kid’s gonna break again soon, and I don’t wanna be around when he does. It’s not like Mr. D will clean up the mess he makes, either.”
“It’ll be all on Izzy,” Lucius said, coy.
Stede wanted to ask who Izzy was, but he knew he wasn’t really a part of this conversation. So he continued listening wordlessly.
“It’s his mess, too,” Oluwande responded, sounding tired. “Let him fix it.”
“What’re we talkin’ about?” said a new voice, and a boy strolled over to stand next to Lucius. He was basically bald, his blond hair buzzed so close to his scalp, and his hand rested on the hilt of a short blade at his hip. “Who’s this? New kid?”
“Pete, this is Stede,” Olu introduced. “Stede, Pete. Son of Ares.”
Stede stuck his hand out to shake, but the newcomer merely gave him a once over and rested an arm on the shoulder of the slightly-taller Lucius. “You can call me Black Pete.”
“None of us are going to call you that,” Lucius groaned as if he had said it a million times. “Stede, don’t call him that.”
“Nice to meet you, Black Pete,” Stede said. Lucius rolled his eyes, but Pete beamed.
“Why’re we standing here?” Pete asked, gesturing towards the black cabin.
Stede answered. “They were just telling me about the Hellhound.”
“Oh, let me tell you about him. They never do him justice.” Pete stepped away from Lucius and schooled his expression, hands out like he was telling a ghost story. “He’s the best demigod to ever do it.”
He had to gasp. “Better than Perseus? Heracles?”
“You really think Heracles or Perseus could walk through Tartarus at 13? No way,” Pete was incredulous. “He makes those guys look like chumps.”
“Tartarus? 13? How old is he now?”
“15,” Pete answered, and Stede sat with that for a second before Pete continued. “He’ll be a god one day, just you wait. And he’ll bring me up to Olympus with him.”
“No, he won’t,” Lucius said.
Pete ignored Lucius. “He’s taking me on his next quest. He told me so himself.”
“No, he’s not,” replied Olu, who appeared to be thoroughly finished with this topic.
Stede raised his brows. “Wow. You’ll know a god!”
“I won’t just know a god, I’ll be his right-hand-man.”
“No, you won’t,” said a voice that moved past them, coming from a very tall boy with ratty suspenders and a noticeable limp.
“Fuck off, Wee John!” Pete said to the boy’s back as he headed for the dining pavilion. “And stop eavesdropping!”
The son of Hephestus threw Pete the middle finger over his shoulder and walked on.
Stede looked at Pete with quiet amazement, even as he, Lucius, and Olu started bickering. Stede wanted to know a god. He wanted to know the kind of person who became a god. He wanted to be the kind of person who became a god. Not for the power; he didn’t care about that. But to be someone so brave, so fearless, so impressive, that you were worthy of that kind of attention? Worthy of power in the first place? That’s what he wanted.
For the first time in his life, he thought it might be possible.
Stede was dropped off shortly thereafter in the Hermes cabin, where he met Frenchie, a scrawny kid who sat like a squirrel and drew messy doodles in a little notebook. He was one of the few here who was actually a child of Hermes; everyone else was stationed here until they were claimed by their godly parent, like Stede. Because of this, he said, he was in charge of welcoming new kids, even though he wasn’t the head counselor.
He showed Stede to his bunk, and then it was time for dinner, where Stede was expected to eat at the Hermes table. He stayed close to Frenchie.
“Say,” Stede started as he sliced his chicken off the bone after dedicating some to the gods. “Whatever happened to the clothes I arrived in?”
“Burned ‘em,” Frenchie replied without missing a beat, chewing chicken right off the bone (like everyone else around them). “Bad luck to have monster blood laying around.”
“Oh. I see.” Stede frowned. His white t-shirt and khakis had been sliced up and stained red and black with his blood and that of the furies, and were surely ruined. Still, the clothes on his back had been the only thing he had from home. He hadn’t had time to grab a duffle bag or even his backpack to bring some books or his favorite under-eye cream before he’d been chased here by those monsters. He hoped someone at camp had a sleep mask he could borrow. He changed the subject. “When can I begin training?”
Frenchie shrugged. “Tomorrow, if ya want.”
“Really? That soon?”
“I mean, it’s Chiron’s decision, but he’s sent people to training right away, as long as they’re up for it.”
“I’m up for it!” Stede assured him. They began scraping off their plates and headed toward a firepit where a crowd was already gathering. “What weapon do you think I’ll have? A sword would be cool.”
“I don’t–”
“I don’t know that I’d be much good with a dagger. Maybe a bow and arrow!”
“Mhmmm.”
“I don’t think I’d like a gun,” Stede mused as they sat down. “Too permanent. Loud, too.”
“No guns. God magic makes ‘em work funny.”
“What does the Hellhound use?”
Frenchie made a face at the name, but answered, “A stygian iron sword.”
Stede sucked in a breath. “What’s that?”
Pete, who had sat with Lucius a few feet down, replied, “A special metal from the Underworld. Hades gave it to him before he travelled through Tartarus.”
“Oh, wow, that sounds cool. When’s he coming back? Where is he now? Is he in the Underworld again? Is he hanging out with his dad?”
“He’s on a quest,” Olu said, adjusting his beanie.
“Is he alone?”
“Nah,” Frenchie said. “He’s with a satyr and a couple of my brothers.”
“Quite a crew,” Lucius chimed in. “I would not want to be stuck with Izzy for that long.”
“I wouldn’t wanna be stuck with him at all,” added Olu. “It doesn’t help that he’s not great in a crisis.”
Lucius nodded. “Fang told me that he shit himself on a quest once.”
“He told me he threw up,” Frenchie said, confused.
From the corner, Jim smirked. “Both.”
Lucius grinned. “Izzy the Spewer.”
“Izzy the Spewer! I forgot about that!” cackled Wee John, leaning back to lounge on the log bench.
“Who is this Izzy, then?” Stede looked around the gathered group.
“Izzy Hands,” Olu said. “He’s a satyr. Goes out and finds demigods to bring back to camp.”
“And he hangs out with the Hellhound?”
“He goes on basically every quest with him. I’d be the better right hand man, but whatever.”
“Yeah, Pete, we know,” sighed Roach, a spindly guy who had joined the melee.
As the sun set over the water, the group began to tell Stede about the adventures of the boy they called the Hellhound; how he had been accused of stealing Hermes’s caduceus when he was 11. How he had traveled through Tartarus to liberate a minor god when he was 13. How he had fought cyclopes and the Minotaur and Scylla, how he had taken Medusa’s head and survived capture by Circe herself. According to them, he was not only skilled with a blade but also incredibly powerful. He was a brilliant tactician and he could face down any opponent and come away stronger for it. He was a god amongst men, a man amongst boys. He was untouchable.
“Telling ghost stories, are we?” asked a deep voice that was accompanied by the sound of hooves. When Stede turned, he found it to be Chiron, the trainer of demigods.
Pete answered, “We’re just accompanying the new guy with a camp legend.”
“Yes, well, thank you for furthering his education,” Chiron said, and Stede couldn’t tell how much of his comment was sarcasm. “Let’s wrap it up, shall we?”
“It’s time fer the moon song,” said the satyr called Buttons, his intense stare wandering from person to person before stopping on Stede. A seagull swooped in from the dock of the Long Island Sound and landed on his head.
“Well, it’s time for all the campfire songs, Buttons,” Chiron corrected.
“But mostly the moon song.”
“Yes, okay. Carry on,” Chiron relented before turning and heading back toward the Big House, where Dionysus sat on the porch playing cards.
Frenchie picked up a mandolin and started plucking a few notes, and a blonde guy across the fire began singing at an almost operatic pitch (Olu informed Stede that this was a son of Calliope they called the Swede). Buttons, meanwhile, dug a wooden recorder out of a satchel at his side and played to the tune set by the others. Soon, other voices joined in, initiated by a group around the original singer and continued by those next to Stede.
It got to be quite nice when all their voices blended together, and Stede was even able to pick up the lyrics on one of them and sing along.
As he climbed into bed that night, pulling his blankets up to his neck and staring at the top bunk, he thought that it wasn’t so bad here. Sure, he had almost died getting here, and his life had been virtually turned upside down, but he found he didn’t mind. He maybe had friends, and he had the opportunity to make something of himself. It wasn’t so bad. Not bad at all.