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chapter twenty. ☄︎. *. ⋆
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ONCE UPON A TIME, your favorite daughter of Apollo learned how to bend light to her will. It took her many months of training—so much so that she could not return home for the school year—but she didn't care, because the training paid off in the end. (Well, mostly. The only thing she learned was, like, one trick, but it was really cool and she'll show you later.) Still, she became somewhat of a big deal around camp. She had almost been recruited by the rising Kronos's army—not that that was necessarily a good thing, but she would be lying if she said it didn't boost her ego a teensy bit. She was awesome, and she was pretty, and most of all, she was humble.
I'll give you one guess who this fantastic demigod is.
It's me, of course! And all of it's true—especially the part where it said I'm awesome and pretty. But most importantly the part about my powers was true; I had spent all year trying to develop my skills, especially after Luke had tried to recruit me for his Titan army. I knew a war was brewing, and I knew I would play a major role in Luke's schemes. At first, the idea of such a thing scared me, but I began focusing on the bigger picture—that Luke wouldn't stop trying to either kill me or enlist me—so that motivated me into training my light-bending power every single day.
I was driving Annabeth mad, I'm pretty sure. She was worried I was overexerting myself. I had never dealt with the exhaustion that comes after using your godly powers, but I was pretty sure mine was at a normal level. I would have to ask Percy if he, too, always felt like he was going to pass out every time he finished using his powers.
Annabeth insisted that, if Grover were here, he would be agreeing with her about the fact that I needed a break, but I was as restless as an ADHD child of Apollo that recently made the discovery that she can bend light.
Anyway, speaking of the G-man, he'd been pretty much radio-silent since he left on his quest for Pan. At this point, almost an entire year later, we weren't even sure he was still alive—but nobody wanted to voice such a suspicion. I'm pretty sure everybody wanted to believe he was still out there—even Clarisse, who had once pummeled Grover in the face with a serving of cheese enchiladas.
Well, besides that, camp was doing well. In the right mood, I could almost imagine that it was back to normal; but of course, the remembrance always comes back, and I regretfully recall the night Luke had shown his true colors. I still could barely believe he would do such a thing, even an entire year later.
I'm sure Luke's betrayal stung most of the people at camp, but if they were upset, they didn't let it show. (Well, you know, except for Annabeth—and even then, you could only tell she was distressed by the redness of her eyes and the dark circles beneath them.)
