El Héroe Perdido (Alma del Olimpo Libro 1)

IV - Home Sweet Camp

The chariot ride passed by Sol in an excruciatingly long blur. Percy was missing. Travis was dating someone else.

Luke was dead. Sol had heard Annabeth say this at some point. She had heard a lot of snippets of facts, names that she both knew and didn't know. But there was one outstanding piece of information; Silena had died. Silena was the spy.

Silena meant so much to Sol. How could she be gone, how could she have betrayed them?

"How?" she whispered.

"Sol? You good?" Leo scooted closer to her. "You're being all spacey. You've said 'how' about a hundred times."

Sol looked into Leo's eyes. She was usually good at reading people, but Leo's story must have been in some other language.

"I'm okay."

"Sure," Leo said nonchalantly, and he left her alone.

~~~~~~~~

Sol didn't sense anything again until she heard Annabeth saying, "Hold on. This is going to get rough."

Suddenly the pegasi jerked forward, and the landscape around them blurred. When the chariot slowed down, they were in a whole new place. Sol trained her eyes on the green, springtime valley in the middle of snow covered hills and a frigid ocean. Camp Half-Blood, Sol thought. Home.

She didn't have long to savor the view. The pegasi were exhausted, rapidly plummeting towards the ground.

"The lake!" Annabeth yelled. "Aim for the lake!"

They spiraled downward, and then- BOOM.

Sol twisted around in the cold, murky water. She felt the hands of the lake's Naiads on her shoulders as they hauled her up.

Sol clambered up onto the shore, gasping from the cold.

Someone grabbed her by the arm and helped her up. "Here's a blanket- Sol?"

Sol looked up into the face of Connor Stoll. "Uh, hey, Connor. Surprise, I'm not dead! Or missing. Clearly, I mean, you can see that." Sol chuckled weakly. Seeing Travis's brother made her nervous.

Connor gaped at her like she was someone foreign. After so long, she pretty much was. "You- how- what?"

By now, other campers had begun to notice the commotion, and by proxy, Sol.

"Is that Sol Salazar?"

"I thought she died!"

"Where was she during the Battle of Manhattan?"

"Who's Sol?"

"You don't know Sol Salazar? She's legendary!"

Was she? Sol was beginning to realize how much she had missed during her mission. She only recognized about half of the demigods surrounding them. Annabeth had said something about Percy forcing all of the gods to claim their kids, including the minor deities. There were probably tons of new campers that Sol had never met. And the ones she did know had changed.

A blast of hot air brought her back from her thoughts.

Everyone looked at the demigods with the giant bronze leaf blower, and they shuffled away. Someone pushed through the crowd to get to Sol.

"Sol? Is that... really you?" Travis Stoll seemed to be cycling through a lot of emotions. Confusion, wonder, ecstasy, worry, anger, anxiety. Not many of those were good for Sol.

"Yep. Just me. Regular, not legendary, Sol."

Travis opened his mouth to respond, but someone pushed him out of the way. The kid looked to be about twelve years old, one of his front teeth missing and his hair messy. "Are you kidding? You're Consolación Salazar, you're like... a hero! Everyone knows you! And pretty much everyone thought you were dead, but you're not, so now you're a living legend!"