PHILOXENIA ➸ Percy Jackson¹

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ONE—Canadians Play Fiery Dodgeball

─── ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽☼☾.* :☆ﾟ｡ ───

A dream was how Lux knew everything was about to go wrong.

She was standing on Half-Blood Hill, but it was not the one that she remembered. It was too quiet.

Even when the summer session was over, she would still expect to hear voices from the year-round campers and the whinnies from the pegasi flying above. But she could hear nothing. Not even a slight breeze.

The grass was also duller than usual, brittle and fragile as if all life had been sucked out from it. The trees were in a similar situation. The barks were flaking off, and dead leaves rained down from above like ash. 

Lux looked around, trying to make sense of what could have brought this change when her eyes fell on Thalia's pine tree. But instead of the tree that all demigods knew and paid their respects to, this one had a girl rooted inside the trunk. She had spiky jet-black hair that was slightly matted to her cheeks, a light spattering of freckles across her nose, and though her eyes were closed, something told Lux that they were intense when full of life.

Her lower half was melted into the trunk and her outstretched arms fused into the wood, like one of the dryads that Lux met so many times when she was at camp. But she knew this girl was no dryad.

A name bubbled to the surface and left her mouth to join the black hole of silence.

Everything changed.

The grass under her feet crumbled into dust. The trees around her blackened, the branches becoming gnarled and twisted. Tendrils of poisonous purple crawled their way up the pine tree and dug into Thalia's skin, branching outwards until they resembled veins. Her face became gaunt, her cheeks hollowing and turning ashen gray.

Lux dashed forward and reached her hand out, silently yelling Thalia's name. Those deadly vines shot out and coiled themselves around her arm, pulling her scream out from her throat.

Lux bolted upright in her bed, sweat running down her back as she panted. She turned her arms over, her vision blurry as she tried to look for any sign of purple, but there was nothing marring her skin.

That didn't stop the knots in her stomach from twisting. Something was going on at Camp Half-Blood. Something that had to do with Thalia's pine tree.

She turned to the opened suitcase near the closet, half-packed with the things she planned to bring to camp.

Lux and Ciaran's school began summer break a week ago. In reality, they could have been at camp right now, but they wanted to wait until Percy finished so they could all go together. Percy was coming over tonight for a sleepover, and the next morning they would all pile into the car to make their way to camp.

But the dream threw doubts into that plan. If there was indeed trouble, shouldn't they get there earlier to help? 

Lux desperately wanted to talk to someone about her dream, but there wouldn't be anyone up at this hour. Not even Chiron would be awake this early.

She leaned her back on the headboard and took a few minutes to even her breathing. After a while, she shakily got out of bed, reasoning that perhaps a cup of water would help her think better. On her way to the kitchen, she glanced inside her brother's room. Ciaran was fast asleep in his bed, his room so dark that she had to squint to make out his silhouette.