Annabeth Chase and the Last Olympian

Chapter 32 - The end of summer

We'd all had such a great time that summer that camp decided to run for another two weeks, ending right at the start of the new school year. I couldn't really complain though. With no war looming, no imminent threat to worry about and finally being able to hang out with Percy without wanting to strangle him all the time (most days), it was the best two weeks ever. 

It wasn't all relaxation though as there was plenty to keep me distracted. 

For starters, I had Olympus to fully redesign and that was no small project. I had to balance all the wishes of the gods with what they needed and what they wanted. I also had to make sure that I didn't favour any of them over another, like if I had too many sculptures of Athena and not enough of Ares, I might get attacked by a boar or something. The gods didn't make it easy though as I was constantly getting messages from them about ideas that they wanted in their temples. Most of them came from Hermes as he collected them and sent me bulk letters from the gods, but some of them invaded my dreams to tell me what they wanted. Every time I went to bed, I worried about what I might dream of, like the time Apollo appeared dressed only in a leopard-print loincloth to show me how he wanted his sculpture to look. That was a dream I definitely tried to forget. 

Most of the time I was keen to start work on construction once I was had finished the designs. It was my dream to design Olympus after all, to make it better than what it was. But I was also worried that I would mess it up, that I wasn't good enough to do this. I didn't want to let my mother down and bring shame on her name. But I kept those fears to myself and worked as hard as I could to make it perfect. 

Another major distraction for me was adding more cabins to the camp. The U-shape we had was starting to become more of a triangle as we added more cabins to it. We had several cabins being built at a time, Tyson leading a team of Cyclopes in their construction. Hephaestus cabin were supporting them while my siblings helped me in the designing of the cabin, with input provided by the campers that were going to live in them. 

The first cabin that was nearly done was the Hades cabin, Nico using a team of undead workers to speed up the work. He'd designed it himself and it looked pretty amazing; made of solid obsidian with a skull set over the door and green torches that burned forever. The other cabins that were being constructed were Hecate, Iris, Nemesis and several others, the Cyclopes able to work on multiple at a time. 

There were so many though that we were thinking of adding a new wing to incorporate them all. Every day, we thought of another minor god or goddess that should hold a place. We were also guided by the claiming that were happening, continually adding more names to the list. 

 A claiming happened almost every night now, the gods forced to keep the promise Percy had bound them to. Hermes cabin was actually starting to look a little empty now as their campers were finally claimed by their parents and able to move to their own cabins. 

There were also plenty of claimings happening all over the country and even in other countries as well. The satyr seekers could barely keep up with them, Grover often seen frantically running around to try coordinate them. As a Lord of the Wild now, he held a lot of responsibility and most of the nature spirits seemed in awe of him. I regularly saw them trailing after him, bowing and scraping even when he told them to stop. 

The high number of demigods claimings meant that new campers would be arriving nearly every day, often with monsters in tow. Sometimes we would send out a squad to guide in demigods, especially those that were being pursued by monsters, making sure that as many arrived in camp safely as we could. 

Seeing all the new faces arriving each day and seeing the delight of those who'd been there for several years and finally been claimed, it made me proud of Percy. He'd grown so much since he'd arrived at camp four years before as a scrawny scared twelve-year-old. Anyone looking at him then would never have expected him to become the hero of Olympus, responsible for finally making the gods owe up to their faults and helping their children.  I doubted that the oath would last forever, as the gods always found ways out of breaking their promises, but it was good while it lasted.