Annabeth lead me to the cabin of Hermes and I already dreaded it. Nothing against the god or the people inside but I did hate spending an extended amount of time in an overcrowded space. And cabin 11 was canonically known to be overcrowded.
Annabeth was talking the entire time, telling me about the cabins and who's they were. She however failed to explain to me why we weren't allowed in the cabin of another god. I, thanks to my 2nd Nightmare, knew of course, not that it was difficult to figure out anyways.
The cabins were for all intents temples to said gods however, unlike the old temples, these once were designed to hold children of said gods. It would be incredibly insulting for the child of another god to walk into the temple of another if it wasn't for matters of believe and prayers.
Cabin 11 was different due to the nature and domains of its god. That was way the unclaimed children and those of minor gods were allowed in. Cabin 11 was the only one that would allow another gods children inside.
Eventually we reached the cabin the scene played out as I had expected, it played out like I had known it would.
As soon as we had crossed the cabins threshold, I felt several eyes focus on us immediately. Two pairs of them had clear divinity behind it.
One of them smelled like medicine and sweat, both aspects of Hermes as he was the god of medicine and travelers.
The other one gave me the feeling of stagnation, as if time had slowed to a crawl around me and the scent of ripe fruits, indicators of harvest. This was definitely Kronos who had probably already taken root in Luke's mind.
And then there were the stares of the campers, both claimed and undetermined.
The question soon followed and Annabeth cut me of before I could say anything.
"Let me introduce you to Peter Jason, undetermined. Peter, meet cabin 11. This will be your home for the foreseeable future."
Did the child of Athena just pull a Dionysius? How in her mother's name did she forget my actual name? Unless of course this was intentional.
Was it intentionally? Honestly I don't doubt that. Lucky for me I had already met some people in the camp.
Remember Ethan? Turns out he was a child of Ares. Did that really matter right now? No. Not really, because while Micheal, Charles, Silena and Ethan knew my "human" identity they had instead spread tales of my Leshen-form and that form was then dubbed as a nature spirit. There were even some whispers around camp about a potential nickname/title for him/it.
But back to business.
Luke approached me and said calmly, with an almost welcoming smile:"So Peter Jason, weird name but okay, welcome to cabin 11. There isn't much space left for you but I'm sure we can make some. Travis, where do you think we could put him?" he turned around looking in the crowed of staring faces and one of them, only slightly older than me, pointed at a spot near the east wall.
" Guess that your spot now Peter."
I just hummed at him in response. I knew that almost all of this was a facade. His kindness might have been real at some point but now it was gone. I noticed it in the way his smile tried but failed to reach his eyes. It had long been suffocated by bitterness. Deserved bitterness, but bitterness none the less.
I wanted to change everything for him and everyone else, but I knew even without considering the promise I had given my mothers, that it was a bad idea and almost impossible to achieve. Fate, or the fulfillment of the prophecy, was almost guaranteed, regardless of what I did.
And if my recent nightmare had thought me anything, even if it had left me with barely any scars, it was to always ensure that fate played out as it should and to always find ways to eliminate possible threats to the predetermined outcome.
But even that wouldn't stop me from saving as many lives as possible without compromising the future.
Travis Stoll, another son of Hermes and one of the three (Luke included) local pranksters, helped me settle in.
After that Annabeth had returned and began dragging me through camp again to Introduce me to the other cabins.
Both Demeter and Dionysos cabins went well, with no problems. Even Apollo weren't to bad, even if they stared at me a lot. They probably wondered if I ate horses for breakfast with how tall I was for my age. The only one of the cabin that wasn't as surprised was Micheal Yew, for obvious reasons.
Then followed the Aphrodite cabin with a similar encounter centered around Silena.
She then introduced me to the Athena cabin. Well, I liked some of the kids there but I would keep my distance from them for a bit. To be honest I didn't like their mother much.
The Hephestus cabin was a lot more fun. Somehow, without me noticing Charles had gotten my measurements without me noticing but even now, after I had hit a growth spurt again, he had somehow gotten accurate ones. How!?
Needless to say, as soon as he had laid eyes on me, he had pushed Annabeth away only to grab me and drag me into the deapths of the forges where he proceeded to interrogate me on my thing styles and how I made the armor I gave him and the others only to steamrolled me again and force me into a set of armor the cabin members had made for me. The armor was peak, even if it hadn't been made by my hands or those of a divine entity. Even only wearing it made me realize the amount of effort and concentration put into this. It had been made with various metals that, as Charles had told me later, had appears inside their cabinet with a sticky note on it that instructed them who to use them for.
I return, after I was forced into the armor and made to hold a long almost black trident made out of black sea pearls and decorated with shards of glas and polished river pebbles.
"Charles, can you tell me why you made me a trident?" I had asked. Even if I wasn't as worried as my father probably would be right now, I was still curious as to why they had made a trident.
Then Charles answered with an amused smile on his lips.
"While the others might have not noticed, it was pretty obvious that you are more than likely the child of a minor water god."
Huh, well at least he didn't suspect me to be a child of Poseidon. But I had one more question.
"Why pearls and pebbles?"
At which he had answered with a smug grin, accompanied by the smiles of more Hephestus-Children.
"Well, first we had a big chunk of pearls left from some years back and we remembered that children of the sea usually do better with weaponsade from either those materials or made in the sea. We decided to do both just to be sure."
And here another blacksmith interjected.
" We still don't know how we got it to work and all of that but regardless we're proud of it. Don't you fucking dare to break it. Though that might be harder to achieve than you think."
The only thing I could do after accepting these presents was to smile and thank them. Seriously they didn't have to do all of that. I was perfectly able to do something like that myself.
Once I was ready to leave the bunker/forges, the armor and trident disappeared in a shower of black and blue particles only to reappear as a miniature trident on my scarab-neckless. Interesting.