I am having University exams soon, so I will be taking a break from writing until the 25th of January. Sorry!
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The air in the school felt different the day Grover Underwood arrived. Nicholas, wearing the face and persona of "Nick Aldridge," sensed the satyr's approach long before he infiltrated the school, a vibration of nervous energy, of cloven hooves disguised by magic, and the faint, grassy scent of panic. He was performing his final role in the mortal world, the concerned friend watching his best friend's life unravel.
He watched as the time for the start of the plot came and Sally Jackson, her face pale with a fear she couldn't name, ushered Percy and Grover out the door toward Montauk. The script was unfolding. Nicholas gave Percy a firm clap on the shoulder, a look of boyish worry in his grey eyes. "Be careful Percy," he said, using the nickname he'd seeded years ago. "Call if you need anything."
He didn't follow them immediately. The narrative required a specific entrance. He waited until he could feel the distinct air of Hades' interference come, and the minotaur be summoned. And as he felt the disturbance in the skin of the world, he decided it was time.
He packed a simple bag, and walked out of the building. He didn't take a bus or a train. He simply walked into a shadowed alley and let the space around him soften. The Kapre cloak, now an intrinsic part of his being, blurred him from mortal sight as he took a single step that spanned miles, arriving at the edge of the pine forest on Long Island just as a battered, car screeched to a halt, disgorging a panicked satyr, Sally Jackson and a stunned, rain-soaked Percy Jackson.
Nicholas let his disguise reassert itself fully, the aura of the Atrium clamped down to the faintest, almost undetectable hum. He stepped out from behind a large pine, feigning breathless urgency. "Percy! Grover!"
Percy whirled, his expression a storm of confusion and fear. "Nick? What… how did you…?"
"I followed you! Sort of. I got worried after you left, and I… I had a really weird dream." Nicholas let his eyes go wide with manufactured awe and terror, looking between Percy and Grover. "There was a… a man sitting on a white throne made out of clouds, and he was yelling about a stolen bolt. And then I saw you two, running through the rain from… from a a giant cow with horns." He shuddered convincingly. "I just knew I had to find you. I hitched, walked… I don't even know, I just sort of knew where you were."
Grover's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He bleated in alarm. "A dream? A clear vision? But you're mortal! The Mist should have…" He stopped, his nose twitching violently. He took a step closer to Nicholas, sniffing. His eyes widened further, going from panic to sheer, unadulterated shock. "You… you smell like… like fennel. And wine. And… chaos. Oh, no. Oh, pinestraw and tin cans, not another one!"
Nicholas blinked, putting on a perfect mask of bewildered ignorance. "What? Smell like what? What's going on, Grover? And why does Percy have a sword?"
Grover buried his face in his hands. "He's clear-sighted! And he's got the scent! Mr. D is going to turn me into a dolphin. A very stupid, floundering dolphin!" He grabbed both of their arms, his grip surprisingly strong. "No time! No time to explain everything! We have to get to camp. Now! The boundary is close. If she followed your scent too…" He cast a terrified look over his shoulder.
The trip through the woods was a masterclass in controlled performance from Nicholas. He gasped at the right moments as Grover and Sally, in a frantic, hushed torrent, explained about the Greek gods, monsters, demigods, and Camp Half-Blood. He let his jaw drop, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and dawning, insane belief.
"Gods? Real? Like… Zeus, Hera?" Nicholas asked, his voice hushed.
"And more! All of them! And their children, like Percy! And… and probably like you, Nick!" Grover moaned.
"Me? But my parents are…" Nicholas trailed off, letting a perfectly crafted look of troubled confusion cross his face. "My dad died when I was born. My mom… my mom was never around. Just a constantly partying, always traveling… all family I knew was my aunt"
"It doesn't matter!" Grover yelped, urging them forward. "The scent doesn't lie! You're not fully mortal. Which means you're in danger too!"
They broke into a run as the trees thinned, but before they could run for long, the minotaur came as promised, and the happenings happened just as they had in the books, the minotaur transporting Sally Jackson to the realm of the dead and Percy killing the minotaur in kind. Just as Nicholas wanted, he needed Percy to have personal experience of the callousness of the gods.
As they entered Camp Half-Blood, the scenery was a breathtaking anachronism, a slice of ancient Greece preserved in a Long Island summer. At the heart sparkled a brilliant blue lake, its surface dotted with canoes.
A cluster of rustic, yet beautifully built cabins nestled in a semicircle, some simple wood, others more elaborate with carved columns or painted designs. A towering limestone cliff held a set of natural climbing walls that gushed with real waterfalls.
An open-air stone pavilion stood ready for meals, and an amphitheater was carved into a hillside. In the distance, he could see a literal lava-filled climbing wall, a sword-fighting arena with straw dummies, and stables for what were undoubtedly not ordinary horses. The air hummed with magic, the scent of pine, strawberries from a vast field, and the underlying ozone of divine power. It was a hidden paradise, a gilded, summer-camp-shaped cage.
They stumbled down the hill toward a large, welcoming farmhouse, the Big House. Hope surged on Grover's face at the safety the camp provided.
Only then did Nicholas let himself stagger, as if the terror had finally caught up to him. He moved to Percy's side as campers and a centaur, Chiron, without his wheelchair disguise, poured out of the Big House.
The aftermath was a blur of medical attention, explanations, and stunned silence. Percy was taken to the infirmary. Nicholas, after a quick check-over, was given a temporary bunk. He could feel the curious, assessing stares of the other campers. A new, unclaimed kid was normal. A new kid who arrived with Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, slayer of the Minotaur, on his first night? That was gossip fodder.
The claiming happened two days later, during dinner in the pavilion. The tension was palpable. Percy sat at the Hermes table, shimmering with unclaimed potential. Nicholas sat with him, doing his best to look overwhelmed and out of place.
Then Dionysus, Mr. D, stood up from the head table. He didn't look bored today. He looked resigned, irritated, but with a sharp glint in his bloodshot eyes. He raised a plastic goblet, not of wine, but of Diet Coke.
"Enough of this," he grumbled, his voice carrying across the silent pavilion. "The stench of unwashed adolescence and poor life choices is giving me a headache." He pointed a languid finger not at Percy, but directly at Nicholas. "You. Aldridge. The one who smells like cheap party tricks and overripe grapes. Try not to embarrass me."
A simple, glowing symbol appeared over Nicholas's head: a thyrsus, a pine-cone-tipped staff entwined with ivy. A murmur ran through the campers. Dionysus. The god of wine, madness, and revelry.
Chiron bowed slightly. "Hail, Nicholas Aldridge, son of Dionysus."
Nicholas let a look of stunned acceptance cross his face, mixed with a hint of wry confusion. Son of the party god. It was perfect.
He was moved to the Dionysus cabin, a building that looked like a permanent frat house, with grapevines crawling over the porch and faint sounds of distant music always in the air. It was mostly empty.
His first real conversation with Percy came the next afternoon by the canoe lake. Percy was sitting alone, turning the Minotaur's horn over in his hands.
"Hey," Nicholas said, sitting beside him.
"Hey. Son of Dionysus, huh?" Percy said, with a weak attempt at a smile. "Could be worse."
"Could be better," Nicholas replied, matching his tone. He looked out at the water. "Gods. Real gods. Our parents. It's… it changes everything, doesn't it?"
Percy's gaze darkened. "It got my mom killed."
"It makes you wonder… what kind of parents just drop their kids into this mess and then vanish? What kind of system is this?"
Percy looked at him, a spark of recognition in his sea-green eyes. "My old history teacher… he used to talk about that. About the common folk being tools to clean up the powerful peoples messes."
Nicholas nodded. "He was a smart guy. It's all a maze, Percy. They build the walls, put the monsters inside, and send us in to fight. The question is, do we just fight the monster, or do we start looking for a way to break the walls?"
They trained together. Nicholas's "powers" were stronger than what one would expect given his claimed father. He displayed a knack for causing minor illusions—making the climbing wall look like it was covered in rainbows, or causing an opponent's sword to briefly feel as heavy as lead. He showed an affinity for vines, making them grow faster during herbology lessons and ensnaring opponents in combat.
Percy's power was a tidal force waiting to be harnessed. At the canoe lake, Nicholas would sit with him. "Don't try to command it," he'd say, echoing the calm, strategic tone of his old Mr. Aldridge persona. "You're not commanding the water. You're part of it. Ask it. Feel its weight, its current. What does it want to do?"
Under this guidance, Percy progressed faster than even Chiron anticipated. He wasn't just learning tricks; he was learning a philosophy of power that was inherently rebellious.
They also made friends with Annabeth Chase. The daughter of Athena was initially wary of the new son of Dionysus, but she was drawn to Percy's raw power and his latent strategic mind, which Nicholas subtly nurtured.
Annabeth's intelligence was formidable, but it was a puzzle-solving intelligence, trained within the system's rules. Nicholas, in his guise as Nick, would ask her questions that gently pushed at the edges of those rules.
"Why are the cabins segregated by godly parent?" he'd ask innocently as the three of them studied maps of the camp. "Wouldn't it be stronger to mix us up? Force us to work with different strengths?"
Annabeth would frown, her grey eyes thoughtful. "Tradition. And… it helps control powers. Prevents conflicts."
"Does it?" Nicholas would muse. "Or does it just keep us thinking of ourselves as extensions of them, instead of our own people?"
The days blended into weeks. Nicholas played his part perfectly: the supportive friend, the sarcastic son of a lackluster god, the trainee with modest, quirky powers. He bonded with Percy over shared loss and a growing, unspoken understanding that the world they'd been thrust into was fundamentally unjust. He earned Annabeth's respect with clever questions and a quiet competence.
He walked the beautiful, treacherous paths of Camp Half-Blood, a paradise built on a foundation of divine neglect. He trained in its arenas, ate at its pavilion, and slept in its themed cabin. And all the while, from behind the eyes of Nick Aldridge, the Shaper watched, and waited, and wove the next threads of the great design.
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