Chapter Text
The Greyhound station smelled like bleach, burnt coffee, and bad decisions.
It was just after two in the morning, and the place looked like it had been picked up in a hurry and dropped back down sideways. Rows of plastic chairs lined the waiting area, most of them cracked or held together with duct tape. A vending machine blinked in the corner like it was on life support, and a sleepy janitor was half-heartedly mopping around a guy snoring against the payphone booth.
Jeremy—now a grumpy, cute Chihuahua with hellhound eyes and a suspiciously sharp underbite—was stuffed inside my jacket like a loaf of living bread. He was warm and occasionally grumbled, but so far, no one had noticed that he was a walking contradiction of breed and menace.
We were barely inside when a voice cut through the buzz of flickering fluorescents.
“Excuse me.” A woman at the ticket counter squinted at us from behind thick plastic lenses. Her nametag said Linda, and her hair was a helmet of stiff curls. “It’s two in the morning. Where are your parents?”
Valerie stepped forward like she owned the whole building. “Our aunt is meeting us in Savannah,” she said smoothly. “We just need to get on the bus. Our parents already called ahead.”
Linda blinked. Her eyes glazed over a little. I noticed the way the shadows around her seemed to bend for a second, like the world hiccupped.
“Right,” she muttered. She snapped her fingers. “Aunt in Savannah. Makes sense.” She turned back to her desk and resumed typing like we hadn’t just been three unattended twelve-year-olds with a death dog and a lot of secrets.
I blinked. “Wait—you just used the Mist. You can manipulate the Mist?”
Valerie didn’t even look at me. “Minor skill. Learned it from Chiron’s guest lectures. Also, I read.”
Brandon shrugged like this happened every Tuesday. “Neat trick. I just punch things until they go away.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’ve noticed.”
With that crisis dodged, we made our way to the ticket kiosk and got three passes. Savannah, Georgia. Departing at 4:05 a.m. Which meant we had just under two hours to kill.
We found a corner away from the bathrooms and collapsed. I stretched out across two chairs, and Jeremy wormed his way out from under my coat to curl up in my lap like an infernal lapdog.
Brandon unzipped his duffel, pulled out a bag of trail mix, and started eating like nothing in the world was wrong. “So,” he said between handfuls. “Anyone else thinking we should’ve brought more snacks?”
Valerie ignored him. She had a small paperback notebook out—one I recognized from Capture the Flag nights—and she was scribbling in it furiously. Probably battle strategies. Or backup escape routes. Or how to kill me in my sleep if this quest turned out to be a wild goose chase.
I leaned back and let the noise of the station fade. We were on the road. The first step was done.
Now came the hard part: figuring out what exactly Hera wanted with this scepter… and why it felt like everything was about to get worse.
I must’ve nodded off for only a few minutes, but it was enough.
The moment my eyes shut, the images came rushing back—fast and flickering like a broken reel in a theater projector. Glimpses. A warrior with blood-red armor and fire in his fists. Another in gleaming bronze and owl-crested helm, shadows flickering behind her. The scepter between them, spinning, glowing, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then came the creatures again—an army of them, their eyes all burning crimson. They weren’t just monsters. They were once like us. Satyrs. Nymphs. Dryads. Twisted by something old and angry.
And there, at the front, was Thistlebranch.
My throat went dry.
He wasn’t smiling. Just staring. His eyes weren’t his anymore.
He lunged.
I snapped awake, heart racing, sweat cold on my back.
Across from me, Valerie didn’t even glance up from her notebook. “That nap seemed productive.”
Brandon was halfway through a second bag of trail mix, lazily tossing pieces into his mouth.
I sat up straighter, wiping my hands on my jeans. “How long was I out?”
Valerie finally looked up. “Huh? We just sat down. Maybe five minutes?”
“It felt longer.”
Something about the dream lingered. Not just a memory, not just a vision. It had weight. Like prophecy.
“I saw them again,” I said quietly. “The red-eyed ones. Thistlebranch. The scepter. And those two warriors from before—definitely Ares and Athena now. They didn’t say anything, but... it felt like a warning.”
Brandon glanced at me, suddenly serious. “Thistlebranch? Are you sure?”
I nodded. “He looked... wrong. Not possessed, exactly. More like... bent. Like he was being used as a mouthpiece for something worse.”
Valerie frowned, chewing the inside of her cheek like she always did when she was thinking too hard. “Dreams like that aren’t just dreams. Not when they come from the gods. Not when they echo.”
I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s not just prophecy anymore. If Thistlebranch is showing up in visions... he’s part of this. Or he’s about to be.”
Brandon tossed a raisin into his mouth and muttered, “Great. Because this quest wasn’t terrifying enough.”
Valerie shot him a look. “This confirms we’re going the right direction. That scepter, the creatures, even Thistlebranch... they’re all threads leading to something bigger.”
I nodded slowly, feeling the heaviness settle on my shoulders again. “Then we better get to Savannah before the threads tighten.”
She returned to her notebook, scribbling again. “Let’s hope we’re not already too late.”
We didn't do much and just waited for the bus to arrive. I looked at the clock on the wall, twelve minutes until the bus arrives.
Valerie was still scribbling something in her notebook, and Brandon had finally stopped crunching trail mix and started pacing like a coiled spring. Jeremy had curled up near the edge of the terminal bench, snoring softly in his tiny Chihuahua form, his tail occasionally twitching like he was chasing something in a dream.
Then I heard it.
A soft clack of hooves against linoleum.
I sat up straighter.
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Brandon stopped pacing. “What?”
Valerie raised a brow, but then her eyes flicked to the far side of the terminal.
Out of the shadows stepped a figure. Hooved legs. Curled horns. Thick fur covered in dirt and ash. A satyr.
Then another.
And another.
Five of them in total, walking slowly—too slowly—through the fluorescent-lit waiting area like they didn’t belong in their own skin. Their eyes glowed a sickly, deep red.
My stomach dropped.
Valerie’s voice was barely a whisper. “Just like your dream.”
I stood up, instinctively grabbing my shield. “That’s—” My voice caught. “That’s Clove. She was here last summer. She used to lead the nature walk for the Demeter kids.”
Valerie went pale. “And that one’s Myn. She played panpipes during the solstice bonfire.”
“What happened to them?” Brandon whispered. “Why do they look like they wanna eat our faces?”
“They’re not themselves,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”
One of the satyrs let out a sound—half screech, half howl—and leapt.
Brandon cursed and rolled sideways as hooves cracked against the tile where he stood a second before.
Valerie threw up a hand, sending the creature back with a telekinetic shove of wind. “We can’t kill them! They’re our friends!”
“Friends?!” Brandon yelled as another lunged at him. “This friend is trying to disembowel me!”
I stepped in, blocking a swipe with my shield. “Just defend. Don’t hurt them.”
“Easy for you to say,” Brandon snapped, swinging the flat side of his axe into one of the satyr’s legs—not enough to wound, just to knock them off-balance.
Jeremy let out a yip and leapt forward, barking furiously in his small form to distract two of them as Valerie muttered a spell under her breath, a pulse of light flaring from her palm.
“I think they’re bound to something,” Valerie called. “Something dark. Like possession—but rooted deeper.”
“They came for us,” I said, locking eyes with Clove—no, whatever Clove had become. “They were sent.”
“Bus is leaving!” Brandon shouted, pointing through the glass doors as the driver outside shut the storage hatch.
We were out of time.
“Valerie!” I barked.
“Go!” she said, raising her hand and throwing a burst of mist like a smoke screen between us and the satyrs. “I’ll cover—”
I grabbed her wrist. “No. Together.”
She didn’t argue.
We ran.
Through the fog, around the benches, over a tipped-over trash can, and out into the cold night air. The bus was already pulling forward—
Brandon banged on the side of it with the flat of his axe. “HEY!”
The driver slammed the brakes and opened the door just enough to scream, “GET IN OR GET LOST!”
We leapt aboard, Jeremy tucked under my arm, just as one of the red-eyed satyrs slammed into the door behind us.
The door whooshed closed.
The bus lurched forward.
I didn’t breathe until we were two blocks away.
Valerie collapsed into a seat beside me, clutching her side. “We can’t keep running into things like that.”
Brandon sat across from us, panting. “No. Next time we bring stun spells or a taser.”
I stared out the window, back at the shrinking terminal.
“Whatever’s turning them,” I said, “it’s not just about us.”
Valerie nodded grimly.
The bus rumbled south through the dark, its engine growling like it was just as tired as we were. I didn’t know where we were exactly—somewhere between Washington and nowhere—but the road blurred by, streaked with headlights and flickers of street lamps that melted against the windows.
I couldn’t stop staring out into the night.
The red eyes. The lunges. The shrieks.
Clove. Myn.
They weren’t just random satyrs. They were ours. They were Camp Half-Blood.
“They looked just like the ones in my dream,” I finally said, my voice low. “Same eyes. Same fury.”
Valerie didn’t look up from the makeshift map she was drawing on the back of a folded Waffle House placemat. “You think it’s the Sképtron?” she asked, tone clinical, but her fingers had stilled slightly.
I nodded. “The Scepter of Binding Will. It’s in the name. It… binds the will of others. What if Kerostes is using it to twist people? Twist creatures? If it can control minds, then…” I swallowed. “No one’s safe.”
Brandon leaned back in the cracked vinyl seat across from us, arms crossed behind his head. “So we’re fighting a nightmare lady who’s turning our allies into zombie rage monsters with a magical brainwashing stick?” He let out a low whistle. “Awesome.”
Valerie tapped her pen against her knee. “The logic tracks. If Kerostes has the Sképtron, then she’s no longer just a threat to you and Eli and Lyssa. She’s a threat to the entire camp. Maybe all demigods.”
“But how do we find her?” I asked. “If she has it already, then where would she even go? What does she want?”
“Power,” Brandon muttered. “They always want power. Or revenge. Or both.”
Valerie leaned her head back against the window. “Kerostes is a shadow being. She’s not meant to exist fully in our world. She feeds on discord, breaks oaths, shatters loyalties. It’s in her myth—what little of it we know. The scepter would give her permanence. Influence. That’s what the Scepter of Binding Will does. It doesn’t just control people—it anchors your desires into others. It’s like forcing someone to believe what you believe. To feel what you feel.”
Brandon scowled. “Whoever made that thing’s a lunatic.”
Valerie’s tone was sharp. “A lunatic with no regard for free will. Honestly, I hope we find them someday. Just so I can punch them in the face.”
I almost told them right then. About the dream. About the flash of a forge and a feathered helm. About the warrior of war and the warrior of wisdom. But I didn’t. Not yet.
Brandon sat forward, his easy smirk fading. “And if she’s already using it…”
“She could turn an entire army,” I said. “Camp. The gods. Anyone.”
We sat in silence for a long beat, the hum of the tires masking the weight in the air.
Then Valerie sighed. “Savannah’s the next stop. That shrine we found in the logbook—it might hold a clue. A resonance of Hera’s energy. Maybe it’ll guide us. That’s what sacred places do. Sometimes.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I asked.
She gave me a flat look. “Then we keep going. Or we die trying.”
Brandon grinned. “That’s the kind of optimism I signed up for.”
I cracked a tired smile. “You really didn’t sign up for anything.”
“Details.”
I leaned back against the cool windowpane, the night slipping past us in long shadows and flickers of early dawn.
Kerostes had the scepter.
She had allies we once called friends.
And we were heading straight into whatever she had planned next.
But we were still three.
One of war.
One of wisdom.
And me—the wildcard Hera sent into the game.
And maybe… just maybe… we had a shot.