Blackjack landed in the middle of the volleyball court. I swung my leg over the house and slid into the sand. I knew that more than half the kids were still in school, but Camp was emptier than I would've expected, especially since lights out wasn't for probably another hour. Only a few kids wandered around and most of those looked lost.
"Grover, what's going on? Where is everyone? Camp shouldn't be this... dead."
"It started out slowly. A couple kids forgetting things like the day or what they had for breakfast. Then they started forgetting how to fight or about monsters and gods. Now half of them can't even remember their own names or who their parents are. When Rachel called, I thought this was what she was coming for, but then she said she needed to see you."
I bit my bottom lip as a couple of girls walked by talking about their hair. It would have been fine, completely normal, except that I realized that neither had an orange Camp Half-Blood tee or any weapons whatsoever. Even the Aphrodite girls had weapons.
“There you are,” a familiar voice called. The voice was female- sort of- and hard to miss. I turned in time to see Clarisse La Rue marching up to our group. Clarisse was a big girl with her mousy brown hair flowing to her mid-back and tied back with a red bandana. She had full armor over her camp shirt and jeans and an electric spear hanging from her side. Unlike usually, her boyfriend, Chris Rodriguez, wasn't by her side. I figured maybe they broke up but there was no way in hell that I was going to ask her about that. Clarisse was scary, and I wasn't afraid to admit it.
“Hey. What's up?”
Her brown eyes narrowed at me. “Seriously, twerp? Look around. Camp's going to chaos.”
I wanted to say something snappy that would probably have her kicking my butt, but at that moment a helicopter started to descend on the valley. Kids fled the area and the two girls that had walked by earlier were screaming about their hair. The chopper blades slowly stopped spinning and the door flew open. Rachel Elizabeth Dare jumped from the helicopter with her pleated skirt flapping around her knees and her shirt was crisp white. I knew that her family had money but it was weird to see that in effect, to see her looking like a rich girl rather than the carefree artist that lived in a cave and drew on her worn jeans. "It's fine," she said into her headset. "Leave me here. I don't care if it's an old strawberry farm. I'll be fine." She yanked the headset from her wild red hair and threw it back into the seat. She ran toward our group as the helicopter took off again.
Annabeth hugged the Oracle and both grinned at each other. “I'm so happy to see you guys and get away from my dad's office for the day. I'm just sorry about the circumstances.”
Clarisse butted her way between them and glowered at Rachel with her hands on her hips. “ So what's going on here? Why is everyone forgetting and how do we fix it?”
"Well I didn't really have a prophecy. It was more like a... vision. I could see all kind of things in my head and it all kept coming back around to you, Naida."
"Huh? Me?"
"Yeah," Rachel answered as she dug through her splatter-painted hobo bag. She drew out a stack of papers and started rifling through them. "This was the first one."
The black-and-white sketch was of me and the background looked familiar. It took a minute to realized that it was a picture of me in the Seattle Space Needle security office.
The next drawing Rachel thrust out was of Mnemosyne wearing a long dress and her hair piled elegantly on her head. Even in the picture, her eyes looked cold and calculating.
The third paper showed the camp and some of the kids with a giant question mark in a thought bubble connecting them all and little swirls danced on the air. It would have been a cool comic book page if it wasn't actually happening. My stomach knotted up as I thought of her taunt.
Next was an image of the kitchen back at my apartment. I was there with my sword drawn facing off against Mnemosyne and Kaya.
The last one was of a place I didn't recognize. It looked like a river in some kind of cave or something. Something like ghosts and wind floated up from the river and disappeared off the top of the page.
Percy groaned at the last one. I turned toward him abs saw a scowl twisting his handsome features. "Do you know where that is?"
He nodded once, not looking happy. "Yeah. That's the River Lethe. One drop and you lose you memory. When people are reborn, they go through it to forget their previous lives."
"So what the hell does all of this mean?" I snapped.
Rachel let out a heavy sigh. "This woman," she pointed to the Mnemosyne picture, "is using the Lethe to make all of the demigods forget. It's in the air. You, Naida, have to stop her. The girl with the snakes is going to be the key. I don't know why she's doing this, but you have another quest."
I cursed in English and Greek. "She's making the kids forget so that it weakens the gods. They lose power when no one believes in them. That's her end game.
"Okay, if I have a stupid quest again, I want Percy and Annabeth to come. Clarisse, you and Grover round up everyone that still has their memory and make sure we have people to defend the camp. This is going to sound silly, but everyone that still remembers need to keep a journal or video diary or something. That way, if they do forget, there's something for them to fall back on."
Clarisse glowered at me but I kept my gaze steady on her brown eyes. After a moment she nodded at with grudging respect. “Okay, fine. Maybe you're right about the journal thing. It would've helped Chris remember-” she cut herself off quickly and I realized why her boyfriend of almost four years was absent. He didn't know her.
“Oh, Clarisse,” Annabeth gasped. She was the closest thing to a best friend that the scary Ares girl had and Clarisse let Annabeth comfort her. Her eyes darted to Percy for just a moment and I didn't know what either of them would do if they ever forgot each other.
I cleared my throat. I'd become a cynic in the last several months and as far as I was concerned, I had no one I was worried about forgetting me. But those two needed each other. I couldn't imagine that kid of devotion and love.
“I'll be right back,” I said quickly, just longing to escape the atmosphere. “If we're going on a quest, I need a change of clothes.”
I rushed back to the Poseidon cabin. I hadn't been there since the end of summer but I kept some spare clothes and toiletries and other essentials for emergencies, like this. I sighed and started rifling through my drawer. I grabbed a small duffle and threw T-shirts, jeans, socks, underwear, and my bathroom stuff into it. I shucked off my cute little ankle boots and replaced them with some tennis shoes. I pulled my hair back and grabbed my bag as I walked out the door.
I started thinking about my first quest, the one to save the Fates. I'd had the five people that I trusted the most with me. This time, I still had two of them, but I felt so alone, even worse than before when I didn't even know what the hell was going on. I thought of Nico and how much he'd helped me and encouraged me on our last quest and my heart broke.
Why couldn't things be easier for me?

Notes

first of all, thank you Thalia grace and tmcar1 for commenting, it means a lot to me.
second, i am SO sorry for not updating sooner! i've been so busy with work and school but i'll try to get more chapters out quickly. (also, comments motivate me more)
thanks for your patience!