The Life of Zander Hamilton

After Chiron blew the conch horn to signal the game had been won, I stood by the flag I had captured as my team gathered around me to celebrate. A couple of the guys lifted me on their shoulders and began chanting, “Zander! Zander! Zander!” I have to admit, it felt great to be celebrated like this.

After the celebrating had finished, everybody gathered around the massive bonfire we have every night. While we were sitting there, singing songs, I couldn’t help but think about Leo. He had been hurt pretty bad during the game. I stood up and walked in front of the stands I had been sitting in and was about to leave and go check on him, but something was off.

The music had stopped and I noticed a faint new orange light that had not come from the fire. I looked around me only to find everybody staring at me. Percy, Annabeth, even that Cody kid smiling. I had a thought that got me very excited. I looked above me saw where the new light had come from. It was the glowing floating shape of a hammer.

“All hail Zander, son of Hephaestus.” Chiron called. Everyone around the campfire cheered, even Clarisse. She knew I had waited five years to feel this great. That night I moved my stuff to the Hephaestus cabin. I finally had my own bunk and not a spot in the corner in the floor.

It was pretty much the same as the Hermes cabin on the inside except the small shrine they built to honor one of their previous head counselors, Charles Beckendorf. They told me he had given his life to give Percy and the rest of the camp little more time to stop the titan lord Kronos a couple years ago. In the middle was a picture of him sitting next to his girlfriend Selina, who had also died to help stop Kronos. It had a couple of sentimental things as well. The others told me that they were an assortment of some of the first things he built as well as some of the last. One item was knife that he had made his first day at camp. It was about a foot long and three inches wide. It was pretty impressive for his first go at making one. Another item that was supposedly a present for Selina was a necklace made of celestial bronze and silver, with her name etched in cursive onto a small piece of metal. He had died before he could give it to her and she died only a couple days later. It would have been a beautiful gift.

The next morning, I went to the infirmary to tell Leo the good news. When I got there, he was sitting up in the bed while a girl from the Apollo cabin was trying to feed him nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods.

“I told you Jessica, I’m fine. If you shove anymore of that stuff down my throat I’ll burn up, which would be ironic since I’m the super awesome master of the flame Leo Valdez.” He said happily, he smiled when he saw me. “Zander, how’s it going man? Anything knew on the outside? I heard someone got claimed last night.” He asked curiously.

“Uh, yeah ‘someone,’ was claimed last night. You got a new addition to the Hephaestus cabin.” I replied, making quotation marks at someone.

“It was you wasn’t it. I knew it was you!” he said practically bouncing up and down. He had almost fallen off the bed when Jessica told him to sit still.

“If I have to tell you again I’ll put you out. Chiron can yell at me later.” She said and for some reason I believed her.

“Well young pupil, first thing we’re doing when I get out of here is heading to forges so the master can teach his student.” He said enthusiastically.

“What’s with the ‘young’ pupil stuff, I’m the same age as you.” I questioned.

“Question the master, you should not.” He said with his best Yoda Impression.

Within the next couple hours, Jessica said he was okay to leave, and like he said, the first place he went after he got food is the forges. He taught me a lot of things like the proper techniques used to heat and shape the metal to get it the way you want it. I, through my own ideas, showed him how to forge something like the fancy Three Musketeers sword hilts. I even made a replacement for my old bronze sword. It looked like a regular Greek Xiphos blade except it had microscopic holes that led to the empty channel in the blade filled with a slow burning clear sap. There was a button on the cross piece that when pressed would coat the blade in the sap and ignite it so that the blade catches fire.

I pressed the button to see if it worked. It worked and it worked well. I went to the training yard to see if I had sharpened it enough. I took a swing at the dummy and sliced its’ head clean off with no resistance. I swung at another dummy and cut the post it was on in half. I stayed in the arena and trained for about an hour.

“Wow.” I heard behind me, I was startled and swung my sword at whoever it was and stopped the blade just millimeters from their neck. It was Cody.

“Please don’t kill me!” he pleaded.

“Dad gum, Cody! You don’t go sneaking up on someone swinging a sword!” I yelled at him.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you; I’m just a quiet guy.” He said in a small voice.

“It’s fine, just, is there a reason to your being here?” I asked a little out of breath.

“Not really, just been watching you for the past half-hour and was wondering, since you’re pretty good with a sword… would you want to teach me?” He asked quickly.

I thought for a minute. “Sure, be here tomorrow after lunch. I’ll show you what I know. Okay?” I held out my hand and he took it gladly. It was a deal.

Notes

Greetings readers.

Sorry I haven't posted in little while, end of school year crapola. Anyway, hope you like.

Bubba boy