JOAQUIN

• CHAPTER 2

GET TO KNOW

JOAQUIN

Knife fighting, however, was another matter. With a pair of celestial bronze knives, Joaquin became an opponent nobody enjoyed sparring. He preferred fighting uncomfortably close. He knew how to use an opponent’s weight against them, break a hold, and recognize when a fight was no longer worth winning. His knives simply made him faster; while a sword needed room, Joaquin gave you none.Ariadne also introduced him to transformation. After a disastrous minute spent as a basilisk, which ended with him nearly biting Chiron because he forgot how legs worked, Joaquin decided mythical reptiles should remain an emergency skill. His natural transformations, inherited from Dionysus, came much easier. The snake was silent and useful for slipping through tight spaces, though the sensory shift was so disorienting that Ariadne drilled a relentless rule into him: Remember your name. Human first. The leopard quickly became his favorite. Fast and quiet, it turned the dark forest into a map of smells and sounds. Campers soon learned that finding a leopard sleeping in the Dionysus cabin wasn't cause for alarm. The bull, however, frightened him. It was his strongest form, capable of shattering shields, but it brought a blinding, ancient anger. The world reduced to simple instincts: threat, challenge, protect, destroy. Ariadne forbade him from using the bull unsupervised until he could revert while furious, and even years later, he used it sparingly.His control over vines started small, six inches of grapevine that left the Ares cabin unimpressed. By summer's end, however, a flick of his fingers could send existing plants crawling across the ground. Grapevines responded eagerly, while ivy and strawberries could be persuaded. He learned to wrap vines around ankles, disarm opponents, build barriers, and break falls. During Capture the Flag, he once dragged three opposing campers backward simultaneously, only to find his hands shaking violently afterward. It taught him that while his father could command forests, his own power had limits.Then there was the ability nobody taught him: music. Campers dubbed him the Piper after he took control of the speakers at a campfire and sent the entire camp into a dancing frenzy. Arguments stopped, inhibitions vanished, and bitter rivals slung arms around each other. It wasn’t mind control, but enthrallment. Music gave Joaquin access to rhythm and ecstasy, stripping away restraints. Under his sound, joy became euphoria, confidence became recklessness, and fear became panic. After Chiron forced him to stop playing that first night, breaking the spell, the nickname stuck. Joaquin eventually learned to focus this effect, using it to give exhausted allies a second wind or disrupt enemy formations. It made sense; Dionysus ruled not just wine, but ecstasy, madness, and revelry, the threshold where people became something else.This inheritance made his struggle with the Mist all the more frustrating. Everyone expected him to master it, but his elaborate illusions collapsed in minutes. He eventually stopped fighting his limitations and realized that while a seven-minute disguise was useless, a half-second blur was lethal. Making a swordsman see him six inches to the left was all the opening his knives needed.This practical discipline defined his time at Camp Half-Blood. He wasn't a berserker, and despite being Dionysus’s son, he knew chaos wasn't carelessness. He mastered close-quarters combat and adapted his transformations for silence, speed, or brute force. He learned that vines could restrain better than blades and that the Mist only needed to hold for a heartbeat. Most importantly, he learned his greatest weapon wasn't celestial bronze. Sometimes, he only needed music.
Years later, mortals would know him as a DJ.They would pack clubs to hear him play, dancing until morning, leaving feeling freer and braver than they had in months. They would never know about Camp Half-Blood, the bronze knives, the vines, or the leopard in the woods. They wouldn't know about the boy who discovered that when he commanded the rhythm, the people followed. But the campers remembered, and they had given him a name for it: The Piper.