an: to all of the stray readers here, be warned that this is an unedited first draft i am writing for camp nanowrimo. large portions have been written under sleep deprivation and it will be awkwardly wordy in places in cheap attempts to boost my word count. it is far from perfect, and i openly accept critique, but don't take this too seriously. i have also tweaked riordan's mythology the tiniest bit, as his representation of kronos was not entirely accurate, although this won't be obvious until later chapters. this is meant in no disrespect to him. xx
On the outside, there was nothing particularly special about Elliott K. Paton. At the age of fifteen, he was almost outlandishly tall, and he moved as if he hadn't gotten quite used to the length of his limbs. His light brown hair was in a constant state of disarray, and much to his mother's chagrin he always seemed to be in desperate need of a haircut. His hands were already worn from working on his family's cattle farm in the Weald in Sussex, and his face held a constant expression that was achingly earnest. He was naïve, which was plain to see in his big, curious eyes and innocent smile. Even almost into adulthood, he was still like a child – clever, curious about everything around him, and a little bit mischievous, although not enough to trouble his hard-working parents.
But underneath all of that simplicity, there was something very special about Elliott Paton. He was clever, this was true, but he was much more clever than a boy his age should have been. He had a way with metal and machinery, and he could build fantastic things from next to nothing. He had a gift that even he didn't understand or know about, a gift that had been given to him from a god.
The only person in the world who was aware of this gift was his mother, who was doing everything in her power to keep the boy safe. Elizabeth Paton was, if anything, the best mother a child in his state could have hoped for. She was a small, strong woman with eyes just as bright as Elliott's, a woman who spent her entire life in the rolling hills of the Greensand Ridge. She was of little intelligence in the way of books, and often the things her son told her went right over her head, but she loved him fiercely with all of her might. She kept him close to her, but she never coddled him. If he fell or hurt himself (which happened quite often), Elizabeth would help him up and give him a kiss, and maybe a bit of chocolate if he was bleeding, and then she would tell him he wasn't allowed to cry for long. She raised him to be good; she raised him to be strong.
Elliott's father loved him with the same fiery passion, even though he was unaware of the truth of his gift. Gregory Paton had grown up on the farm Elliott was raised on, claiming ownership when his parents passed. He was a quiet man, and he normally the noise and music and play to his wife. Even if he knew the truth of his son's parentage, he would still love him just as much. He would do his damndest, just as Elizabeth had done, to keep him safe from the evil lurking in the shadows.
They were a happy little family, living a quiet little life with their cows and chickens. Elliott's parents indulged in his strange hobbies the best they could, but it didn't particularly matter what things they couldn't afford – he could fix a broken tractor within minutes, or build a working automaton of a little bird to flutter around his mother's dressing table. They started keeping scraps of metal for him to tinker with in the barn, and one weekend they took him to meet an actual blacksmith. He was happy with the little he had been given.
Little did any of them know, however, there were people looking for Elliott. There were good people out there, but there were also monsters lurking in the dark, their teeth and claws ready to tear into him before the prophecy could complete itself. The camp had already salvaged the first half, and the monsters from below refused to lose the second half as well. Without it, the prophecy would never become complete and their plan would follow through. They all searched for the proof of his existence, good and evil fighting to get to him.
The monsters found him first.
The day that would change everything started like any other day. Elliott woke up at an ungodly hour to do his chores, helping his mother with breakfast and his father with the animals. After both he and the chickens were fed, he wasted a little bit more time before school started in the barn, fiddling with some of the broken farm equipment that was lying around. Though as much as he would have liked to, he couldn't spend all of his time in the barn on his own, and so he collected his things and left for school. If he would have known what was going to happen only a few hours later, he might have clung to his mother like he used to, begging her to allow him to stay home. But that would have been childish, so he said his goodbyes and set off on the familiar walk that he had been taking all of his life.
Elliott liked being alone and he never thought twice about walking through a bit of woods along the backside of the barn to get to school faster, but there was something unsettling about that walk today. He felt the little hairs on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation, as if there was someone right behind him – it was like he was being followed, or watched. The further he got away from his home, the worse the feeling became, a feeling of cold dread creeping up the back of his spine. He sped up, clutching the straps of his backpack tighter until his knuckled turned white and he could feel his nails digging into his palms.
He hoped that the feeling would go away once he was in the safe confines of his little school, but it only got worse and Elliott found it harder than normal to concentrate on his schoolwork. It was never out of the ordinary for him to have a little bit of a problem focusing or sitting still, and sometimes the words in his textbooks swam off of the pages, but this was different than normal. He just couldn't shake that bit of fear that had been steadily forming in the back of his mind since he left home. He wanted to be somewhere quite, where he could be safe and alone until he knew that the danger had passed – whatever that danger was. He wanted to be back in his barn, curled up in the loft with his trinkets. He wanted home
So he decided to skip the rest of the day.
He had never skipped school before, but it was an easy decision to make once the thought entered his thoughts. So while the rest of his classmates were filing out for lunch, he snuck around the back of the school to cut through the woods to get back home. It was surprisingly easy, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of skiving off before now. He darted into the cover of the trees before anyone noticed him, and he hurried down the familiar path to the safety of his loft. Time seemed to inch by, and he kept thinking to himself that any moment now he would be home. He realized, rather belatedly, that he was lost.
Being lost was a strange feeling for Elliott, who often wandered off on his own into the woods when he got tired of the confinement of his house. He liked the quiet of the trees and the little animals that bounded about in the branches. He liked the solitude. But there was no denying it – he was lost in the woods that he had thought had been so familiar to him. Trying not to panic he tried to tell himself that he must have turned off of the path too soon without thinking about it, and… why did he hear hissing?
He froze on the spot, turning around to try to find the source of the eerie noise. It was too cold for snakes, wasn't it? A little squirrel stared down at him from one of the trees, there was a rustle in the brush that spooked it, and it fled higher up into the branched.
"Shouldn't you be at school, child?"
Elliott turned quickly at the sound of the voice, nearly tripping over his own feet. There was a woman standing away from him a few feet away, watching him with her head tilted curiously. She was beautiful, tall and thin, wearing a long green skirt that covered her feet and trailed behind her. She had a heavy fur jacket wrapped tightly around her thin frame, and her golden hair billowed around her face as if it was made of air. He immediately noticed her eyes – big and green – and he instinctively took a step back from her. He could still hear hissing.
"It's dangerous to be out here alone," the woman went on, still smiling sweetly at him. "You really should have stayed amongst the mortals." She made a clicking sound with her tongue, as if she was chastising him.
"Mortals?" Elliott managed, somehow finding his voice. He tried not to notice how nervous he sounded and straightened, telling himself to be brave.
The woman tilted her head, her eyes still unblinking. Why wasn't she blinking? Elliott found it hard to look away from her face, but all he wanted to do was turn and run. There was something in her expression that he didn't quite like, something… hungry. "It's a shame, such a handsome child," the woman mused, moving close to him. She moved strangely, although Elliott found it hard to think about that. He couldn't move, he couldn't look away from that hauntingly beautiful face of hers as she inched closer to him. Soon, her hand was reaching out to him, her skin pale and—
Scaly?
"Child of Hephaestus, duck!" came the shrill voice of a young girl.
Something inside of Elliott woke up at the urgency in the girl's voice, and he awkwardly tumbled to the ground as one of the larger trees behind him creaked and groaned, its heaviest limb swinging forward to knock the woman back away from him. He looked up as she slid across the forest ground, her skirt rippling around her legs, and his face blanched. Instead of two, normal, human legs, the woman seemed to have one long trunk, scaly and green – like a snake. He scrambled backwards until his back hit the nearest tree, and he looked up to see a young girl standing beside him. Her appearance was just as strange as the woman's; she seemed to be wearing a dress made of bark, her hair was a golden green (like the leaves, Elliott thought dumbly), and where her skin should have been flushed, it was tinted a bright green.
"Lamia, leave my forest!" the girl screamed, and with a slight ripple in the air she disappeared, and the tree let out another threatening groan as it lurched forward to give the snake-woman – Lamia – another violent shove.
Lamia let out a loud, screeching hiss as she was thrown backwards again, just as she had been trying to regain her balance. She seemed to have his her head on something, and Elliott noticed her blood was black and unnaturally thick. The girl in the bark dress reappeared, and she tugged Elliott to his feet. "Run!" she said quickly, giving him a little shove that almost sent him back to the ground. "I will keep her back, the forest is with you! Find the satyr!"
Although nothing she was saying or anything that was happening was making much sense, she didn't have to tell him twice. Elliott bolted off in the opposite direction just as Lamia managed to upright herself, and there was another creak of the tree and more screaming. He didn't look back; he just ran.
He wasn't sure how long he ran, weaving in and out of the trees as fast as his legs would carry him, but Elliott came to a screeching halt at a little stream. He was sweating and shaking, and he fell to his knees to splash water on his face. What was going on? He couldn't find his bearings, he just kept thinking about all of the strange things that the girl in the bark had said – Child of Hephastus. His heart pounded in his ears and he tried to think of why that name sounded so familiar. And Lamia? The fairy tale? He splashed more water on his face, jumping backwards when he realized there was a girl on the opposite side of the creek, watching him. She couldn't have been older than him, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and was dressed in a light blue dress with a matching cardigan.
"So it is true," was all she said, gazing at him with big, big eyes. She stepped into the water toward him, grouching down so that their eyes were level. She studied him closely, as if she was trying to decide if he was actually real or not. "Drink from my water, clean yourself, but you should find the satyr," she finally went on, a little bit sternly. "He is close!" And then she was gone, dissolving into the water, leaving Elliott alone in the mud.
"The satyr?" he repeated to himself, looking around nervously. Elliott climbed to his feet and then ran off, heading back toward his home. His thoughts were racing, thinking of fairy tales and girls that lived in trees and water and satyrs and Hephaestus. He skidded to a stop when he remembered where he had heard that name.
But that couldn't be right.
This wasn't real.
Shaking his head, he started for his house again, praying that his parents were safe. He came around the back of the barn, but was forced to come to another quick stop when a boy came from the open back door of the barn. They nearly collided into each other, and it took a moment for Elliott to regain his footing. He opened his mouth to yell at the boy, but that was when he realized instead of human legs, he had the legs of a goat. And on the top of his head, among a mess of curly dark hair, two little horns peeked out. The satyr.
No.
"Come with me-ee-ee!" he bleated, his accent Irish, reaching for Elliott's arm. He tugged him away just as a giant smashed though the back of the barn. He raised a heavy club above his head and growled at him, and Elliott's heart nearly stopped.
"Wait!" he cried to the satyr, trying desperately to keep up. "What's going on? My parents—" He let out a choked noise, unable to think about what could have possibly happened to them. "Stop!" he begged, tears stinging in his eyes, fighting against the satyr as the giant stomped after them.
But the other boy, creature, thing couldn't seem to hear him, and they darted back into the cover of the woods. "We need to get you to camp!" he exclaimed, impossibly vague as the other strangers he had met in the past hour or so had been. Following that was a string of angry words that could have only been cursing in another language. For some reason, in the back of his mind Elliott decided it was Greek.
He refused to listen to him, though, and instead he kept desperately trying to pull his arm away. In a single moment the satyr stumbled over a stone, lost his grip on him, and Elliott fell backwards toward the ground. There was pain, a flash of red, and then everything went dark.