~►The Death of A Star◄~

When I woke up, I didn't sense anything was wrong. I didn't know what had happened while I was asleep. I didn't know that a raging hurricane with the same name as a Primordial God, the Ancient god of the Sky in the Greek mythology had passed on the city I was sleeping in. I didn't know that it had destroyed every building to the ground. I didn't know that I was the only survivor. How could I? I was asleep. Looking back into my life, I realized I didn't really know that much of it. I didn't know who my father was. My mom mysteriously died when I was twelve. I had to move to live with my grandparents in Rangherd. I was forced to live with them, to go to school, to have good grades. After all I've been through, after everyone I've lost, the only thing that seemed to matter to them was the grades. They said that if I had bad grades, I wouldn't have a proper job, a proper family. I hated them for that. I tried to find a way out. A way to not be with them, even it was only for half a day.
You see, at Friday night's Bingo Time at Rangherd. They obviously fulfilled the old man's prototype, so they went to the City Saloon to play bingo every Friday night. That left me alone every night, and with the excuse of being afraid of robbers when I'm home alone, they agreed on letting me go to Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Philip's house at Star City.

Now there is no Star City.

I sat on my bed, unknown of all that wasn't outside my uncle's house. I didn't hear any noise downstairs, so I assumed they were out, maybe they had went to the café or something. I looked at the digital clock that was in my night table. It marked 10:04 am. Something was wrong.

My grandparents always picked me up at exactly 9 am. Always, with no exception. I didn't know what happened, so I tried to phone them. It would not even ring. I felt a gush of panic striking me. My stomach made a 360 inside my body.

I tried to calm down. Surely something had happened for them to be late. They had slept in. They had caught traffic in the way in. Something.

I tried to calm down. It was dark because the blinds were closed, so I got up and pressed the button on the remote control to pull them up. Aunt Mathilda worked on a computer factory as a design manager, as well as uncle Philip (that is how they met), so they pretty much liked to be actualized technologically speaking.

I waited for about five seconds for the blinds to fully go up.

When I saw Star City through the windows of my bedroom, my stomach didn't really do a 360, it kinda went to a rollercoaster after it had eaten too much and it just couldn't handle it. I threw up for the first time in many years, the first time being when a police officer came to the high school back at Rangherd and announced me that my mother had died in a chemical accident at the lab she worked. The lab had blown up, nobody knows how or why. It's a cold case now.

When I knew I had finished throwing up, I dared to look outside the window one more time.

Oh god.

Long story short: there was no Star. All I saw of the city was the pavement and ashes; lots and lots of ashes, even piles of them were large buildings like the Gill Corp. Tower and the National Bank stood. The ashes were surrounded by a weird fog. The sky was not on its normal daylight colors, but instead was red.

When I was about to turn away from the window, I saw two little points appearing in the distance from the shadow of an especially tall pile of ash. I didn't know what that was, but there was a chance that those points were people.

I quickly put on a coat that was on a chair over my pajamas and my slippers and hurried downstairs. The dots were getting closer, and now I knew they were people. A girl and a boy, it seemed. I opened the door to go outside and meet them.

Because of the fog, I thought outside would be cold, maybe even with negative temperatures, but as I stepped outside, a wave of heat took over my body. I immediately took my coat away and kept moving. The people were getting closer, but the girl screamed. I was getting really dizzy because of the heat, and I hadn't been outside for more than fifteen seconds. I started gasping for air, but there wasn't any to breathe. Soon I fell on the ground and started crawling towards the strangers, who were now running towards me. My vision turned red and my eyes started closing. I was choking.

The strangers came closer. I saw the guy raising his hand and I felt like I was floating. Then I hit a hard surface.

I opened my eyes and I saw that I was in my uncle's house. I started gasping for air and when I had my breathing more or less controlled, I saw the girl and the guy walking inside my house.

The girl was not that tall but she was almost the size of the guy. She had blonde hair tied in a ponytail and bright, blue eyes. In her back there was a quiver with some arrows and a brown bow. She was wearing a red t-shirt, like the ones at summer camps, which said "Camp Bellum" under an image of a temple crossed by a lightning bolt.

The guy had black hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a gray shirt, a scarf and black skinny jeans. His skin was olive, and he was very pale.

"Hi there," He said, in a much deeper voice than I thought he would have. "You better get up, don't you think?"

I got up, embarrassed and raised my hand.

"Hi. My name is Aidoneus. But you can call me Don. That's what most people do."

"Well, Don, you destroyed a city and murdered thousands of people, including your uncle and your aunt and, also, gigantic snake ladies are coming to kill us", the guy said. "But hey, my name's Frost. And this lady here is Lydia."

I felt sick again. What? I had burned this city to ashes? Haha. As far as I know, I'm not a secret agent or the leader of the Mafia.

"That's so not funny."

"The truth is not always amusing, right?" Lydia stated.

"We have no time to chit-chat. The dracanae are closer. Hey, Donny boy, you have everything you need for a summer camp?"

"Wait what? Draca-who?" I said, in exasperation. I didn't know what they were talking about. I only wanted to know WHAT HAPPENED TO STAR CITY AND WHERE WERE MY UNCLE AND MY AUNT.

"Thought so. Donny boy, we really have to go because…"

The front door exploded. Outside there were two creatures about nine feet, in every aspect like women but, instead of legs and feet, there were scaly tentacles. They were wielding a shield and a sword.

"THAT IS A DRACANAE", Lydia cried, as if I hadn't figured that yet.

Frost suddenly threw a knife at one of those creatures (that failed, by the way) and ran towards Lydia, that managed to scream a "what?!" as she and Frost disappeared into the ground.

"What" was the most adequate reaction to what just had happened. Two guys enter my uncle's house after all near civilization has vanished and then, not even five minutes later, two Killer Croc-like ladies blow up the door because they were too lazy to open it. But obviously the ladies weren't after Frost and Lydia, because they kept advancing towards me. I picked up a vase with daisies and threw it to the nearest dracanae, which she avoided easily. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom, seeing I had no other choice, and barricaded the door with the bookshelf.

I thought that maybe I could jump off the window, seeing I somehow survived longer falls before. But then again, I would be fried alive before the dracanae realized I was outside. I just didn't know how Lydia and Frost had survived the heat. Maybe they had some sort of special suit to protect them.

I heard the dracanae going up the stairs and I realized it was a matter of moments before I would be dead

"Hold on, Don", someone said. But there wasn't anyone in my bedroom except me and oh god they're here. The dracanae started pounding on the door, and I wondered why they didn't just blow it up like they did downstairs.

I hid under my bed. They were so tall, they wouldn't notice me. But I realized that was a stupid idea, because they were not normal ladies and they might have x-ray vision or super smell. So I rolled to get under my bed, got up and faced the door, ready for anything whatsoever.

"HEY, DOUCHE, WHERE ARE YOU?" I heard the voice again. I realized the voice was on my head, so I mentally pictured my bedroom and hoped the person (or whatever was that was talking to me) understood that was my bedroom.

Once the dracanae made the door go boom, I started walking backwards.

"Hey, hum, Ms. Dracanae, you know, maybe we don't have to recur to violence, maybe you two could just, err, tell me what you ladies want and maybe we could make a deal or something, that is, if you…"

"WE WANTS YOU, DEMIGOD!" they both said, better, hissed, at the same time.

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you ladies, but that is something I can"t give you. So, hum, shoo!" I ordered, doing a "go away" gesture with my hands.

Surprisingly enough, both of them flew backwards, as if someone had given them a gigantic invisible sucker punch. They landed on the bathroom, knocking over the toilet, which was now dropping water all over the place. I ran there, to make sure they were unconscious, but somehow there was only a pile of dust where they were.

"Hey, Pluto, why didn't you answer me? And where are the dracanae?" shouted Frost, who had appeared behind me.

"They disappeared…now there's only this pile of dust. What happened?"

"It always happens when a monster is slain. Who killed them?"

"Well…me, I suppose"

Frost laughed.

"Don't laugh at me, douchebag!" I continued. "I just waved at them to go away and they flew here!"

Frost's expression hardened.

"Are you serious?"

"ARE YOU SERIOUS? IT'S JUST WHAT I TOLD YOU, DAMMIT!"

He stretched his hand.

"Here," he said, surprisingly calm. "Hold my hand"

"Are you…? Look, I like girls."

He rolled his eyes and took my hand. Immediately everything turned pitch-black and when I opened my eyes again, I was in a dark cavern. The ceiling was about twenty feet higher than us, and was made of glass. In the opening where we were, there was a large bed, a bookshelf, an open bathroom, a kitchen and a living room.

The walls were full of carvings, either just circles and loops or beautiful drawings of human-like creatures. This place was beautiful, even though I felt a little trapped in here.

"Is this where you…" I started to ask.

"Live? Yes. I am an exile. And I'm really sorry to introduce you to camp this way. But you'll have to ask me questions later. Shadow-travelling isn't easy, especially when you have to go four times across the country with another person. I'm exhausted. Now, just follow that corridor and you'll meet Lydia. She'll help you from there."

I didn't question him. I knew how it felt when you're really tired and people won't stop bugging you, so I walked towards the corridor. It was a long corridor, dimly lit by torches about every ten feet. As I walked through it, I heard the sound of water getting closer and closer, and it was also getting more illuminated. As I took the final curve of the corridor, I saw Lydia sitting on the corner, next to a waterfall. She got up when she saw me and hugged me. This was weird because no one who knew me for so little time ever hugged me.

"Don! Is everything fine?"

"Yeah. Actually, no. I'm still trying to digest everything that happened."

"You know, you may want to be all macho man next to my boyfriend but you can tell me what you're feeling to me. I… I've lost a lot of people in my life."

I realized I had a friend in Lydia. I never had a real friend in ten years of school.

"Hey, come on. Let's get out of here."

She turned at the waterfall and whistled. Immediately the water flux stopped and I could see a vast lake and a forest. She then took a look at the water below us and jumped. I leaned to see where she was and saw her on a boat, next to a dark haired dude. I jumped too.

The cold water touch was a surprise. I could swear I was going straight to the boat. But anyways, I tried to swim up, but I realized I couldn't. I never swam in my life, to be honest. My mom never let me.

I tried to shake my legs but I was only going down. Then suddenly something grabbed my ankle. I looked down to see what was grabbing me, but I couldn't see anything except darkness. The thing grabbing my ankle started pulling me down, and I was starting to drown.

Above me I heard the sound of someone entering the water and I saw the guy who was on the boat with Lydia swimming towards me at full speed. He grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the surface. When I emerged I gasped for air. The guy was already in the boat, dry as if he hadn't been in the water.

They helped me get inside the boat.

"THIS," I told them. "IS THE SECOND TIME SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENS WITH NO APPARENT REASON AND IT IS NOT OKAY IN SOO. MANY. LEVELS."

"Try not to make so much noise," the guy said. "The hellhounds might wake up. Oh, and I'm Mark, by the way. Nice to save you."

He raised his hand to me, which I shook.

"Thanks, dude. I'm Don."

He nodded. "Hey, Lyd, where do you wanna go now?"

"We're going to the Common House, to see Fabius."

Mark touched the back of the boat and it started to drift towards the right margin of the lake.

"How do you do that?" I asked, amazed.

He looked at Lydia, who shook her head. "Let's just say I have special blood running through my veins."

We remained in silence until the boat hit the shore. We were surrounded by the forest in every way except forward, where a trail led to a large circle of the strangest lot of cabins.

"Well, I have to go to my cabin. My brothers said for me to hurry up, so yeah. See you later." Mark told us, then he walked away to the circle of houses. Lydia and I kept moving. We entered the forest and Lydia led me to a large clearing where there was a hill about twenty five feet tall, with a bunch of white marble stairs leading to a white and black mansion, with twelve pillars, lots of windows and massive oak doors.

"Come on," Lydia said. "Let's go visit Mr. Fab."

(A/N: I really liked writing this chapter, especially the first part. I hope you liked reading it too haha. Next chapter the camp will be surprised with a horrible news that will kick off a dangerous quest, and Don will know the truth about his father-who do you think he is?)

NEXT CHAPTER: THE ANCIENT AND THE NEW