A/N: Drop a review if you like it or if you feel the need to point out something, I don't really know if it helps but it makes me smile. Hope you enjoy!
Rinier was jittery, the incident with Piper in the Big House made him feel like he wasn't the owner of his own body anymore. His skin was crawling, the hairs on his neck were standing and most of all some of the thoughts in his head weren't his own. Lou Ellen led him from the big house to Cabin #20, the place Rinier would now call home. It was about eight feet high, made of stone with writing engraved on it, of which he could only recognize some. Rinier reached his hand out and the stones were cool and smooth to the touch. He felt a tingle through his fingers as his hand glided over the letters, like electricity was flowing through his body. Lou Ellen stepped through the doorway.
"Be careful with that. If you break it somehow, the whole camp will come burning down." She was already through the door when she finished her sentence, and Rinier hurried through the door to follow her. The inside was a whole different mystery, there was a library, a dining room, a bathroom and one bedroom with only one bed in it. Rinier was quick on the uptake that there was no space for him in the cabin.
"Oh right, sorry." Lou Ellen laughed. "I was the only one here for the winter so I got a bit carried away." She clapped her hands. Rinier had seen lights that turn on and off when you clap them but this was something else entirely. The room became shrouded in mist, and when it receded the library and bathroom shrunk in size to make space for a new room.
"Your stuff, are in there, sheets for the bed and some clothes too. Get yourself settled; it's almost lights out." He walked into the room and sure enough the bag that his mother had given him was sitting on top of the bed. He sat on the bed and looked at the bag and a nostalgic feeling bubbled in his chest. But now that he was alone with nothing but his thoughts, he could hear the voice in his head again. It started out as soft as a whisper and the more he tried listening in the louder they became.
"Are you purposefully ignoring me?" the words echoed in his brain. Rinier froze, it wasn't the first time she'd spoken to him but he couldn't shake the visceral feeling of fear. Rinier took deep breaths, in an attempt to calm himself, but it did little for him. The deep breaths he was taking soon became short and shallow ones. He was hyperventilating. "Calm down, child. There is nothing for you to fear." The voice called to him again, and with it came a rush of calm. His shaking hands became still and his breathing and heart rate returned to the norm.
"What did you do to me?" Rinier managed. Fear was showing on his face, Rinier doubted that someone talking into his brain could see his face but the ample amount of fear in his voice clearly communicated the message.
"Gods as powerful as I can't influence surface matters directly without destroying the world as you know it. However, there are certain matters in which I am very invested. So, in choosing certain demigods to champion my cause I am able to have events play out in my favour." Nyx explained.
"But couldn't you have done this without diving into my head space? How am I even supposed to trust you?" Rinier countered.
"Well for one, I could do whatever I want and you'd be powerless to stop me. Secondly, you can't do what I want you to without my help, as such I am inside your head. As for trusting me, it is not my place to say currently, but it is a matter of mutual interest. I can do nothing but ask for your blind faith at this point in time. Do you have any more questions?" Nyx asked. Her words invited Rinier to inquire more of her but he could have sworn she sounded impatient but there were questions that he needed to ask.
"Why me? So many other demigods would be much better for this job than me. Did you have to destroy my life for this? Did Mom have to go through that for this?" Rinier's voice threatened to break, stopping his flurry of questions. The room fell silent falling more in line of what you'd expect if a sane person were in a room by themselves. The goddess broke the silence.
"Hecate was a chthonic goddess – or titaness if you so choose, prior to her joining with the Olympians. It is easier to connect with my proxy as necessary when the connection is close and it removes any risk from the arrangement. As for choosing you from among your siblings, I simply favoured you more than your siblings. Scarlett and I have seen you grow into the person you are today and so I know you are well suited. Also make no mistake, the life you had up until this point would have ended sooner or later, such is the life of a demigod. If it's any consolation to you my daughters - The Fates - did wait as long as they could have to put this into motion. Scarlett volunteered herself to raise you, after your father died, knowing full well whatever risk it might entail. Maybe, if you get the chance to speak to her after she reconstitutes, she would tell you herself. But I can say with utmost confidence that she loved you and she would make the same decisions a thousand times over." The mention of his mother diffused Rinier's rage leaving him feeling a weird mix of emotions after receiving closure in relation to his mother's whereabouts. A tear snuck its way down Rinier's cheek as he fell asleep.
Rinier woke up at 9 o'clock. His mother would never had allowed it. She always said that functional members of society wake up early, but yesterday's events evidently took their toll on him. The first thing he heard as he woke up was Nyx in his head, 'Brace Yourself, it will begin soon.' Rinier didn't know if this was the goddess' sense of humour or maybe her statement simply lacked urgency. But when the ground started shaking and he was flung off his bed to the floor he couldn't help but smile. After the shaking stopped Lou Ellen walked in to see her brother pressed in a corner of the room with a smile on his face. Only the fact that walls were stone instead of white padding separated the scene in front of her from being that of a mental patient rather than a demigod.
"You okay down there?" Lou Ellen asked, the laugh she was stifling snaked its way into her question. Rinier realized how he'd look from the outside and quickly jumped up clearing his throat, a simple plea to his sister to leave what she saw in the past.
"Yeah, could have not gotten thrown off my bed, but I'll live. What's going on? I heard natural disasters like this don't happen here." Rinier replied.
"Well, when you get there, you'll see. No time for you to get pretty either, you've got your first official event as a member of the Hecate Cabin."
As Rinier and his sister ran through the camp -both with equally dishevelled hair - he quite quickly saw what the hurry was for. It was the largest geyser Rinier had ever laid eyes on and worse than that it wasn't shooting water it was raining monsters. It seemed like most of the other campers had been rudely awakened by the shaking; some of the demigods that were gearing up to form the first line of defence were in their pyjamas still.
"Ever since this spring the Hecate Cabin's been in charge maintaining the barrier during large scale confrontations." Lou Ellen finally slowed to a stop right at the Thalia's Tree. "Needless to say, the tree does an excellent job. It's just that sometimes it's not enough and other times monsters or enemy demigods sneak in and that's where we come in. We're not just strengthening the barrier, for the time that we're here we'll be able to tell where people enter and leave- if they do. Anyway, copy what I'm writing here on your side." He stood behind her watching over her shoulder as she wrote the words Motus Subsisto.
"But that's Latin, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to use Greek?" Rinier inquired. She got up and dusted the chalk off her hands.
" They work the same and Latin sounds just a bit cooler, don't you think." She turned around. "Okay hurry up and write it." He wrote the words on his side in such a way that his and his sister's made a circle. As he stood back to admire his work, he felt a pang of fatigue as the letters glowed and morphed into a glowing white circle around the tree. When he looked to his sister, he saw she had in that short time put on a breastplate and was currently clipping on her gauntlets.
"If you see a red spot on the circle, it means that something unauthorized entered the camp from that direction. Stay here and watch the circle and I mean it, it's important. And after casting a spell for the first time you're in no state to help fight right now." Rinier didn't object, he'd been suspicious of the fact that Lou Ellen brought him to a battlefront without letting him take his weapons and now he knew why. Even more so, if he left and some of the monsters managed to flank the demigods somehow because he couldn't warn them, he wouldn't be able to live with the guilt.
"Cheers, little brother." She dropped a horn by his feet and fell in rank with the other demigods as they moved to fight the horde of monsters. Rinier watched the battle with his eyes trained on his sister, she wasn't the best sword fighter in the camp but she was resourceful. She reached in a pack she had slung at her side; and threw it at one of the monsters – a cyclops as he remembered from the monster classes. It exploded in its eye as a puff of red smoke, and in one swift motion she thrust her sword into its chest and it exploded. The rest of the fight was a spectacle. Bolts of lightning were arcing through the monsters, at one point he could have sworn he'd seen an eagle fly off with a harpy in tow. He forced himself to look away from it and focus on the circle. He noticed that Lou Ellen had given him the quick run-down of the circle's colour scheme. There was a-lot of orange at the front of the circle, Rinier quickly came to the conclusion that it represented the Greek Demigods that were fighting up ahead. Mixed in with the orange were small blotches of purple, for the Roman Demigods who were also helping defend the camp. Rinier heard the fighting begin to quiet down, the demigods only had a few of the bigger monsters left to kill. He noticed a small blip on the circle in the direction of the forest. The black spot stood out against the pre-dominantly white circle; he didn't know what black was supposed to mean, but it would most definitely be something he'd look into. Rinier's concentration was broken when an eagle – which apparently, he had not imagined – raced past him. It was carrying both Will Solace and the boy he lost to in the tournament on his back who looked like he was near dead. The eagle soon disappeared from his sight but Rinier knew where it was going, to the Apollo Cabin. Rinier's thought process was simple. Since the campers had just staved off a monster invasion, most people with injuries, their worried friends in tow, would go to the cabin to be treated. He would check for it there. Rinier then felt a small rumbling in the ground. He had hoped it was just the footsteps of the campers returning to base - which was happening. But in unnaturally good fortune, the source was the hole that was spewing the monsters closing. The campers let out a huge cheer. Rinier spotted his sister among the cheerers and ran up to her.
"Uh, Lou Ellen." Rinier started. "Sis, call me sis." She chided.
"Okay, sis", the word sounded foreign in Rinier's mouth, as he said it, he'd realized now that even though his old family burned away with the house, he now had a new one. There were more people to care about and more people who cared about him. "I didn't see any red on the circle and there were other colours that I figured out. But what does black mean?" Lou Ellen pondered for a bit.
"Are you sure you saw black? That doesn't make any sense. Black means that something dead crossed the border. And corpses can't just walk about the place, right. Don't worry about it too much." She patted him on the back and continued walking. Unfortunately, Rinier had already spent too much time worrying about it to stop now. He raced to the Apollo Cabin and trained his eyes on the forest. The person would come out soon and likely try and blend into the crowd. Whoever it was would at least be able to point Rinier in the right direction. Then the Apollo Cabin started to glow, and everyone who was touched by the light was getting healed by it. He could see cuts and bruises on the people who were around disappear by the second. The attention it drew caused even more people to show up, and Rinier's heart fell, no one had come out of the forest, maybe he was being paranoid. Then a voice behind him started reciting some poem. He wasn't paying much attention keeping his eyes peeled, but the first line stuck with him. In the land of the night lies the soul of the sun. From what he knew Nyx was the goddess of the Night, he had a sneaking suspicion that this involved him somehow. After a couple more lines that Rinier didn't care too much about, the poem ended and the cabin's glow subsided, it was then that he saw. Someone had just exited the forest, and it was Shelby.