Thank goodness, I know someone else's name, finally! So, this is Krishna? Makes sense he's an orator and seminar guy, I guess. The Puranas never told me he was so bad at marker drawing though. The best he could do was a bunch of squiggly lines that looked like shapes if you squinted hard at them… Or they could have been how a dunk man would picture an elephant. Either one would have made sense. Krishna didn't seem to mind the fact his handwriting was pretty much ineligible and just kept going.

"If you were asking how mortals don't see the effect we have, that's due to the power of maya. That's Sanskrit for illusion. Say you and a regular person were both watching acts of the Gods. Where you would see what was really happening, the guy next to you would see something more plausible, say a force of nature. Other camps have this exact same process, but with different names for each."

Krishna looked at her with glinting eyes, like she was some sort of jewel he wanted to keep for himself. He smiled, "Does that answer your question? If yes, I'm going to continue." Question Girl gave him an awkward thumbs up and sat back down.

Krishna sketched out a square at the bottom of the board with the letter A inside. He drew a line connecting it to an octagon with a frowny face inside it, that subsequently connected to the shape with VH on it. He turned to us again and explained, "So, for those who have been here for a while, you may notice some… younger humans in the crowd. Well, under guidance from my boy Shiva, a war is coming and these other pantheons? They need our help. Usually, we would claim our children when they turn 16. But there have been complications and we were forced to take younger ones in order to facilitate our army." Krishna scanned the crowd to make sure he was clear before he got into the juicy part of his seminar.

"Have any of you heard of Ragnarok?" Around me, around 40 to 55 people raised their hands along with me. Krishna took a breath and continued, "For those who don't know, Ragnarok is supposed to be the mahayudh. The great war to end all wars. We need as many of you as we can because for the first time ever, we've been called into conflict."

He looked down for a second to catch his breath and looked back at his board. "Now, we have secret meetings between representatives of the other pantheons, and we came to a decision- Ragnarok involves the evil forces of the world coming together to face the army of Odin himself. That's the VH people. This will inevitably vanquish the entirety of VH. Those evil dudes on the other hand… Well, we aren't sure. To be certain the sacrifice of the Einherjar isn't in vain, the other camps have sworn to send in their forces. But since we have by far the most forces, we will most likely be the majority of the supplementary army."

I looked around to see how the rest of the crowd was taking this. I was certainly confused. So that's the big war Indra was talking us through until he DNFed his speech. So, there are other Gods and pantheons along with us. That was interesting. And it seems we're going to a war to fight evil in an effort to save the world. Admittedly, suspiciously sounds like approving of child soldiers, but we'll let it slide for now.

Krishna pursed his lips and mused, "I'll be very honest, the odds are stacked against you. I mean, we have a little less than 2 months to prepare every camp as well as ourselves. Meanwhile, the enemy has had literally thousands of years to train for this very purpose. To be frank, many of you right here will not survive the war. All that's left to do is fight to the last man and hope for the best. Of course, we'll try to do our best to bring you up to speed as soon as possible." He walked back to the microphone and smiled, "Now, that's the end of our lecture. Any questions?"

At least 15 people raised their hands. Can't blame them to be honest.

Krishna sighed, "Everybody who's question is about dying in battle, lower your hands. I explained well enough. It's a war, for our sake. People die, it happens." As a result, 14 people lowered their hands. Again, not surprising. The one person who still had his hand up was a reed thin, wheat skinned boy. He spoke up, "Hey, Krishna. Aren't the Gods all powerful? Can't you just… I don't know, smite whoever you need to?"

"I wish, man. Unfortunately, around…. What, a couple centuries ago? The Gods came together and swore to never smite anyone again. I know! It sounds so weird to hear, I get it- But believe me, we? The Hindu pantheon? We care for our children. It's mandatory to claim your child on their 16th birthday. And trust me, if this ship," he gestured to the enraptured audience, now all ears for him. "If this ship, as we fight to protect it with you goes down. We go down with you. That is our promise."

Krishna cleared his throat and pulled out a parchment, as if he hadn't just made a rousing speech out of nowhere. He peered at it and announced to the sea of very, very confused soldiers. "So… In order to account for any losses in combat and to speed up your training progress, we will be overhauling the cabinet procedure and instead be allocating you into groups of five. If by any chance there is a group left over, we'll just group all of 'em together. Beginning in alphabetical order…

Well, my name came soon enough. I was announced as "Ajay Singh, son of Vishnu, branched!" I walked up to the main platform, where I could finally get a good look at the council around me. Their appearance kept changing, like their own DNA was glitching out while they sat still. There were 13 of them, but 1 empty seat in the middle that seemingly belonged to nobody. As I walked past them, I noticed some had auras around them. One had the aura of waves and fish swimming around his head. Another, who has seated far away from everyone else had an aura of sunlight around him. I wondered why he was kept so far away. What did he do wrong?

Anyway, I dragged myself to the podium where we began to be grouped. There was a boy and a girl already in my squad. The girl was dark, with a leaf and shell bracelet. Meanwhile, the boy was of a lighter complexion. He had a holy cross necklace and a serious expression on his face. This guy meant business. He wore a badge depicting a trident with three eyes above it and a serpent entwined around it. His bird messenger was almost as bulky as him, with brownish black plumage and sharp wings. Its aggressive yellow eyes bored into Arasu, like we had just done something horribly wrong at school and he was the principal.

What apparently passed for only 5 minutes seemed to pass for about 50 minutes. In the end, we had to shuffle for position seeing as the stage was a tad small for, oh I don't know… about 70 thousand people having to be split into groups of 5 on a stage seemingly made just for seminars. I took a gander at my squad: We had one girl surrounded by 4 guys including me. I looked around and noted that a lot of the groups had pretty random sections. Some were equally divided in terms of gender and race, others… not so much. One had a whole team of girls, another had a boy from Africa, an Asian, a bearded European in a wheelchair and a partridge in a pear tree.

We had been organized into our new groups. I was still confused about the processes in this camp. I snatched a look at Abdullah, who was shaking hands with another camper in his unit. He turned his head and gave me a thumbs up before continuing to direct his teammates. The message was clear: I can't help you anymore. Use the guidance of the ones around you.

Krishna returned to the speaker's podium, "Well, these are the men and women you will be training and running skirmishes with. In 2 months, you will be sent to battle against the forces of evil and – fingers crossed! – we will leave that battlefield with minimal damages. Those who have not yet received their imprint weapons are to follow their bird guides to the nearest Shaman's tent. Thank you and good luck!"

Hey, take note here. I know it doesn't look like it, but I was still confused as hell, alright? So, you can't blame me for what happened next, 'kay?