New story!
Okay, so I finished reading The Lost Hero, and I am so psyched for the second book... I just need something to do for the next year. But anyway, I heart Leo. And my favourite part of the book? WHEN THEY GO TO QUEBEC AND GOTHE THE CHATEAU FRONTINAC. I love love love love love love love love love QUEBEC and talking in French and eating yummy poutine EVER. When I saw the cover of the book (if you look, the Chateau Frontenac is in the background).
I'm really supposed to be doing my psychology homework but meh. Hope you like this.
I
Percy
Winter 2010
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Repeat. My breath left a faint cloud of steam with every exhale, and I made a small game out of it by pretending I was a dragon.
That's about as much as my mind could process right now. I was running, or more like stumbling, through the thick foliage without a clue of my location. I tripped on a snow dusted branch, but was able to steady myself before I fell. Because if I actually did fall, there was a high chance that I would never get back up.
I cursed underneath my breath and trudged onward through the sludgy mud/snow combo, my head pounding. I probed my head with tentative fingers to check for a head wound I didn't remember getting. I really don't remember anything much. I forced myself to think through the headache and just kept going. I was exhausted, and confused, and I think it's safe to say I have never been hungrier in my entire life.
Well, I'm just guessing since I can't remember any of my life prior to yesterday. I just woke up in a subway car, as if I had dozed off and experienced a major amnesia attack. Which kind of leads to now. Well, not really. There was a taxi that told me to get in and dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, but I'm kind of trying to overlook that part.
"Today sucks," I grumbled, and as if to make things worse, sleet started to pour down. Great. I was so ready to curl up into the fetal position and sleep for a hundred years, but a voice in the back of my mind kept urging me to go.
I'm not sure whether or not I should be concerned about hearing voices in my head. And if I really am hearing voices in my head, then I'm probably going totally crazy. And where am I anyway?
The pounding in my head was starting to increase, so I was reduced to smaller thoughts. Inhale, exhale. Repeat. You are not going to die.
I pulled my thin black windbreaker tighter against my body. The icy precipitation was chilling me to the bone, not to mention the frigid winter wind. I ducked my head down and continued.
You just need to keep walking. Okay, I'll just keep doing that. At least I tried to but as another hour or so passed I was just dragging my feet along. I'd been going for almost 38 hours; at least, that's what I thought. I wasn't really sure how to tell time using the stars.
I had tried to keep a positive mindset, but that had slowly slipped down the drain. Hmmm, that tree looks comfy. I think it would make a nice place to die.
That's when I saw it. I had to take a double take and then I whacked myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. No, it was real.
It was a barn, painted what I assumed used to be red, but most of the paint had been peeled off leaving it an almost green colour. The rusty weathervane was bent to the left, but these details hardly registered in my mind. And before I knew it, I was shuffling as fast as I could over towards it. It came closer in sight, and I felt more and more need to reach, to get inside. I was about ten yards away when I noticed something that totally ruined my plan.
There was a massive chain and padlock on the front, locking the doors up. I desperately walked towards it and pulled on the chain with no avail.
I collapsed in the soft mud next to it. I guess this was an okay place to die. I mean, at least my body might've been found... eventually. My eyes fluttered shut and I hardly even felt the sleet anymore. It was almost comfortable. Then I heard the slight creaking, but I waved it off.
"Hello?"
I heard that for sure though. My eyes slid open and I managed a slight grumbling noise.
The next thing I saw were fuzzy Hello Kitty socks, except they were muddy and wet. My eyes followed up, taking in the gray sweatpants and hooded figure holding a...wireless Xbox controller.
"Okay, totally not the pizza guy," the hooded figure said and a group of four guys all rounded the corner of the barn and looked at me.
"Damn it. I'm so hungry," One of them scowled.
The figure in the socks brushed back their hood to reveal a girl. Approximately 5' 7''. Brown skin, dark hair and eyes. She reached down and poked my face before recoiling as if she had been shocked. Her eyes widened, horrified, as she stared at me. "Um guys, can you head home?"
"What?" One of them exploded before glaring at me. "Is this your boyfriend or something? Because if you are kicking us out in the middle of a storm just so you can have-"
"He's a family friend. Like a cousin. No southern jokes." She made a face at her buddies. "Guys, you actually need to go, I'm serious."
They glared until one gave in. "Fine, whatever. It's probably just because I was winning anyway." The guys rounded the corner and I heard what I thought to be the sound of an old car engine, but I wasn't sure. As soon as they sounded far away, she turned to me, her fake smile gone.
"Are you being followed?"
I stared at her. "I don't think so."
She sighed in relief. "Well get up. Follow me. Quickly."
And without waiting a second she started to walk away. I forced myself to stand up, although it felt stiff and painful. My eyes followed her as she rounded the corner. For some reason, it seemed dangerous to follow a stranger into a barn that's locked and doesn't appear to have windows I could smash through for a speedy escape. Then again, she was possibly my only chance for survival so I followed behind her through a secret entrance at the side of the barn. She flicked on a light switch and locked the door behind us.
I got a good look at the place, and it was honestly not what you'd expect. There were a couple futons to one side, a hammock hanging from two posts, bean bag chairs scattered across the room. There was a small TV on a platform on the hayloft which was paused in the middle of a shooting game. A mini fridge was in the corner and the ground was covered in hay.
My new friend sat me down on a bean bag chair, and went to grab a big black bag from the corner. When she got back she grabbed my wrist, feeling along it with two fingers. "Heart beat is slower than average, pupils are slightly dilated, and do you have a headache?"
I nodded.
"You're around sixteen, seventeen years old, right?" she asked. She reached into the black bag and pulled out a bottle of Advil and handed me two pills. I didn't swallow them right away; something about receiving pills from strangers scared me.
I shrugged. "I don't know."
She laughed, as if I was telling a joke. "No seriously."
"I really don't know." I sighed.
Her eyes narrowed at me as she reached into her deep sweatpants pockets. "Care to explain?"
I didn't know what to say, so I started at the beginning of everything I knew. "I woke up in a subway with absolutely no recollection of who I am. A taxi came and picked me up and I took it and it dumped me in the middle of nowhere. I trudged through the wood for about a day and a half before I ran into your barn and collapsed. I don't know my name, my age, who I am, or where I come from."
"You're a demigod though, I know that. Your heart rate is slower than the average human's and you just have that look, that aura."
Demigod. That word seemed to register somewhere in the back of my mind. "Demigod. Half-god, half human."
She nodded. "Yeah, that's right. You're a demigod. I'm Melody by the way."
She stuck out a hand which I tentatively shook. "Hi Melody. I'd tell you my name if I could."
Melody smiled, and I noticed she was kind of pretty. She pulled off her wet hoodie and tossed it aside. "So you have any recollection of who your godly parent is?"
I shook my head. I shoved my hands down into my pockets and retrieved a ball point pen. Hmm, okay.
"Oh my gods, that's a brilliant idea. Empty your pockets. If you have amnesia then the stuff you find might help you remember." Melody urged me.
"Um, okay." I dug around through my pockets and found a one dollar bill, but nothing else. No ID, no real hint to where I come from. Just one dollar and a ballpoint pen. "Well it was a good idea," I told her.
Melody growled before an expression of confusion crossed her face. "Wait, you're about sixteen. Have you ever been to camp? I mean, you couldn't have survived on your own—not for so long."
"I don't know."
She stomped her foot in frustration. "Okay, this doesn't make sense it's so—"
A sickening crack! Caught our attention. Melody immediately pulled a hair pin from her pocket and it elongated into a bow, a quiver of golden arrows at her back. She reached into her other pocket to bring out a set of darts.
I sent her a questioning glance. "They're tipped with imperial gold."
We heard another sound outside and I instinctively uncapped the pen, which was a sword in less than a second. The blade had a faint shine and felt perfectly balanced in my hand. Anaklusmos. I immediately translated that to Riptide.
Now it was Melody's turn to send me a questioning look. I shrugged. She sent me a glare; you better explain later before running off to pull a shotgun out from behind the mini fridge and sling it over her shoulder.
And that's when the door broke down.
"Shit."
There were about twenty of them, all armed with rocks, one per hand. And they each had six arms. They had an ogre-ish appearance. I nudged Melody. "I'll distract them on the ground; you pick them off from the hayloft."
She nodded. "Three, two, go!"
And she was gone. The ogres started their volley of throwing and I charged the closest one, slashing it clean through the chest. I rolled to avoid the throw of another and took out the legs of the closest one. When defeated, they seemed to melt into clay. I got up and feinted to the right before taking its head off with a swift movement that turned into a lunge through an ogres abdomen. I turned back around and assessed. Melody was riddling ogres with arrows and dropped to dodge the rock sailing towards her head. It went through her TV and seemed to smash her Xbox.
"My Xbox!" she cried. "And I just got Black Ops you jerk."
She reached into her pocket and through five darts at one, taking out two more ogres as I decapitated the one in front of me. And then there was only one left. I swung my sword and it pierced him between the eyes before he crumpled and melted.
I retrieved Riptide, and recapped it. "You're a pretty good shot."
Melody stared at me in disbelief. "You've been trained before. There's no way you haven't been trained."
"Okay," I replied. What else was I supposed to say?
Melody looked so lost in thought. "We have a problem... can I call you Mike? Okay, Mike, we have somewhere we need to go."
"Where?"
She growled. "Trust me, if I had another choice, I wouldn't be going there, but this seems like the only solution. Reyna's really worried. Worried enough to lower her pride."
"What's going on?" I asked, genuinely confused.
"I had a dream last night where I was supposed to be approached by a demigod with sea green eyes and black hair—that's you—and I was dumb enough to think that if I ignored it enough, it wouldn't happen. They know I tried to separate."
I shook my head at her, no understanding. "What's going on?"
"We need to go to the place I promised myself I wouldn't return to. Camp Legion."
"What's Camp Legion?" I asked innocently.
She tossed me a backpack. "Grab some water from the fridge. Camp Legion is a place where demigods are trained in order to survive monster attacks. The children there are all half mortal, half Roman god. Those things we fought, those qualify as monsters."
"And why do I sense you hate it there?"
She scowled at me. "Because I do hate it there."
I raised an eyebrow at her.
"It's a long story," she whispered before running off to the side of a room and pulling out a large cardboard box which had been hidden in a pile of hay. She pulled out a couple purple t-shirts and shoved them in her bag while pulling out a shield three feet in diameter. She threw it at me. "Catch."
I caught the shield in one hand and slung it over my back.
"So what's the story behind your sword?"
I pulled out the ballpoint pen and rolled it around in my palm. "I don't know. It was just instinct."
"We should get going," she shrugged her hoodie back on before whistling three sharp notes.
I heard a small clip-clop noise before a horse rushed through an old stable and whined. But the surprising part was that the horse had tan speckled wings to match the rest of its body as it clomped around unhappily.
"Shhh," Melody cooed, "I'm sorry Sunshine, but we need your help. We need your help. I know you haven't been out in a while, but I couldn't risk it."
Sunshine stepped back from Melody and whinnied. You only need me when you need help, a voice seemed to say in my mind. Then it dawned on me; it was the horse, the Pegasus.
"Sunshine!" Melody sounded exasperated.
Sunshine turned to me, and widened her eyes? Oh lord, it's a pleasure to meet you. She happily trotted over to me.
"Um, hi Sunshine." I pet her nose. "Could you help us out and give us a ride? Please?"
Sunshine bayed. Oh, anything for you lord. Please hop on! make yourself at home.
"Uh, thanks." I signalled for Melody to mount the horse, and she walked over with wide eyes.
"Who are you, the horse whisperer?" She exclaimed, climbing onto Sunshine.
"I guess so," I replied, climbing on behind her.
She stuck her tongue out at me like a child. "Okay Sunshine, Camp Legion."
Sunshine walked plainly out of the smashed barn doors, took a small run up, then took off into the clear night sky.
See that button down there? You should press it, then write something. I'm always up for criticism or any kind of comment whatsoever.
