The Sacred Lot Cards Chapter 3:
After Dessa had unpacked, a horn sounded, presumably for lunch. Dessa wandered over to where she knew the dining pavilion was. It was open, and Dessa liked it that way, with the air and sunshine coming in to warm everything up.
A late-twenties guy walked up to her. He had bright green eyes and black hair. Dessa had never seen him before, and stared. "Hey." The guy's voice was definitely the voice in that orientation video. "You're new- Eos' cabin, right?"
Remembering that Raya said she had to talk to people for them to like her, Dessa croaked out, "Um, hi. I'm Dessa."
The guy smiled. "Nervous? It's okay. This camp is impenetrable . Anyway, I'm Percy Jackson, the sword fighting teacher. Here's your schedule," Percy handed Dessa a sheet of paper, " And you sit at the minor gods table. " He pointed to an overstuffed table near the back of the pavilion.
Dessa nodded slowly and walked over to the table. At each place was a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of warm tomato soup, and some fresh fruit- grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries.
Dessa sat down at the end of a table, and ate her lunch quietly. Everything was delicious, but Dessa missed eating lunch with Raya like an ache in her side. During the school week, Raya and Dessa had eaten lunch together every day since kindergarten. Everyone had a glass of water as well, and Dessa almost cried when she realized that her best friend wasn't there to open her water bottle like they had done every day since third grade.
Everyone else at the table already had a best friend. There was about twenty kids crammed around the table, and there were a couple small groups of kids that looked alike. Some girls with flowing blonde hair and wide, sleepy blue eyes, some boys that had dark hair and dark eyes, but no one like Dessa, with her distinctive high cheekbones and button nose.
After eating a lonely lunch, Dessa went down to the fighting plain where the targets and sword fighting arena was, as her schedule told her to do. She dabbled in sword- work , but then a perfect blue-eyed boy started beating the instructor, and Dessa didn't want to humiliate herself, so she explored the rest of the weaponry there. A girl who looked exactly like the blue-eyed boy was twirling a spear like it was a baton, taking out a dummy with long, deep lashes. Wincing, Dessa kept walking, past a boy fistfighting, past his sister and a boy fighting with daggers, and stopping at the archery field, where the dagger boy's sister was practicing archery.
Archery had always interested Dessa, so she strolled over to investigate and watch. The girl shoved a sharpened, narrow stick into the center of the target, as well as a couple not centered. They were maybe an eighth of an inch thick, and the girl strolled a couple dozen yards away, nocked an arrow, and fired. Dessa looked at the target, and the stick in the center was cut clean down the middle. A minute later, each stick was cleaved cleanly in two.
Intimidated, Dessa went to another target, where knives were laid out on a table a couple yards away. Dessa picked one up, and it was weighted slightly by the handle. Dessa tried throwing it at the target.
It didn't hit center, but it was a good solid stick, embedded a couple inches into the target. Smiling, Dessa tried again, and the knife stuck deeper, but a little farther from the target.
"Hey," the girl Dessa had seen fighting with a long, wicked knife earlier was standing nearby. "I prefer stabbing, but I've dabbled in the throwing arts. I'm Ayra, daughter of Ares. Lemme show you."
Ayra picked up a knife and stood, holding the knife a little differently than Dessa did, and just as she was going to throw, the girl doing archery turned and said, "Hey, Ayra, thought you were more… stabby."
"Don't worry, Akilah! I'm not going to condescend to possibly pretend to have your godly skills!" Ayra retorted, heavy on sarcasm and spitting out the girl's name with all the contempt she could muster
The girl's liquid brown eyes burned. "Oh, I'm not worried, Ayra. You can't ever possibly get this good."
Ayra shook her head angrily, making her long auburn waves glint in the sunshine. As she prepared to throw again, Dessa was struck by how paradoxical Ayra was. She looked like a fairy, with ultra-pale skin, extra-wide eye, and slender, petite limbs. However, she was draped in black, oversize clothes and an angry fire burned in her eyes. She threw the knife, and it glinted while it spun in the air. It hurtled straight toward the target… prissy Akilah's target. It cleaved her arrow in two horizontally.
The two girls turned toward each other, Akilah with a pair of nocked arrows, and Ayra with a knife twelve inches long sliding out of her shirtsleeve. Dessa moved a target away and started practicing throwing knives.
By changing her stance and power agonizingly throughout the 2-hour block, she slowly inched closer to the center of the target. Her last throw of the day soared true, hitting the target dead center with a two-inch stick.
She was hot and sticky from standing in the sun, so she hit the showers before the conch shell sounded for dinner. Dessa tied her hair up in a bun, slapped on some clean clothes, and headed up to dinner.
It was delicious, grilled chicken, but all anyone could talk about was the Capture the Flag game. At the end of dinner, Percy came over and gave her a set of a dozen throwing knives, having been notified of her progress with them to arm her for Capture the Flag.
Dessa was pretty confused. Why would she need to be armed for Capture the Flag? She'd played before- there was really no violence. From eavesdropping shamelessly, Dessa figured out that it wasn't your typical random Capture the Flag game. It was a war, Ares versus Athena, with everyone getting picked for sides.
After dinner, everyone raced over to the woods to put on different plumes by team. No one had claimed Dessa, so she just decided to put on armor with a plumeless helmet and explore the woods. She was armed. She couldn't get hurt.
Half an hour of walking upstream, she heard a cry coming from the woods. It sounded like a dying bird of prey- a hawk or an eagle, maybe. Concerned, Dessa automatically turned toward the sound and started walking.
Every few minutes, it would cry again, and Dessa would run for a bit. After what felt like hours, Dessa stumbled upon a little cave. The cry sounded shrilly from inside the cave. It almost sounded like a baby bird. She walked inside.
She felt a small resistance on her left foot, and when she looked down, she saw she had broken a trip wire. She turned back to run, but there was a wall of fire blocking the way. Dessa curled up inside the little cave (it was almost just a sideways hole), and waited for someone to notice she was missing.
Someone realized surprisingly fast. Chiron came cantering out from the direction from which Dessa came. Once he came within a few dozen feet, the wall of fire vanished without a trace, not even a ring of ashes.
Dessa walked over to him and asked, "How did you find me so fast, Mr. Chiron?"
"I set the trap and asked Hephaestus to alert me when it was tripped," Chiron explained. He pulled her onto his back, murmuring, "No time to waste walking."
Within ten minutes, they were at the Big House. Dessa kept dwelling on a whisper that she could barely hear- "Is she one of the seven? Her? She's gonna stop Hades from usurping the throne?" She didn't know what would happen if the Lord of Death took over the world, but it couldn't be good.
Chiron led her into the Big House, where three boys and three girls were sitting around a Ping-Pong table. "Dessa," he said, "Meet Conrad, Bernadette, Kenji, Akilah, Ekon, and Ayra."
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bekeyboo ;)