So, you didn't get your update. Will another chapter appease you? Probably not as long as the other ones, but I updated yesterday. I have also now got a beta. Everyone bow down to… SoaringPassion!
-confetti, streamers, etc-
On with the story.
DiamondDragonFang: Nope, you're wrong. :D
I settled in fairly quickly. It had been a week since I'd come to camp, and it already felt like home. Due to the influx of campers before my arrival, everything apparently worked on a much more complex rotational basis than before the war, starting earlier and ending later. This was why I found myself staring at the tip of a sword at six o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, eight days after I had arrived at this camp.
I was still half asleep, and didn't have the slightest idea which end I was meant to hold. The sky wasn't even properly lit yet! This was ridiculous.
"The pointy end goes in other people," Giac remarked grumpily. He and his cabin were also doing sword-play in the morning, along with the kids from Apollo cabin. I had been sitting on a patch of grass ten minutes earlier when he flopped down next to me, blond hair sticking up wildly, and then started to snore softly. I poked him back awake, and I had a feeling he didn't enjoy it too much.
"I knew that," I said, picking it up from the non-sharp end.
"Right," I heard a brisk voice say from the other end of the arena. "Let's see what talent we have this morning." I looked up, and there was the girl from the Morpheus cabin, dressed in black, loose-fitting clothes and hefting a large sword. She tapped the flat-end onto the palm of her right hand. "Who's first?"
"Jakob is," Giac said, pushing me forward, still grumpy from the whole 'poke him until he wakes up' thing. The girl smiled.
"Um, uh, what?" I said, disorientated.
"En garde," she said, leaping forward. I had barely enough time to raise my sword before she started cutting me into ribbons. "Keep your guard up!" she said, aiming for my legs. I jumped back. "Don't let me in!"
I parried another blow, stepping backwards again. This girl was brutal. Time and again, she would hit me, or trip me, or do something that would leave me with yet another bruise. Finally, she relented.
"Alright," she said, her tone slightly warmer. "You aren't bad. You can go back now."
I staggered back to where Giac was. The teenager was watching me with an amused smile on his face.
"You're pretty good," he said, looking at me. "Most people don't do too well with Grace."
"Grace?" I asked. "Oh, is that her name?" He nodded, and was about to say something else, when she called to us.
"Giac," she said. "It's your turn!" Giac groaned, and stood up, stretching, before picking up a sword from the brackets. He stood in front of her, and she did the same thing, but at least Giac was expecting it, unlike me. He was quite good, and gave her a couple of bruises of her own, but at last flopped onto the sand, chest heaving with exertion.
"And now you're dead," she said, putting her blade near his neck.
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, pushing it away, before staggering upright. The others from each respective cabin each had their turn. The Apollo kids were terrible, but then they were better with bows. Giac's cabin was average, as was the Hermes cabin, a couple of them managing to win. Finally, at nine o'clock, it was over. I was sweaty and hot, and was looking forward to a shower, when Giac pulled me back, tutting.
"Can't have a shower yet," he said. "We've got canoeing. You'll probably get wet in that, anyway."
We had the Hermes, Priapus and Apollo cabins with us for the entire day, which consisted of canoeing, (which I was pretty good at), archery (which I was terrible at), and climbing the lava wall, which left my shirt smoking and the hair on the back of my head singed. Night had fallen during the last activity, and everyone was drawn away from their activities by the sound of the conch horn. All of the campers drifted to the dining pavilion, which blazed with light. Once we were seated, Mr. D stood up, clinking his fork against a wineglass that was filled with Coke.
"Shut it," he commanded. "Now, before we eat, I'd like to point out that Capture the Flag will happen on Tuesday." A loud roaring followed this. Mr. D waited impatiently for this to abate, before continuing dryly, "The Apollo cabin currently holds the laurels." Another cheer went up. "Right," he said, sitting down. "Eat."
He snapped his fingers and just like they had every night since I've been here, the wood nymphs materialized from the shadows, bearing food on silver platters.
I stood up with the others, and dropped a bunch of grapes into the fire.
Poseidon, or whoever you are, father… I thought, before returning to my seat.
I had already seen a kid claimed. It had been the night before last, when we were sparring. The girl had dropped her sword, standing rigid, as a golden bow appeared above her head, rotating slowly.
She was twelve. I'm sixteen, and I wish I would be claimed. I mean, is it so hard to snap your fingers and make one of those things rotate around above my head? I sighed, and picked at the barbecue on my plate. Suddenly I wasn't hungry.
Finally, the meal was over. Dionysus banished the satyrs who had been feeding him peeled grapes, and then stood up. Chiron, in wheelchair form (I had seen the centaur-form. It was damn creepy), wheeled around expectantly to him. "Now, before you go along to your stupid sing along," Dionysus said, "There is something that Chiron has felt important to tell you brats—"
Whatever he was going to say next was cut off by a rocking boom, which shook the dining pavilion and collapsed tables and benches sending us crashing to the floor among plates, cutlery, splinters of wood and shreds of table cloth.
"What the hell was that?" I asked the camper on the floor next to me.
"I don't know, but—"
The ground shook again, and one of the marble pillars fell off its stand, crashing into the ground. And then, from the direction of the first crash, came the sound of human screaming.
Well, you'll just have to wait until Sunday to see what happened. Thank you everyone for the reviews, I love all of you (in a non-stalker-ish way). Thanks again to SoaringPassion for betaing this, and, oh, one more thing.
REVIEW.