A little AN: The way these chapters work, some of them will be in 1st person instead of 3rd person depending on the situation. So for example, Zach writes down his thoughts in a journal, so when it's in his perspective the chapter will include "Zachariah's journal" but if it's in Riley's PoV then it will include "Riley's thoughts". So now, here is the chapter. Thanks to those who have read already and stuff, enjoy!
CHAPTER 3: I SIP FROM THE CHALICE OF INFINITE SPARKLES (Zachariah's journal)
If I thought I'd seen it all before, I was definitely wrong. Mom always said that no matter how old you get, you've never seen even half of what's out there, and that I wouldn't get it until I started to get older. Older up there, in my head, and not just in my legs. She also told me to eat my vegetables and grow taller. At least I was growing taller.
But still, a camp for pagan gods? No, the kids of pagan gods. I didn't even know pagan gods had kids! Well, I guess it makes sense. In most of their myths, it was pretty much normal for them to have like a dozen human children running around, but shouldn't we have noticed them by now if they've been around the whole time? Wouldn't other hunters have made them extinct maybe? I guess because they aren't really killing people or destroying anything. Hell, these guys are almost human! But I would never have guessed it before I woke up today. For the second time.
So, I was pretty much out cold, it was too much of a shock to digest it in one go, when I felt myself get shoved out of my sleep as quickly as I went in it. Whatever happened, I felt my head hit something flat, and really hard, and for some reason there was no pillow to cushion the landing. I tried to shake the sleep out of my eyes and get my bearings when a really loud voice snapped me out of it.
"Come on! Get up already! Get up, get up, get up!" I slapped my face back to attention as I realised I was lying on the floor, and looked up. Standing more or less over me was a tall, Asian girl with black hair that came to rest just below her ears, with a far too bright rainbow coloured highlight running through it. She had one of those almost elfish faces that would have instantly gotten her on every teacher's bad books at school, with a sly grin, upturned eyebrows and a glint in her eyes that screamed trouble. She was wearing one of those orange t-shirts I'd gotten used to by now that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD, and a simple pair of jeans. "You're the new guy, right? Riley told me all about you already, and since you haven't had your tour yet, I've decided to give it! Now come on!" I groaned as I tried to get up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. As soon as I opened them again, she was gone.
"Come on!" she whined, somehow already outside the cabin door. By the time I'd made it outside, she'd made her way to the other side of the encampment, tapping her foot impatiently (or something similar, it didn't look easy while standing on rollerblades. Did I forget to mention that? Well, she was moving around on rollerblades.) I blinked, and she was right in front of my face, snatching the breath right out of my throat. "Geez, could you move any slower? Why do I always stick myself with the lame guys? The way Riley described you, I thought you'd be shooting laser beams out of your eyes or something."
"…. What?" The way she said that made me get the feeling that Riley was telling everybody I was a ten foot, demon summoning nuclear powered robot or something like that. And this girl believed it.
"We've got a lot to cover, so shuffle those feet!" This time, I made sure to keep my eyes open, and just like before she vanished into thin-air, appearing thirty feet away. Yeah, she gave me a tour of the place, but all of it was, like, at light-speed. We started at the stables, but there actually weren't that many horses in it. Or at least, not without wings. It was going to take a while before I could look at the pegasi without my goggles on. She was a whirlwind, talking incessantly and moving from place to place in a gust of wind. One second she was at the stable door, next, she was showing me the shed where they kept all the food, then an instant later, the strawberry fields. The only time I actually saw her moving was when she slowly drifted towards one of the pegasi, a big black one with a sign saying 'Blackjack' by it. Then, she was another hundred metres away, leaving me to run to catch up to her.
She showed me a weird looking race track with stone bleachers, but it clearly hadn't been used in a long time, with weeds popping up out of the cobblestones and moss on the stone benches. Then she showed me the edge of the forest, and all in one breath, mentioned all the different varieties of monsters inside it, including a little story of when they hid a baby basilisk inside the showers of the Aphrodite cabin.
"You'd be surprised how dangerous a horde of teenagers armed with hairbrushes are when their hair products are in danger," she pointed out, shuddering at an unpleasant memory that was still too fresh in her mind. Then, she was gone again, a rainbow coloured dust devil at the other side of camp.
I saw the commons yard and mess hall just ahead, the big amphitheatre where they had camp singalongs and the campfire burned at night, the Big House where I'd arrived first, the great lake that held a bunch of smiling water spirits, swimming around like it was their own personal swimming pool (which it kind of was) and then we hit the armoury.
Do you know that feeling when its Christmas morning, and your eyes snap open with excitement as you remember, and you tear off the sheets, leap out like a hurricane, rush down the stairs at a hundred miles an hour, tear open the door to the living room and find a whole bunch of presents under the Christmas tree? Santa was here! And that means, presents! Remember that feeling? I don't, but I'm pretty sure that was what I felt like.
The armoury looked a lot more like a gardening shed than a weapon's storage, but instead of lawn mowers and clippers, there were longswords and daggers. Greek and Roman weapons were lined all around it, most of them made out of a glowing, almost mystical bronze.
"This is where we store all our weapons," the girl said. "Courtesy of the Athena Cabin. As they say, 'match the right weapon to the right person'. Trust me when I say that you're gonna need one. Let's see…." She pulled up a sword the size of a small child and handed it to me. I couldn't even lift it, let alone hit someone with it.
"Anything more sleek maybe?" I asked. She nodded, glanced at the sword, and chucked it right at me. For all my pride and arrogance as a hunter, I have to admit, I screamed like a little girl. I ducked, but just a second too late. Luckily, she wasn't actually aiming it at me, the sword flying just over my head and embedding itself above the door. "What the hell was that?!"
"What? It's not like it hit you or anything." She smiled as she looked through more weapons while I tried to get my heart beating normally again. She pulled out a grey pump action shotgun, and her expression of sinister elation matched mine. Well, mine before I was almost decapitated.
"M-500 pump action shotgun," she said. "Perfect for those messy up-close and personal fights. Nothing gets up after a shot from this puppy! This one fires celestial bronze shells."
"No thanks," I said. "I've already got my own. Personally I stick with rock salt for all my ghost hunting needs, but any ammo you've got would be good." She placed it back with a bit more care on a rack filled with a whole arsenal of weapons. Some weird glowing bronze grenades, a mac-10 machine pistol, an M249 light machinegun the colour of midnight… And that was just the firearms! Most of the weapons were swords, spears, daggers, shields, quivers of arrows, and even a huge battle axe. And here I thought I had weapons.
"Aha!" she exclaimed, pulling out a golden double edged longsword. "Imperial Gold, that's really rare even by camp standards. I wonder if Jason left this here? Anyway, this is pretty light for a longsword, and just about nothing can break it. It looks like it would suit you." I picked it up, and sure, it felt pretty good in my hands. Great. Now all that was left was learning how to use a sword in the first place.
"I think I'm good," I said. "I prefer to keep my enemies out of arms reach."
"Well there's loads of bows and arrows that you can help yourself to, but I don't want to force you to pick anything. We can come back later and decide then." I nodded my head, and then felt a gust of wind nearly bowl me over. She had gone. Another breeze blew its way into the armoury and she was standing right in front of me as if she had never left.
"Oh man I totally forgot! I haven't even introduced myself yet! Sorry, I got kind of excited there huh? Anyway, my name's Reika Tachibana! Pleased to meet you!"
"Right, I'm Zachariah Kerouac," I said. "Though you probably know that by now, huh?" She gave me a big toothy grin, and then was gone. I exhaled, and followed her out the door.
There were a lot more campers moving around camp now than there were when I first arrived. I guess they were done with their capture the flag game or whatever. Some of them were looking at me real funny, but I couldn't really blame them. They just saw this random kid with an oversized trench coat and goggles, like he was trying too hard to force a steampunk detective look.
By the time our tour was finished, it was getting close to dinnertime. We made our way to the mess hall pavilion, and of course, when there's food involved, everybody becomes excited. There was a pretty long line, and not just filled with humans either. A bunch of the weird water spirits I saw in the lake were coming out as well, dressed in weird green shirts that kind of flowed like water. I think they were called naiads or something weird like that, but I wasn't really sure. I'd never really had a reason to hunt one. There were more nymphs coming out of the woods… like, literally out of the woods, some of them kind of pulling themselves out of the trees themselves. It wasn't just them either, there were also these weird half man, half goat people running around too, with goat legs, hooves and horns. My Greek mythology wasn't good enough to remember what they were called, but I think they were fains or fauns or something.
As for the campers, there must have been over a hundred of them from all the different cabins. Of course, since I was the newbie, I was right at the very back of the line. Even the nine year olds were ahead of me. Fun. For a second it looked like Reika was going to wait in line with me, but then after about two seconds she got impatient and disappeared.
We marched up the hill towards the pavilion, and a feast was waiting for us. There were big ancient Greek styled columns, with torches burning around them. Right in the centre of the pavilion was a big basin sized brazier with a huge flame in the middle. There were loads of long wooden tables arranged around the fire, probably one or two per each cabin. I looked around, and spotted Riley at table five with a bunch of other big and scary looking demigods, all in leather jackets or camo. Seeing them all together like that, joking around, punching each other's shoulders, I could see the family resemblance. Most of them had blonde hair and really wild, intense eyes. They were pretty much all big and burly, and most of them had faces like bulls or bulldogs. It was like the world's greatest gathering of playground bullies. By comparison, Riley who seemed intense and athletic the first time they'd met, now looked like everybody's little sister, too awkward in her own body, not big or scary enough. She looked like me.
I was a little intimidated, but I walked towards her table to sit down, but without even turning to look at me, she held up her hand.
"Wrong table. You have to sit with your own cabin."
"So the Hermes cabin?"
"Yup. Now scram." Frankly, I was a little glad. They were all looking at me like I was their prey, Riley included. I looked around for cabin eleven and found Reika already seated at it with her siblings. I joined them, trying to slide obscurely next to them. Chiron was sort of standing by table twelve, Mr. D seated by his side with a rather bored expression on his face. A slightly more alert, slightly less plump young version of him was also at the table. I was guessing that was his kid or something. Chiron slammed his hoof on the marble floor, silencing all of the numerous chattering voices. Wait… his hoof? I had to really stop and think about that one. A hoof? Just a few hours ago, this guy was in a wheelchair. Now everything below his waist was a white stallion. A centaur.
"Yup. Gonna be a while before I don't need my goggles," I said to myself. Chiron raised a glass above his head.
"To the gods!"
"To the gods!" everybody roared back at him, raising their own glasses. And then the pavilion was a whirlwind of activity. Wood nymphs and fauns (no, satyrs, that was it!) came forward with large plates of food, more food than I think I'd seen in the last two months. Grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, some bread that looked too fancy to just be bread, and the part that I'd been waiting for: the great barbecued steak. My mouth watered just looking at it all. I was just wondering what drinks there would be when Reika tapped my cup.
"Ask for anything, as long as it's under eighteen," she said. I looked at the cup suspiciously.
"Hot cocoa." It filled itself to the brim with hot chocolate. I still glared at my magic cup with suspicion. I was tempted to ask for something ridiculous like if it could be filled with sparkles, but something told me liquid sparkles weren't good for my digestive system. I tentatively took a sip, feeling my face stretch into an unwilling smile as the warmth filled my insides. It tasted of home. "Hot cocoa with marhsmallows." Two marshmallows plopped themselves into my drink, slowly melting across the surface. I could barely believe my eyes. It still tasted fine too. "To hell with the digestive! Sparkling hot cocoa!" It didn't quite come out the way I thought. I guess the cup got offended that I thought it could make sparkling hot chocolate, but the marshmallows changed to melt in a star shape, and the outside of the cup was covered in glitter. I admit: I was impressed. A camper slid a platter across the table to my end and I shovelled the best selection into my own plate. I took a massive bite out of a chicken drumstick when Reika slapped me on the back of the head. Less than twenty four hours, and I nearly choked to death on my dinner.
"What was that for?" She tilted her head towards the big fire in the middle. Campers were getting up and taking their food to the fire, dropping portions of their food into it. All the best parts even.
"Um… okay, why?"
"Burnt offerings to the gods. You offer a portion of the best food."
"And what happens if I-"
"Don't even think about it. Remember King Minos?" She sounded deadly serious, so I took her warning to heart and got up. I wasn't really sure how an offering of burnt carrots would get up to Heaven or Olympus or whatever, but I went anyway. Reika chucked the biggest steak into the fire. "Hermes." She turned back, but that hadn't made anything clearer for me. If they were offering food to their godly parents, who was I meant to give it to? I just kind of slid them in quietly so I wouldn't stand out and turned on my heel. The smells that came back from it didn't make me feel nauseous. Instead there was the smell of hot chocolate and marshmallows, chocolate chip cookies, pizzas fresh out of the oven, crumpled up old parchments and worn leather, my mom's coffee in the morning… it didn't make any sense, but even when mixed together, it wasn't too bad. I guess that's why the gods liked it so much.
By the time I'd finished eating, I felt like I'd tripled my weight. I couldn't even move without my stomach making some kind of protest, when Chiron slammed his hoofs again to get our attention.
Mr. D and Chiron made regular camp announcements if you ignored the message of warning for the Hermes cabin to not sabotage the Apollo cabin's chariots whilst they were using them (although Reika commented to me that it didn't say they couldn't sabotage other cabins' stuff, or sabotage whilst they weren't in use.) Finally, they turned their attention to me.
"You might have noticed by now, but it looks like we've got a new camper," Mr. D said. "Say hi to Ezekiel Crackerjack over there." Chiron whispered something quickly to him. "Say hi to Zachariah Kerouac," he continued, as if he hadn't just gotten my name wrong. I hated being introduced as the new guy, and I hoped I wouldn't be expected to introduce myself, like hi, my name's Zachariah. My hobbies including poetry, studying cursed texts, and planning ways to use the forces of darkness! Luckily, he forgot about me even quicker than the other campers, and dismissed us to the amphitheatre, where the campfire was already lit, waiting for us.
The Apollo cabin took to leading all the camp songs, loads of them about Greek heroes and gods and your nickers getting eaten by a hydra. Even while we were munching down on s'mores and roasting marshmallows, I couldn't quite loosen up like the others.
Riley eventually found me, staring into the roaring golden inferno. She sat down next to me, staring at me with concern.
"If you keep frowning, your face will get stuck like that," she said "Loosen up a little!"
"I'm trying, but this is all way too much to take in at once," I said. "Everything's so weird, it's not like outside…."
"You know what will make you feel better? Some marshmallows! Have a… hey, is that the packet?"
"Maybe."
"It's empty. Zach, how many did you have?"
"… All of them…."
"By yourself?"
"You got any more marshmallows? I've got a weird craving for them…." Riley shook her head.
"Remind me never to tell you where those are stored!" She got up, about to head back to the others. "Hey, Camp Half-Blood can be pretty freaky at first, but you start to get used to it after a while. When you get claimed, it will be even better, you'll get sorted into the proper cabin and everything." I seriously doubted that I was some demigod or whatever, although it would explain why Mom never wanted to talk about dad. But I nodded my head anyway. Still, it kinda sucks that she doesn't know the real reason I felt uneasy. It's not that I'm not used to Camp Half-Blood (although that was gonna take a while.) It's something else. I'm not used to having fun.