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Prelude: Morior Invictus Act I . . . Something Angry
People die all the time.
Demigods die all the time.
Alone, too, in most cases. That's not shocking, given their nature. Monsters want to fill their stomachs and demigods are their natural foes. The gods, as usual, don't care.
Their problem wasn't alarming. There weren't signs implicating abnormal behavior on the part of any species in the cycle. Monsters, as far as they were concerned, continued hunting them. Demigods continued to go missing, never making it back from quests. Gods remained out of the picture.
On the surface, nothing was exactly out of order.
The problem they were facing was complex. It was new. If left unchecked, it would lead to a more obvious, louder problem.
Bowie's stomach had been rolling that day. At breakfast, she'd nibbled on a few brussel sprouts, and that was it. She'd looked around the mess hall, sharply observing her fellow Romans, when she realized it was less crowded than usual.
"It's a Saturday," Reyna had dismissed when Bowie voiced it. "They're probably sleeping in. We don't take that many days off anyway."
Judicious as ever, their praetor.
Bowie didn't argue with her then.
A few less Romans in the mess hall for one day? That wasn't a big deal at all.
The week passed, and eventually, so did the month.
They only just managed to notice the huge chunk of demigods vanishing into thin air before it was too late.
They only noticed when Freddy Yamada failed to show up for war games.
They are Romans: it is in their nature to foresee. So, at first they searched the grounds — perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he'd forgotten. Worst case scenario, perhaps someone had gotten to him and his dead body was lying in wait to be discovered by them.
But he was nowhere in their territory, and so, he became the first to go.
Every day, one or two demigods went missing. The fifth cohort took the brunt of it, their numbers decreasing rapidly. They thought about reaching out to the gods but pulled back after a senate meeting — from an outsider's point of view, this reflected badly on the Roman officials. Especially the Praetors. They represented Camp Jupiter, and it was not the citizens of New Rome that were missing.
Reyna began to grow tense. Jason began to grow quiet. Bowie learned to ignore the uneasiness.
One month later, inside the lush basement room of the Principia, they conducted interviews with the demigods — every single demigod that was not a part of the Senate.
