"After all those years on the streets, I finally feel like I'm home"
"You're lying" Leo didn't even have to look up, he knew her better than anyone.
"You're right, I was always at home with you"
In which there's an unlikely friendship (... and ma...
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After walking a good distance, Alex realised they wouldn't find Festus at that pace so she suggested they split up, as expected, Leo was immediately against the idea.
"I'll be fine, if anyone tried to kill me I'll stab them" Alex joked and Leo relented.
"Ok fine, but meet me back here in five minutes."
Leo went toward the left while Alex went to the right. She didn't find Festus so she traced back her steps to the place Leo had told her to meet up. She waited a few seconds before hearing an odd voice. It was clearly Piper's, but strained to sound more high pitched.
"Alex, help!" Alex made her way inside again but before she could think why Jason left Piper defenceless, a huge shape in the shadows moved and hit her hard on her head. And the world dissolved into shadows.
---
When Alex woke up, she was tied upside down by her ankle and cocooned with chains up to her neck. To her right Piper was flailing around, trying to free herself. Her mouth was gagged, but at least she was alive. Jason didn't look so good. He hung limply, his eyes rolled up in his head. A red welt the size of an apple had swollen over his left eyebrow.
"Leo, help!" A voice startled Alex because it was a perfect imitation of her own. She had to check twice and confirm that she hadn't spoke out loud.
Then the voice spoke again, this time less sure. "Leo?"
"Told you it was nothing," The shape in the shadows rumbled. Its voice was too deep and feral to be human.
Another lump, Alex couldn't describe what it was spoke this time in Piper's voice- "Leo, help me! Help-" Then the voice changed, becoming a masculine snarl. "Bah, there's nobody out there. No demigod could be that quiet, eh?"
The first monster chuckled. "Probably ran away, if he knows what's good for him. Or the girl was lying about a fourth demigod. Let's get cooking."
Snap. A bright orange light sizzled to life-an emergency flare-and Alex was temporarily blinded. She wondered how she always wound up in such situations.
On the conveyor belt, beneath Alex, a bed of the unfinished pickup truck was being used as a fire pit. The emergency flare had ignited a mixture of tires and wood, which, from the smell of it, had been doused in kerosene. A big metal pole was suspended over the flames-a spit. Alex realised, which meant this was a cooking fire.
Great, this is how I'm gonna die
Alex thought.
In the newly lit firelight though, Alex could see the lumps in the shadows which weren't lumps at all. Three massive humanoids gathered around the fire. Two were standing, stoking the flames. The largest one crouched. The two facing younger ones were ten feet tall, with hairy muscular bodies and skin that glowed red in the firelight. One of the monsters wore a chain mail loincloth that looked really uncomfortable. The other wore a ragged fuzzy toga made of fiberglass insulation. Other than that, the two monsters could've been twins. Each had a brutish face with a single eye in the center of his forehead. The cooks were Cyclopes.
