PIPER
The thought of the campfire at the camp terrified Piper. It reminded her of the huge purple blaze in her dreams and of her father tied to a pole.
What lay ahead was almost as bad: a singing party. The steps of the amphitheater were carved into the hillside, surrounding a stone-lined fire pit. About fifty or sixty young people had taken their places in the rows, grouped under different banners.
Piper spotted Jason in the front row, sitting with Annabeth. Leo was not far behind, in a group of strongly built pensioners, under a gray banner with a hammer. Earlana was more difficult to find. She was in a group of young people under a red banner stamped with a boar's head. Standing in front of the fire, half a dozen pensioners equipped with guitars and funny old-fashioned harps -- lyres, perhaps ? -- were skipping back and forth, leading a song about armor pieces and how their grandmother dressed for war. All the other demigods were singing along, laughing with them, miming by gesture the different parts of the armor. It was probably one of the strangest moments Piper has ever experienced in her life: one of those campfire songs that would have shamed them in the daytime, but in the dark, with everyone joining in, and you're just a hair's breadth away from being funny. As the energy of the group climbed, the flames increased in intensity and their color changed from red, to orange, to gold.
The song ended with a thunderous applause. Then a guy on a horse came trotting by. At least, in the flickering light Piper thought it was a guy on a horse... before she realized it was a centaur ! The lower half of his body was a white stallion, and the upper half a middle-aged man with curly hair and a trimmed beard. He was brandishing a javelin with marshmallows skewered on it.
"Well done !" he exclaimed. "And welcome to our newest members ! I'm Chiron, the colony's activities director, and I'm very happy that you all made it here alive, with almost all your arms and legs. In a moment, I promise, we'll be roasting marshmallows, but first..."
"What about Capture-the-Flag ?" shouted someone.
Grunts ran through the ranks of a group of armored teens, including Earlana.
"Yes," said the centaur. "I know the Ares can't wait to get back to the woods to play our usual games."
"And kill people !" one of them echoed.
"However," Chiron continued, "until the dragon is under control, that is impossible. Cabin Nine, any news on that front ?"
He turned to Leo's group. The latter winked at Piper as he fired an imaginary shot with his finger. The girl sitting next to him stood up, obviously uncomfortable. She was wearing an army jacket that looked very similar to Leo's and a red bandanna tied over her hair.
"We're working on it," she says.
A new wave of grunts.
"Really, Nyssa ?" asked an Ares.
"Yeah," said the girl, "really."
Nyssa sat back down in a chorus of complaints and shouts, which made the fire crackle chaotically. Chiron tapped his hoof against the stones of the pit -- bang, bang, bang, bang -- and the boarders fell silent.
"We must be patient," he said. "In the meantime, we have more pressing business to discuss."
"Percy ?" someone asked.
The fire dimmed again, but Piper didn't need to look at the flames to see the concern of the assembly.
Chiron gestured toward Annabeth, who took a deep breath and stood up.
"I haven't found Percy," she announced. Her voice choked slightly as she uttered his name. "He wasn't at the Grand Canyon like I thought. But we're not giving up. We have teams deployed everywhere. Grover, Tyson, Nico, the Huntresses of Artemis -- everyone is looking for him. We'll find him. Chiron wants to talk to us about something else. A new quest."
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Bloody Lover | Piper McLean
Fanfiction" Earlana Ramírez Arellano has a big problem. She doesn't remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently, she is best friends with Leo, a young Latino boy, and a sweet half-cherokee beauty, called Piper. The la...
