The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 24

A/N-So um . . . I just realized I wrote The Silver Ring in the first person, and not the third. I'm going to do something forbidden and change the perspective from now on since, personally, it's a bit easier to write in the first.

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In my twelve years inside the mythological world, I had never been so close to crying.

To sleep, that is.

Usually, I was the one who would be the strong one and completely adjust to every situation no matter how much I had to sacrifice. Because that's kind of the what warriors have unofficially signed up for. But when it came to my sleep schedule, I acted more like a three-year-old boy begging for candy at a store's checkout. Even then, I could still push my exhaustion down for a couple of hours.

Except when I had to do anything related to heights.  In fact, in those times, I wanted to be tired so that I couldn't operate correctly.

Like right now. We were back at the village. As Rosaline had told us, nobody was up at this "ungodly" hour, allowing us to roam about in the darkness with ease and sneak up onto the village. Adriana and I were looking incredulously at Rosaline as she tried to persuade one of us to climb onto the roof of the southernmost house, to which we were standing next. 

From afar, the house looked crude and small. But when I was right next to it, the hut suddenly seemed as tall as a mansion. Its walls were smooth as though they were sanded down, while the thatch roof spread out a few dozen yards above me.

"Please," I begged Rosaline. "I need to sleep. I can't function." I was only slightly lying.

"No!" she told me. I had the feeling that if the sun was up, I would've seen an exasperated look on her face. "In a few hours. Besides, you're speaking in coherent sentences, which indicates you still have some energy left."

"But not enough to scale the wall. Besides, why do you even want someone on top of the house?"

My voice was getting a bit louder than a whisper in my frantic state, but so was Rosaline's, which was why I didn't do anything about my volume.

"It's one hour to sunrise," Rosaline said matter-of-factly. "If there is even a shred of order in this place, almost everybody will be up to practice drills or exercise. Soldiers aren't allowed to be lazy. We need someone as a scout to tell us when soldiers come this way."

I glanced up. A million stars twinkled at me through the ink-black sky, a million stars that wouldn't be there on Earth, with the existence of light pollution. Meanwhile, the moon was round, like a white, celestial ball. It was shining brightly, illuminating the surroundings from space just slightly. It was enough to see shadows, but nothing more.

"You're right," I admitted, "But how do you know it's one hour to sunrise? The sky three hours to sunrise looks about the same to me as the sky at one hour to sunrise."

"Lots of practice," Rosaline said cryptically. "Now, are you going to climb up on you're own, or am I going to have to force you?"

"Hold up. I merely said you were right. Not that I would climb the freaking hut. Why don't you make Adriana climb up?" I pointed at her.

Adriana's voice seemed to be as panicked as mine when she responded. "No way. I'm scared of heights. A few feet above the ground, and it's hard for me to focus."

"That's why it took so long for us to jump into the ocean after you," Rosaline explained to me. "She was practically hyperventilating with one look off the cliff, and I didn't want to leave her there, lest she couldn't jump on her own. Finally, I had to push her when I started to hear the individual voices of the Void soldiers."