¹Royal Cries, p. jackson

009.

ROYAL CRIES
━━ chapter nine

━━ WHAT'S WORSE THAN a mummy who comes to hand-deliver a prophecy about death? A mummy who comes to hand-deliver a prophecy about death but can't walk herself back to where she came from.

Luckily for Elisa, she wasn't Percy or Grover, the two who were elected to carry the Oracle back to where she came from. Elisa still couldn't believe the Oracle was a shriveled-up corpse, but it seemed to be that way.

Elisa ignored the murmuring of other campers that had been happening ever since the Capture the Flag game ended. She followed Castor and Pollux back to Cabin Twelve from lunch. The two looked nervous, both pale in the face, with ruddy cheeks from the cold winter air.

"So, that's not normal," she guessed behind the closed door of their cabin. "It's not normal for an Oracle-Corpse to come and deliver a prophecy with swirling green mist coming out of her mouth."

Castor and Pollux looked at Elisa. She couldn't tell what the look meant. The three looked over when there was a knock on the door. Silena Beauregard poked her head inside.

"Your dad is calling a council of cabin leaders to discuss the prophecy," she said to the twins.

Pollux and Castor started walking after Silena. Castor looked over his shoulder at Elisa. "Wait here," he said. "It'll probably only take an hour or two."

An hour or not, Elisa wanted to know what was going on in that meeting.

She left Cabin Twelve after a few minutes, a way to make sure no one would be around to see her sneaking back over to the Big House. Or no one would see her that would care or want to know what she was doing.

Thing was, Nico was hurrying over to her from Cabin Eleven.

"What was that back there, Elisa?" he asked loudly.

"Be quiet!" Elisa hissed, grabbing Nico by the arm to pull him behind her.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"I wanna hear what's said in the meeting," said Elisa, storming through the snowy ground for the Big House.

"But why?" asked Nico. "Is it about what happened back there?"

Elisa looked back at Nico. "Obviously. Just stay quiet."

She found the room that had the most noise. It was a room with a ping-pong table in the middle. There were maybe fourteen or fifteen kids in there, they had to be the head counselors. Elisa recognized a few of them; Castor and Pollux, Silena, Beckendorf, the Stoll brothers, and Percy, but there were more that she had no idea who they were. Zoë and Bianca seemed to be representing the Hunters.

Elisa glanced back at Nico, who seemed to be keeping the best passive face he could. She couldn't fail to notice the slight fall to his lips at the sight of his sister.

Elisa heard the drawling voice of Dionysus and Chiron's polite and strained voice in response. Elisa crept along the wall, keeping her hand out behind her to tell Nico to do the same.

That's when the silence crept in. It seemed no one knew how to start the meeting.

"This is pointless," Elisa heard Zoë finally start the meeting. ( Not on a very positive note, but started nonetheless. )