Defy (Demigods of the Death Gate; Book #2)

Chapter 1: Myths

・Tuntuk, The SeaKings・

It's been years.

Still silence from Arianus and Abbarach.

I'm getting responses from Chelestra, but they don't seem to understand our predicament.

The mensch* are getting restless, I've found we need to break up fights more and more now.

The citadel is proving to be too cramped to stay for this long.

I shall be the first to admit the truth: I'm terrified.

I think we made the wrong choice.

We sent a message to the Labyrinth nearly a cycle ago.

Silence there, too.

I don't think the Council of Seven have realized what is happening.

They mentioned off-hand in their last message about going under for a few years to 'let things settle'.

Whatever the hell that means.

One thing I know for sure: I'm not giving up on the mensch.

Even if we have to move them to the jungles below.

Annabeth finished translating the page and turned to the next one. The writing on this one almost seemed to blur together. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and checked the hour flower** that occupied the window nearby. She had been sitting here for nearly two hours. Sighing, she blew a strand of her hair out of her face and finally set her pen down, reading over her translation of the runes.

Why did the Sartan have to be vague as hell? Even when revealing their deepest fears in writing, they danced around the most important details.

Such as where the hell their stronghold was.

Annabeth sighed deeply and ran her fingers over her face. She reached for the nearby glass of water and took a long drink. It had taken her the better part of a year to get a vague grasp of the Sartan's rune language, and even then she wasn't entirely certain her translation was exact.

At least I have a translation to work off of, she thought to herself, remembering the baffled human scholars who spent years of their lives trying to figure out the language. The frustration had worn them down so much it hadn't taken much coaxing to take the books off their hands.

Annabeth remembered the exhausted looks on their faces, the glances passing between the small group when she left with the books. "Look at this child," they muttered amongst themselves, "how does she think she can succeed where men greater than her have failed?"

How she wished they could see her now, so she could revel in their disbelief.

But she was still no closer to finding the damn Sartan stronghold, where they had taken the humans, elves, and dwarves (referred to by the Sartan as mensch) after the cataclysmic event known as the Sundering. Sure, Annabeth had translated their handwritten journals documenting their sorrows in attempting to control the 'lesser races'. Sure, she had a grasp on how their rune magic worked and how it differed from their spoken language.

None of that was worth a damn if she couldn't figure out how to use it.

Annabeth stood and started pacing the small room that doubled as her bedroom and study. During the wakeful hours, the bed was occupied by the books she had to move to make room on her desk for note-taking. During the sleeping hours, the books went back to the desk. She would never put the books on the floor of all places.