Defenders of the Demigods - A Percy Jackson Fanfiction, Book Two

Chapter 4

Camp Half-Blood, Lia's POV

A banging resounded throughout the food hall as the last of the offerings were thrown into the fire (which is a waste in my opinion). Some of the cabins were getting up on the tables, whooping and hollering as Chiron walked towards the front of the food hall. He watched for awhile, waiting as the eager members slowly calmed down.

"I do believe that is enough now. As you all know, we are hosting another game of Capture the Flag tonight." Another chorus of yells rang out, not nearly as loud as before, but still much more rowdy than the pep rallies at my middle school. "The Hephaestus and Ares cabins have submitted their alliances, and they go as follow..." Chiron took out a sheet of crumpled paper, calling out god and goddess names. The only one I really paid attention to was that we were with the Hephaestus cabin.

"As you all know, no mutilations, or killing, and keep it as friendly as possible." He cast an obvious sideways glance to the loudest cabin, who were snickering. "First team to capture the other team's flag wins. Losing teams have to clean the bathrooms. You have ten minutes till the horn sounds for the beginning of the game. Go set up!"

~~~ Well, this is going to be interesting, don't you think? ~~~

"'Go to the river in that direction' They said, 'You should be able to find it on your own' they said." I pushed through another bunch of branches, thoroughly lost. I think I got off track a long time ago. Why did they tell the new person to do this alone? I think there was more than enough people in our group for one person to be spared to help me!

I pushed aside a branch angrily, suddenly falling face-first into the open area in front of me. I sighed, glancing up to see a black cat walking happily in front of me. Odd... Well, the black cat already walked in my path, so I'm already doomed, so why not follow. Maybe I'll find some way out of this mess.

I got up, silently following the cat while looking around some. Trees, trees, more trees... Different bunch of trees?

I blinked, looking in front of me to see the cat slip off under a bunch of brambles. Ones that I thought weren't there before. Something felt... Off. And my memory felt fuzzy from this walk. Especially since I felt oddly happily. Really weird.

I looked around, spotting a few people looking in another direction. And a flag. Which wasn't our flag. So I did the most logical thing. Grab it and run.

Weirder thing? No one noticed. Or followed. For a while.

My luck ran out fairly quickly as I ran into a two of particularly nasty looking campers. By ran into, I mean literally ran into them.

They turned around, looking from me, to the flag, and back to me.

"Who even are you?" A snotty looking girl asked, stepping forward. I step back, trying to slowly edge away.

"Hi, my name's Lia, and if you could just let me through, that'd be awesome, you know?"

What they thought of my intelligence level was very obvious on their faces. Until they suddenly fell over with an arrow in both of their backs. Loud snoring came quickly.

"You know, the river was way back there." A head of bleached hair peeked out from behind a tree, grinning at me and motioning for me to follow. "Come on, come on!"

I glanced around before following, clutching the flag tightly. "I didn't see a stream."

Allan looked back at me incredulously before looking around, bow at ready. "You have to go over it to get to this side though. Come on, we can talk about it later." He shot an arrow towards the trees, someone falling off one branch of a tree, landing on another and snoring loudly. We rushed ahead, him moving aside a few branches to help us get through. The area opened up, us ending up in the middle of a warzone over an area of stream. Cheering arose from a few of the fighters, while others turned to us.