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006.

ROYAL CRIES
━━ chapter six


━━ THE TOUR OF the cabins was a blur. Zoë refused to let Castor and Pollux near the cabin, she insisted that she would give Elisa the tour of Artemis's cabin for them. It was a silver building with silver curtains. The walls inside were decorated with silver outlines of animals sacred to the goddess of the Hunt; deer, bears, and guinea fowls. The bunks were occupied for once ( Elisa assumed, anyway ).

Elisa had tried to talk to Bianca but she didn't seem to want to talk to Elisa. It was basically a one-sided conversation. Elisa picked up on the obvious hints easily, frowning, and making her exit from Cabin Eight.

She was led to Cabin Six, the cabin for Athena. It was a grey building with plain white curtains and a design of an owl over the door. The interior had a workshop and a library. The library was filled with thousands of books and old scrolls, as well as tables and chairs for the inhabitants to study or read. The workshop was crammed with tables and workbenches, and the cupboards were filled with materials to build things. There were also several 3D models of buildings, blueprints, old war maps, and armor. All the bunks shoved together against one wall, as if sleeping was the last thing on their mind.

There were some people inside, and they all greeted Elisa with warm smiles, but none seemed up to a conversation. They all went back to what they were doing, and Elisa got the hint that they had better things to do.

"Cabin Four! Demeter's cabin!" said Pollux happily. "We train with them often, Demeter and Dad both have powers over plants, it makes sense."

Elisa hummed, looking at Cabin Four with interest. It was covered in flowers; window sills, the rooftop, planted around the edge of the cabin. Tomato plants grow on the walls and doorway. Wildflowers and roses were growing on the porch. It has a real grass roof. The cabin is colored a light shade of brown.

The inside has a grass floor and an oak tree in the center to hold up the ceiling. A girl with straw-brown hair and with cedar brown eyes was smiling at them.

"Hey, Castor, Pollux! Who's this?" she asked. She slid off her top bunk, holding out her hand to Elisa. "I'm Katie Gardner! Head counselor for Cabin Four."

Elisa slowly shook Katie's hand, nodding. "Elisa. Uh, Dionysus just claimed me."

Katie looked at Castor and Pollux. "Are you giving her a tour?"

Castor nodded. "Yeah, we'll see the rest of the cabins. Then probably try and see the amphitheater or training area; archery field, you know."

Katie shook Elisa's hand one last time, patting her on the shoulder. "Are you here for the break, or are you gonna stay here year-round?"

"Um ..." said Elisa, blinking, "year-round, I guess."

"Well," said Katie, "I'm excited to get to know you better!"

Elisa nodded awkwardly, following the twins out of Cabin Four.  The next cabin, Cabin Two, was for Hera. Castor said it would never be used, but it was there to appease the goddess. Cabin Two was a marble, formal-looking building, with slim columns covered with pomegranates and flowers growing up them. The walls also have images of peacocks carved on them, as well as the doors.

Cabin One, the cabin for Zeus, was designed similarly to Cabin Two. It was a marble building looking like a mausoleum, with heavy columns. The big bronze double doors are polished in such a way to provide a holographic ( Elisa didn't know if that was the right word ) effect of lightning bolts passing across.

"This one's suppose to be empty, too, right?" Elisa asked as the three stood outside it.

"Yeah," Castor said, "but ... y'know, it's not."

"Thalia stays here, right?" said Elisa.

Pollux nodded. "Wanna talk to her?"

Elisa shook her head quickly. "I doubt she really wants to see me."

She didn't want to talk to Thalia. The daughter of Zeus didn't seem to care too much about Elisa, maybe it was because Annabeth was missing. The two seemed close, or as Elisa assumed by Thalia's reaction.

"Well, Cabin Three's next," said Pollux, turning to a long, low building with windows facing the ocean. The cabin was made from rough sea stone, pieces of coral and seashell embedded into the outside walls, and a trident with a big bronze number 3 over the door. "The one Percy stays in. The cabin for Poseidon."

Elisa's eyes narrowed in on the cabin. "Let's move on."

Castor guffawed. "What? He's already getting on your nerves?"

"He does that with everyone, then?" Elisa crossed her arms.

"It's worse with other people; Clarisse, for example. She's always ready to rip his head off," explained Castor. "But ... he means well. Nice guy. Ready to help."

Elisa let out a loud humph. "Some help he made back at Westover," she grumbled.

She started walking off, heading for the cabin next door. The next cabin was badly painted red and has a large boar's head over the door with barbed wire on the roof. Rock music was blaring from the inside.

"Cabin Five," said Pollux as he and Castor hurried after Elisa. "Ares's cabin. We're not going inside. I don't want to have to walk around all those land mines again."

Elisa's eyes widened. She slowed her pace, gazing up at the building. "Land mines?" she squeaked.

Pollux nodded. "All over. You'll learn where they are eventually."

"Next cabin, then," she said, quickly walking past Cabin Five.

"The next cabin is the one for Apollo," said Castor. "Cabin Seven."

Cabin Seven was made of solid gold and was glowing brightly in the sunlightElisa was having a hard time telling if the gold is reflecting light or generating it.

"Has the second most campers, I think," said Castor. "After the Hermes Cabin."

Elisa thought back to when she met the God of the Sun. She guessed it made sense. Apollo seemed like the type to like attention, and having a lot of lovers would give that kind of attention.

"Next is Cabin Nine," said Castor leading Elisa by the shoulders. "The cabin for Hephaestus. These are the people you go to when you need a weapon made."

"Eryeah," said Elisa.

Cabin Nine looked like a small factory, with brick walls and smokestacks like the forges and lots of gears around the entrance. The inside had folded steel bunks against the walls that seemed to be pretty high-tech for a place without much technology. Each bed had a digital control panel, blinking LED lights, glowing gems, and interlocking gears. It has shiny metal walls and metal slated doors. It was pretty messy, and there was a fire pole that came down from the second floor, although from the outside, the extra floor is not visible. A circular staircase leads down into some kind of basement.

There was a girl lying on her bed, flipping through a blue notebook. She had tanned skin, bandages covering the ends of her fingers, and a red bandana pulling her black hair back. She looked up at them, smiling.

"Nyssa Barrera," Pollux said happily, "this is Elisa! Dad just claimed her!"

Nyssa waved, flipping the notebook closed. Elisa noticed there were pages that stuck out, intricate drawings of weapons on them. "Nice to meet you, Elisa. I'm sure they told you, but, come here if you ever need a weapon made. If none one's here, we're all down in the forges."

Elisa nodded. "Then ... I'll get back to you on that. I'll have to figure out what weapons work best with me," she half lied.

Cabin Eleven, the cabin Nico was staying in, had peeling brown paint and a caduceus over the door. The caduceus was the symbol of Hermes, Pollux explained to Elisa. It seemed to be the most cabin-esque cabin at Camp Half-Blood. It was overcrowded, she saw, and Pollux said that's barely half of the people who are there in the summer.

Elisa felt a twinge of sympathy for Nico, for him having to stay in such a crowded cabin, but she knew he would probably be fine if he kept an eye on his stuff. Nico seemed to be able to talk to anybody, finding something to talk about with them: if he couldn't find a shared topic, he'd talk to them about Mythomagic.

The current head counselors, Travis and Connor Stoll were out, but Pollux and Castor introduced Elisa to some of the inhabitants. There was Cecil Markowitz, Julia Feingold, and Alice Miyazawa; they all had the same elf-ish features; upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, and a gleam in their eyes. Elisa could easily tell the resemblance to Connor and Travis.

Julia said Travis and Connor were showing Nico around Camp, just like Castor and Pollux, and that they'd probably be back soon, but the three took their leave from the cabin.

"Pack down your pockets," advised Castor. "Make sure they took nothing."

"They never got near me," Elisa pointed out.

Castor shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Their dad's the God of Thieves."

Elisa did as advised and patted down her pockets. The dagger she had stored away in her right sleeve was still there, the thyrsus made of Celestial bronze, Acantha, was still there, but they had taken a couple of dimes. Elisa figured the twenty cents wasn't worth it, and just let them have it. They couldn't get much with twenty cents alone.

"That's the last cabin," said Pollux, patting down his back pockets. "So you've seen the camp store, and the climbing wall, the amphitheater, dining pavilion, the Big House."

"I landed in some kind of lake thing," Elisa offered.

Pollux nodded. "You landed in the Canoe Lake. You haven't seen much of the training grounds though ..."

"I saw that armory thing," said Elisa. "Next to Cabin Six. Grover told me about the sword fighting arena and the archery field."

"There's a volleyball court, it's pretty self-explanatory of what it is," said Pollux. "I mean, most places are with the names."

"Then, let's head to the armory so you can see what kind of weapons there are," said Pollux.

"I already have some," said Elisa. "I got a dagger, an acinaces dagger named Scion."

"Heir?" Castor translated, his eyebrows pinching together. "That's a weird name."

Elisa shrugged, pulling the dagger out of its hiding spot. She tossed it to Castor. He looked at it, the Celestial bronze glinting in the snowy sunshine of December.

"We should take it to Nyssa so she can fix it up," said Pollux, leaning over Castor's shoulder to look at the dagger.

"Probably should," Elisa agreed. "Dionysus also gave me a weapon."

The twins looked up at her in unison, completely abandoning their analysis of the dagger.

"What?" Pollux blurted.

"Dionysus gave me a weapon," repeated Elisa. "He never said what it was," she said, taking the golden thyrsus out and tossing it to Pollux. "Said to twist the top of the thyrsus, but"

Pollux did as told and a Celestial bronze dory spear grew in his hands. The blades, at both ends, were razor-sharp and had the golden glow of Celestial bronze. The wooden staff that held the ends together was carved in the design of grapevines, growing up the oak wood. It had to be six, maybe seven feet in length.

The spear flew out of Pollux's hands, landing twenty feet away in the grass. The three chased after it, Elisa getting there first, and picking it up.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Pollux asked, gazing at the weapon with awe.

"I don't know," Elisa admitted, looking at the weapon. "It just never came up."

"Well," said Castor, "let's head to the sword-fighting arena."

"To train?" Elisa asked.

Castor nodded, already starting to walk away. "Let's see what you can do."


ˋˏ [ 👑 ] ˎˊ


Castor and Pollux were stricter teachers than Elisa expected. She didn't really know what to expect for the first time "training" properly. She had learned some of Callum's very undeveloped skills with a dagger, learning how to wield a dagger incorrectly while on the run.

They were relentless. They never gave Elisa a break, but she also never asked for one. She had to learn, she had to learn how to protect herself properly. She chose to not train with a shield, never having used one before, but maybe she should have. Elisa could already feel bruises starting to form on her arms and legs from where they had hit her.

"Guard yourself!" Castor barked.

"I am!" Elisa hissed.

She lunged for him with the spear, and Castor finally seemed surprised by the attack she made. His shield lowered by barely an inch and Elisa took full advantage of it. She drove the spear over the top of the shield, nicking some of the skin underneath his arm.

She backed away, starting to apologize as Castor bled some.

Castor held the wound, shaking his head with a smile. "No, that was perfect! You weren't too bad, but you still have a lot of training to do."

Elisa turned the spear back into the shaft of Celestial bronze; she had to drag her hand over Acantha carved into the wood. ( She didn't want to admit how long it took the three to figure that out. ) Pollux was grinning at them, wiping sweat off his face with his camp T-shirt.

"I'll head down to the Infirmary," said Castor, putting away the sword and shield he had drug out. "You two go take some showers before dinner."

"How do you know when dinner is?" Elisa asked as she and Pollux walked down to Cabin Twelve.

"A conch horn will sound," said Pollux. "Pretty simple."

Sure enough, there was a conch horn thirty minutes later. Elisa had on a Camp Half-Blood T-shirt the twins had found for her, and her hair was dried. She was smoothing down the shirt, feeling awkward in it. The color was bright orange, making her blue hair look even worse than it normally did.

Elisa wasn't too happy with her hair anymore; sick of the color, the fading, and the constant re-dyeing. She also hated how it had damaged her hair, taking away the definition of her curls. She tied it back, following Pollux and Castor to the dining pavilion.

Each of the twelve tables, as there was a table for each cabin, was covered in a white tablecloth fringed with purple. At the center of the pavilion was a bonfire. Pollux explained to Elisa that for every meal, the campers give an offering to the gods there.

"They like the smell of burnt food, I guess," said Pollux, shrugging.

Elisa looked back at the bonfire, sitting down at the table for Dionysus. The torches and the braziers kept the area warm. Food was piled on the table; barbecue, pizza, chicken, basically anything you could think of. There was a never-ending drink of your choice ( just as long as it wasn't anything alcoholic, a rule that also applied to her father ). But most tables were having fun.

Pollux and Castor didn't seem bothered at the fact that Dionysus was sitting at their table. They acted like it was a daily occurrence, and maybe it was, Elisa didn't know. The two sat down on opposite sides of the table, talking excitedly with one another. Elisa sat down beside Pollux, trying her best to be not so obvious about her confusion.

Castor glanced at her. "Dad sits here for every meal."

"I have to sit somewhere, don't I?" said Dionysus.

Elisa nearly flinched. "I guess so," she said passively. "Is there not a staff table or something?"

Castor shook his head. "Satyrs can sit where ever they want, so no, not really. But they generally sit with us."

"Where does Chiron sit, then?" Elisa asked.

"Where ever he wants," said Pollux.

All of the other tables seemed to have pretty lousy moods. Elisa saw what looked to be the table for Zeus; only Thalia was sitting at that table, and the table for Poseidon; Percy was also sitting by himself. Elisa saw Katie Gardner with a few of her other siblings, they were all talking quietly among themselves. As was Silena Beauregard, too. The table for Aphrodite had a few more than the table for Demeter, and all the kids at the table had breathtaking beauty.

The Ares, Hephaestus, and Apollo tables were just the same; a few campers there, but none seemed in lively moods. Elisa spotted Nico at the Hermes table, stuck on the end of the bench. He was talking to the Stoll brothers, it seemed the brothers were trying to convince Nico that poker was a much better game than Mythomagic.

The only table that seemed to be having fun was the table for Artemis. The Hunters drank and ate and laughed like one big happy family. Zoë sat at the head of the table, she didn't laugh as much as the others, but she did smile from time to time. Her silver lieutenant's band glittered in the dark braids of her hair. Bianca seemed to be having a great time. She was trying to learn how to arm wrestle from a buffer girl. The bigger girl was beating her every time, but Bianca didn't seem to mind.

Bianca caught Elisa's eyes once and smiled warmly, waving to her. Elisa waved back, quickly grabbing her drink as a way to distract herself.

When everyone was finished with their meals, Chiron made a toast to the gods. He formally welcomed the Hunters of Artemis to Camp Half-Blood, but the clapping was pretty half-hearted. Then Chiron announced the "goodwill" Capture the Flag game for tomorrow night, which got a lot better reception.

Afterward, Elisa trailed after Pollux and Castor back to Cabin Twelve for an early, winter lights out. There was a figure hanging outside Cabin Eleven, a figure that hurried over.

It was Nico. He was smiling brightly at Elisa, clinging onto a deck of Mythomagic cards. Elisa waved Pollux and Castor inside Cabin Twelve, shutting the door after them.

"How's Camp been for you, Nico?" she asked.

Nico shrugged, his grin faltering slightly. "I wish we didn't have to sleep in separate cabins," he admitted.

"Well ..." said Elisa, "that's how Camp works, I guess. But we try and spend tomorrow together. There's that Capture the Flag game tomorrow, we'll probably be on the same team. And there are plenty of things we can do around here together, too; climbing wall, and that Arts & Crafts Center. Pollux told me about this pegasus stable, that'd be cool to go to."

She felt like she was talking too much. Elisa felt like she had to try and fill the shoes that Bianca had left. Shoes she would never be able to fill. Bianca and Nico had grown up together; and as close as Elisa and Nico seemed, they only knew each other for a couple of months. Elisa wasn't Bianca, she didn't have that familiar warmth that Bianca had. Elisa didn't have the kind smile and words of encouragement Bianca was great at, she was a hardened person, having to become so to survive.

Elisa felt awkward and misplaced, as if she was trying to be someone she wasn't. She felt like she was trying to be a shell of the person she had been long ago.

"That'd be nice ... I think we should go visit the pegasi first. And I ... I want to give this to you," said Nico. He started shuffling through the stack of cards. "It's the Dionysus card. I think it should be the first card you get so you can start building your collection. And that way, you can start actually playing Mythomagic with me without having to take some of my cards!"

He pulled the card out with a flourish, almost dropping the rest of the cards. He held out the card to Elisa with a smile. She took the card, flipping it over in her hand.

"You have to tell me where you get them, then," she said, stuffing it in the back pockets of her jeans.

Nico shrugged. "I get them at gas stations and stuff ... grocery stores, too, I guess."

Elisa smiled lightly. "The next time I'm at a store like that, I'll look. Maybe I'll get some hair dye too. You can pick the color."

Nico's eyes glinted. "I can pick?" he said.

Elisa's smile turned nervous. "No green or pink, I already veto those."

Nico's joy didn't falter. "I need time to think, Ellie! I'll come back to you with a color soon! And you have to dye it that color, no takes-backsies."

Elisa nodded, giving Nico a thumbs up as he started rushing back to Cabin Eleven. "No take-backsies," she agreed.













👑 APR. 3RD, 2022 / i want none of yall to talk to me when bianca die, or when nico runs away. i will actually be sobbing and feral for all

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