Rox Anne & the Demigod Wars: The Gods' Legacy

1: Tale as old as time

You may be thinking: Wow another Demigod Story! Are we going to see stuff blow up? Children going into war? Or read about someone getting resurrected from the dead and arrive at a hotel? 

 No. Just no.

 My story is far different from the Kane Chronicles, Percy Jackson, and Magnus Chase. I am nothing like them, nor is my life story. In fact, I've lived a pretty normal life.

I reside in a large mansion far out into the country, my father is an author who became wealthy off of his many books and theories, I have an older brother who's always there for me, and my mother is a famous NASA researcher that you've probably heard of once or twice if you've ever paid attention in science.

See, there's no problem what-so-ever. Nothing is out of the ordinary with my family, and we're all living happily until the day we die...

Is something I would say if I were a regular child with no clue about the real world.

The truth is that I am a demigod. Surprising right? In fact I've known since I was a kid, and so did my brother. We didn't find out we were "different" because a monster tried to attack us, or because one of our parents died, (one of my parents did die, but i'll get to that later.) We found out because our father simply told us. Why did he tell two children that he loved so dearly that they were born into a danger-filled life? I honestly don't know. And to be fair, I didn't even care.

 All I wanted to do that night was read a book and go to sleep. Like every other kid in the world. I didn't want to hear about my past relatives and how they screwed around, creating things and then ending up destroying mortal's lives.

If you had told someone that your great-uncle ate his children and threw them up, or that your grandmother was the goddess of war, people would think it was all a big joke. And that's exactly how we reacted to our father when he told us exactly that.

Given, my brother was nine and I was seven at the time, and we both had the attention span of a hyperactive monkey (ADHD), so I don't really blame ourselves for thinking that way. But now, I kind of wish that we paid more attention to what he said. It would've been really helpful the first time we ran into trouble, which wasn't too long ago I might add. I don't remember the exact details of what happened, yet the conversation we had was clear as day.

The evening our father told us was on a Friday. Me and my brother had just eaten dinner and we were ready to go to bed. Our mother was outside on the roof staring longingly at the stars, (which I now know is called stargazing), and our father was with us in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. Keep in mind that there were barely any photos in our house, and we had a huge house. 

The only photos hung on the wall were ones of our family. Just mother, father, my brother and I. There were no cousins, grandparents, uncles, or aunts. Only us, and whenever we had friends over, (which was close to never), they would always ask us about the rest of our family. 

"Did they die?"

"Do you know them?"

"Are you orphans?"

"Are your parents secret agents who're hiding information?"

Those were the most commonly asked questions. (The one about secret agents wasn't brought up very often but I like to think that it was close enough.) All my brother and I could do was shrug and tell them that we had no idea. And that was the truth. Soon rumors started to spread and we were known as the "spy family" throughout my school.

That may sound cool to most kids, but my brother and I, we were definitely not most kids. We both hated that nickname, and couldn't understand why our parents weren't bothered by it.

So on that Friday evening my brother, being the curious demigod he was, asked our father the question:

"Why don't we know our family?"

I'm pretty sure that my father dropped a plate into the sink, again I can't remember. But his whole body tensed up at the question. Which should have told us that we may have hit a nerve.

He turned around to face us, forcing himself to put on a smile.

"Why do you want to know? Are you already tired of me and your mother?"

That was a real joke, meant to steer us away from the conversation. Too bad demigods are known to be persistent.

My brother told him about the lack of pictures, the "spy family" nickname, and how we just wanted to know about why we've never seen our other relatives. My father tried to turn the conversation around to other topics, but my brother just kept on asking the same questions over and over again. Like: Who they were? Where did they come from? And Will we ever get to meet them?

Finally our father caved in. He led us into the living room and made us sit down on the floor while he sat in a big, plush, red chair. The fire besides us seemed to dim when he started to talk. He told us everything, starting from my mother's side, with Kronos. We listened as he explained the Myth to us, how Kronos had eaten his sons and daughters, and how Zues had rescued them by tricking his father into eating rock, making Kronos throw up all his siblings. (I know, gross.)

For a second I saw my mother peek through the doorway. She didn't smile though, just stood there and left. I was about to go talk to her, but my interest was turned back to our father when he started talking about his mother.

He told us the story about the Egyptian goddess Neith. She was the goddess of weaving and the wife of the god Khnum. The guy who molded humans out of clay, (no not Prometheus), and gave us the breath of life. With this story our father spoke with more gusto than the last one. My brother watched in wonder at the hand motions my father made as he told us all about our "grandmother". He was smiling, we assumed that he was happy, yet I noticed that his eyes told a different story.

Our father's eyes were usually bright and full of excitement with the readiness to learn something new, but this time his eyes were so dark that they rivaled the nighttime sky outside. Again that should've set off some red flags in my mind., though even if they did I didn't do anything.

At the end of his story I didn't know what my father was expecting from us. Probably more questions instead of a round of applause. Since that's what you usually expect after you tell children about their parent heritage.

We didn't do any of that. Instead we laughed. Or, my brother started laughing and I followed his example. My father chuckled too but in a strained way, as if it hurt to laugh.

You're probably wondering why I didn't do anything.

Yeah Rox Anne, why didn't notice all the obviously suspicious things going on with your parents?

Well news flash, I did. But the reason why I didn't do anything is simple: I found it all a big joke. So did my brother, and me being the obedient little sister I copied him. We both found it hilarious, there was no way that our parents could be related to deities. Little did we know how wrong we were.