misplaced || l. valdez

10 || everyone's confused and hera's gone, i guess

° ~ •. ♆ chapter ten ♆ .• ~ °
"everyone's confused and hera's gone, i guess"

The whole campfire idea freaked Mari out. She'd never liked big fires, and she was worried she'd accidentally burn herself.

What she got instead was almost as terrifying: a sing-along. The amphitheater steps were carved into the side of a hill, facing a stone-lined fire pit. Fifty or sixty kids filled the rows, clustered into groups under various banners.

Mari spotted Jason in the front next to Annabeth. Leo was nearby, sitting with a bunch of burly-looking campers under a steel gray banner emblazoned with a hammer. Standing in front of the fire, half a dozen campers with guitars and strange, old fashioned harps— lyres?— were jumping around, leading a song about pieces of armor, something about how their grandma got dressed for war.

It was quite possibly the weirdest thing Mari had ever seen— one of those campfire songs that would've been completely embarrassing in the day, but in the dark, with everybody participating, it was kind of corny and fun. As the energy level got higher, the flames did too, turning from red to orange to gold.

Finally the song ended with a lot of rowdy applause. Chiron walked up, but he wasn't in a wheelchair anymore. From the waist down, he had the body of a white stallion. Piper and Mari stared at him in shock.

"Is that an actual centaur?" Piper whispered.

"At this point, he could be a mermaid and I would believe it." Mari replied.

Chiron brandished a spear impaled with toasted marshmallows. "Very nice! And a special welcome to our new arrivals. As you may know, I am Chiron, camp activities director, and I'm happy you have all arrived here alive and with most of your limbs attached. In a moment, I promise we'll get to the s'mores, but first—"

"What about capture the flag?" Somebody yelled. Grumbling broke out among some kids in armor, sitting under a red banner with the emblem of a boar's head.

"Yes," the centaur said. "I know the Ares cabin is anxious to return to the woods for our regular games."

"And killing people!" one of them shouted.

"However, until the dragon is brought under control, that won't be possible. Cabin Nine, anything to report on that?"

Chiron turned to Leo's group. Mari hadn't seen Leo since they'd arrived, and it felt like it had been months since she last saw him. Leo winked at Mari and shot her with a finger gun. The girl next to him stood uncomfortably. She wore an army jacket like Leo's, with her hair covered in a red bandana. "We're working on it."

More grumbling.

"How, Nyssa?" an Ares kid demanded.

"Really hard." the girl said.

Nyssa sat down to a lot of complaining and yelling, which caused the fire to sputter chaotically. Chiron stamped his foot against the fire pit stone and the campers fell silent.

"We will have to be patient." Chiron said. "In the meantime, we have more pressing matters to discuss."

"Percy?" Someone asked. The fire dimmed even further, but Mari didn't need the mood flames to sense the crowd's anxiety.

Chiron gestured to Annabeth. She took a deep breath and stood.

"I didn't find Percy." she announced. Her voice caught a little when she said his name. "He wasn't at the Grand Canyon like I thought. But we're not giving up. We've got teams everywhere. Grover, Tyson, Nico, the Hunters of Artemis— everyone's out looking. We will find him. Chiron's talking about something different. A new quest."

"It's the Great Prophecy, isn't it?" a girl called out.

Everyone turned. The voice had come from a group in the back, sitting under a rose-colored banner with a dove emblem. They'd been chatting among themselves and not paying much attention until their leader stood up: Drew.

Everyone else looked surprised. Apparently Drew didn't address the crowd very often.

"Drew?" Annabeth said. "What do you mean?"

"Well, come on." Drew spread her hands out like the truth was obvious. "Olympus is closed. Percy's disappeared. Hera sends you a vision and you come back with three new demigods in one day. I mean, something weird is going on. The Great Prophecy has started right?"

Mari whispered to Rachel, "What's she talking about— the Great Prophecy?" Then she realized everyone was looking at Rachel too.

Rachel's eyes looked scary. Mari was afraid she might clench up and start channeling Juno again, but she stepped forward calmly and addressed the camp.

"Yes. The Great Prophecy has begun."At first, there was silence. Then, pandemonium broke out.

Mari caught Leo looking at her, and he mouthed, "Everything ok over there?" She shrugged, and responded, "As ok as anything could be right now."

"For those of you who have not heard it," Rachel said. "the Great Prophecy was my first prediction. It arrived in August. It goes like this:

"Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire the world must fall—"

Rachel stopped and started coughing, green mist coming out of her mouth and surrounding her feet. She looked back up, and her eyes glowed green.

"—With aid from a stranger of unknown seas, Three gambles made, for destruction or peace. An oath to keep with a final breath, and foes bear arms to the doors of death."

As soon as Rachel finished, her eyes returned back to their normal green. An uneasy silence settled on the group. Everyone looked surprised, but Mari didn't really understand why until Annabeth spoke up.

"Those— those were new verses." she stammered. Rachel looked shaken by the sudden additions, and she glanced at Chiron for help. He just stood, grim and silent, as if he were watching a play he couldn't interrupt— a tragedy that ended with a suspicious amount of people dead.

"Well," Rachel said, trying to regain her composure. "So, yeah that was the Great Prophecy, with some new lines, I guess. We hoped it might not happen for years, but I fear it's starting now. I can't give you proof, it's just a feeling. And like Drew said, some weird stuff is happening. The seven demigods, and this new... stranger... whoever they are, have not been gathered. I get the feeling that some are here tonight. Some are not."

The campers began to stir and mutter, looking at each other nervously, until a drowsy voice in the crowd called out, "I'm here! Oh... were you calling roll?"

"Go back to sleep, Clovis!" someone yelled, and a lot of people laughed.

"Anyway," Rachel continued, "we don't know what the Great Prophecy means. We don't know what challenge the demigods will face, but since the first Great Prophecy predicted the Titan War, we can guess the second Great Prophecy will predict something at least that bad."

"Or worse." Chiron muttered.

Maybe he didn't mean everyone to overhear, but they did. The campfire immediately turned dark purple, the same color as Piper's dream.

"What we do know," Rachel said. "Is that the first phase has begun. A major problem has arisen, and we need a quest to solve it. Hera, the queen of the gods, has been taken."