Heart Pierced - Kayla Knowles (1)

Kayla's POV - You're My Hero

(A/N: An Interlude Of Sorts As We See Kayla's Perspective Of The Events Of Last Chapter.. And How Tantalus Reacts To Colton's Bird Massacre. Just to be clear, this won't be the last time we get Kayla's perspective on things.)

To describe Kayla in the moments leading up to Colton's desperate fight with the Stymphalian Birds to save her and the others would be.. deep in thought.

On the one hand, she couldn't stop thinking about how much she wanted to stab Tantalus through the head with an arrow or shoot an arrow through his head every time she looked at him.

On the other hand, the fact that Colton wasn't there as she sat in the stands of the amphitheater with her siblings was more disappointing to her than she first thought. Clarisse had simply explained his absence this way.

"He's always acted differently than the rest of us Ares kids. Being out on patrol is where he's in his natural element, and I prefer it that way."

To be fair, she did make sense. Kayla did notice Colton had been standing a good distance away from the other campers when she first saw him, inflicting the kill shot on the Colchis Bull with that rifle of his from point blank range. How that man could stand there with the massive bronze bull barreling down on him and stare it in the eye the way he did, a bit scared yet defiant, she had no clue.

Still, she couldn't help but feel anxious and clingy at the moment, mainly to be clingy.. to him. The fact that he let her cry into his shirt while he stared down Tantalus earlier and literally insulted the man to his face.. was amazing, to be honest. She had always felt that she was destined to be with someone who would do everything for her, which is why even at the fashion shows she attended, she always rejected the advances of any wealthy, rich boys that came near her. Having a war veteran that was actually a monster on her godly parent's payroll as a bodyguard definitely helped. (A/N: If you want to know who Kayla's bodyguard is, here's a hint: he appears as an antagonist in one of my other Percy Jackson fanfics (main series/crossovers).)

So it was that she sat there with her siblings, not really paying much attention to what was going on around her. At least until the incessant squawking started, causing her to snap out of her thoughts.

She looked up. Perched high up on the trees around them, or flying in to sit on them, were dozens, if not hundreds, of a peculiar sort of bird. With sharper and more curved beaks, made seemingly out of a different sort of material than normal bird beaks - since it shined in the sunlight way more than normal, eyes that sheened unnaturally, and looking larger and more bulkier than normal birds - or even pigeons for that matter, she had to admit that they were definitely interesting to look at.

After a while, she looked away from them, but then she noticed signs that these birds weren't friendly.

The first hint of trouble was from her own siblings. She glanced around after looking away from the birds and noticed some of her own siblings looking up at them. The expressions of two of her siblings were definitely what gave her the first hint.

She hadn't gotten to know all of her siblings that well yet, but she had warmed up quickly to head counselor Lee and a young, yet very bright ball of energy as she saw it, named Will Solace. Right now though, Will wasn't showing any of that happy, bright energy because he was looking up at the birds with a very worried, anxious expression on his face. It was as if he knew exactly what those birds were, as if he had seen them before. Next to him, Lee also gazed up at the birds with an anxious look on his face. He seemed to also recognize what those birds were.

Either way, Kayla seemed to get the message. Those birds weren't what they seemed to be.

At that moment, she felt the gaze of a familiar someone from above.