Keeper Of Their Hearts (EG/PJO) - Book One

VIII. We Set Off After The Magic

(A/N: Now we get to the bread and butter of Part One! The story of how Colton Reynolds got his iconic Whitworth he wields in the original story in this timeline. Also, yeah.. Colton, Alabaster, Charles, Clarisse, Sherman, and Michael.. all on a quest. It's a rather fitting combination if you ask me. Anyways, enjoy!)

Needless to say, I really didn't have much to pack. I'll be honest. Most likely, Charles, Michael, Clarisse, and Sherman probably took longer as they had been here longer than I had. Alabaster didn't have much either, although he did take a bit longer than I did. I had to admit.

All I took was some armor and two swords from the armory, and not much else. I didn't want to take too much away from camp on this one, because of.. you know exactly what.

All of camp was pretty much on total edge right now because of what could be the impending war between Zeus and Poseidon. You could read it in their faces. No one had mentioned the part about Percy being accused of stealing Zeus' master bolt yet, which was good. How long that would last remained to be seen.

I sure hoped it would stay that way.

Though you know, with demigod luck, it was more likely that it would not.

Because luck is something that fate really likes to give to everyone other than demigods most of the time. Total bullshit, if you ask me.

As could probably have been expected though, those around me - especially those not going on this quest yet still really close to me - did not take it well. I will mention, that at the first news of the second quest that came out of Chiron's lips at a gathering only a half hour after the camp councilors' meeting, the first words out of one of the other Hermes kids was, "You have to be kidding me." I don't know who said it, but I think it was Chris Rodriguez. Not sure.

That really set the tone for the reactions for the most part there. Disbelief and shock etched on the other campers' faces, rather unable to really believe that a kid as young as me got saddled with a quest. Fate, or the Fates as they called them, apparently had other ideas though.

Anyway, Lou Ellen was rather very emotional when she found out. It took me and Alabaster a while to calm her down after the gathering before we packed.

"I don't want you both to go! I don't want to be alone here!" she whimpered, hugging both of us tightly. Alabaster and I both had guilty looks on our faces, and I was sure he felt as awful as I did at that point. Believe me when I say, our little sister does not deserve this.. at all.

According to Alabaster, Lou Ellen had a very rough life growing up before she turned 8, the year she ran away from home and met Alabaster when he was ten. Luke and Dawson were escorting him to camp at the time when they came across Lou Ellen in an alleyway in Baltimore. She had all the signs of a lot of domestic abuse at home, and even for a child of Hecate, she was still living with the trauma of it even now.. hence why while she could be the sweetest thing in the world when stable, she's also extremely fragile. I hated it.

I absolutely fucking hated it and wanted to rip her dad's body apart because of it. Yeah, this world had given plenty of reasons to be angry over this past couple of weeks.

Believe me, she did not deserve to gain another brother at camp, only for fate to send both of her brothers out on a quest when the fate of what would happen to her and everyone else at camp now hung by a thread, with that damn Jackson having it all resting on his shoulders now.

But yet.. here we fucking were. Here we were in this exact situation now. The only real thing me and Alabaster could do now was to let this thing play out and hope we would come out of this okay.

"We're going to be okay, sis.." Alabaster said calmly, gently petting Lou Ellen's head while I had my hands wrapped around her, gently hugging her. "I'm not going to leave you here alone permanently. We will be coming back soon."