The Demigod Games

Chapter 3

We pack only what we need. Water bottles, snacks, spare daggers, two sleeping bags. Not too many, or it will slow us down. Once we are done, we cover and seal the chest again and place it back into the hole. Frank covers it with soil and mud while I keep a lookout.

Nothing comes out of the bushes, and Frank soon completes his task, so we head off to find shelter. I take the pack first and sling it over one shoulder. Frank leads the way. We wander through the woods. By the time it is afternoon, we are thirsty, and we know we will have to find water soon.

"Let's go back to the lake. We can fill our water bottles," Frank says as he turns around to face me.

"Okay, let's go," I reply and we head back towards the lake.

On the way, I find some plants that I know are edible. But when I kneel down to harvest them, the grass at my feet immediately wilts, and the plant I want simply recoils. Strange.

"Hazel, you have some strange power," Frank laughs, but I know he is scared of me now.

In the end, I get him to harvest the plants. We finally get to the lake, the plants in his hands, and I take out the water bottles. I fill each one and pass one to Frank. We gulp down the water quickly, and soon I am filling them the next time. We sit on the grass, our feet submerged in the cool water of the lake and I take out a cracker from our pack.

We are munching on our crackers and gulping water down whem we hear a slight rustle in the bushes. I instinctively jerk my head towards the noise.

A boy emerges from the bushes, followed by a girl. The boy is blond, with electric blue eyes, and the girl has her brown hair tied up in a braid. They are wearing the same thing as us.

I draw my sword and Frank loads an arrow into his bow, but I know we are not willing to kill them. The pair don't seem fazed by the weapons in our hands and continued to walking to the lake.

I lower my sword, but leave it in my hand.

"Peace," the boy says. His electric blue eyes bear down on me and I nod.

"We could be a team," the girl says, extending a hand to me. "I'm Piper McLean, and that's Jason Grace." We shake hands.

"Hazel Levesque, and he's Frank Zhang," I say as I tuck my sword back into my belt.

"Where'd you get those? We just can't find anything," Jason asks as he looks at my gleaming bronze swords.

"Found them in a chest, half buried under the soil ib the forest," Frank answers as we open up a packet of meat and start to eat. The sun is setting now, dipping down towards the horizon and casting long shadows across the grass.

We chat for a while. As night fell, I handed them each one of the daggers in the pack. Passing the daggers to Jason, I notice one strange thing. The bronze of the weapons glow with a strange powerful aura, eluminating the darkness of the night.