The Demigod Games

Chapter 8

Frank notches an arrow as the monster leaps down the hill. I pull Piper away and the thing lands exactly where she had been. Jason grabs his spear and charges. Frank shoots an arrow at the monster as it approaches Piper, who can't run away as quickly. The arrow hits the monster on its arm, but it just howls and runs towards us again, this time after Frank.

I leap up and stab my sword down into its shoulder, and it cuffs me away with its enormous hands. Up close, I can see it is human, except for being two meters taller than us. And a single, large eye set in the centre of its face.

Cyclops.

I know the name for this abomination almost immediately. I stab it once again, this time on its chest, and it turns to golden dust like the hellhounds.

We decide that our spot on the mountain is not safe and we head uphill, with me leading and Jason at the back, helping Piper. We reach the submit, exhausted, right after sunset. We know this is an exposed position and we keep as low to ground as possible.

Jason and Piper take first watch. Frank gets the sleeping bags out and I get into mine.

"Hazel."

I look up and see the man from my first dream. The man with the creepy cloak of tortured faces.

I am in a dark cavern, and there are hooded figures roaming around a field. There is a river next to me, but its water is pure blackness, and it's filled with screams of tortured souls.

"Hazel, I need to tell you something important." The man continues. He looks familiar, not just from my dream, but I have met him before.

"You have a power, to summon the dead. You are a demig-"

"PLUTO! You're not allowed to reveal that!" Another voice, more powerful than his, echoes into the cavern.

The dream cuts off, and I lie in the sleeping bag shivering in fear. I think about the things the man in the cavern had said. What was he trying to tell me I was? What power of summoning the dead did I have? Why did he get cut off?

When Frank wakes up a few minutes later, I tell him about my dream.

"It's familiar... I just had a dream, and my father was in it. He said his name was Mars, and he said I was a demigod," Frank said as we got Piper and Jason into the sleeping bags and sat on the soft snow at the peak of the mountain.

"So that's what the man in the cavern, Pluto, was trying to tell me. That I am a demigod," I said, shocked at our latest discovery. "And he said about raising the dead..."

"No, Hazel, don't try," Frank interrupts me before I can contemplate the idea further. "Let's deal with our survival first."
The temperature on the mountain is dropping, and I zip up my jacket tight. I sidle closer to Frank until my hand rests on his lap.

"You know, Hazel, Mars said something else," Frank says.

"Yeah?"

"I asked him whether I knew you before. Apparently, we had a little bit of a relationship going on before this arena thing," he says, his face turning red, both from the cold and the embarrassment.

Then, he leans in and presses his lips against mine.