Control ° PJO

viii

Silena Beauregard took a small twirl around the room and the Dionysus offsprings did not look nervous about the inspection at all.

"Inspections after inspections," she muttered. "never really improved."

"So, Silena," Castor spoke up, "we're not at the bottom?"

"Of course not. Look at this place, it's spotless!" her gaze burned at the walls. "Literally."

She walked out of the Cabin making Mirren's nervousness slip away.

"How are you so chill when we could be scrubbing lava to dirty dishes?"

"Because Silena is our friend and Hephaestus always ends up doing the dishes ─ or rather breaking them." Pollux replied. "Those Hephaestus kids, always work before hygene."

They spent the afternoon looking through their father's stock of wine. Just because he wasn't aloud a sip doesn't mean his children can't. Well technically, they can't since their under-aged but to hell with that, Mirren always hated technicallities. It's not like Castor and Pollux would let her have more than two sips of some very old wine.

Mirren laughed at the stupid things Castor and Pollux done. They were very idiotic and very charming, and that led to immense trouble.

"I can't believe you pranked the Hermes cabin!"

"Those asses had it coming. Whatever it was in our food, made us look drunk 24/7 for a week! It caused Chiron to actually think we got drunk and he wasn't very pleasant about it either."

She giggled at their confessions. They made stupid, idiotic decisions, like they were meant to. They were 17, for gods sakes, they were supposed to be having terrible decisions on who the dated, or if they partied a little too much. But no, they were worrying about the upcoming war and reminiscing their old life of care free choices.

She wondered if that was fated for her too. She was fourteen, maybe when she was seventeen she was doomed to worry about something bigger than the way she dressed or who had sex with who because that was all but some fantasy. No, she was not doomed with the same fate as her brothers, she's going to get worse.

::

The next morning there was a lot of excitement for breakfast.

News was, around three in the morning an Aethiopian drakon had been spotted at the borders of camp. It was kind of horrible that Mirren and her brothers slept right through the mayhem. Of course, the magical boundaries had kept the monster out, but it prowled the hills, looking for weak spots in the camp's defenses, and it didn't seem anxious to go away until Lee Fletcher from Apollo's cabin led a couple of his siblings in pursuit. After a few dozen arrows lodged in the chinks of the drakon's armor, it finally withdrew.

"It's still out there," Lee Fletcher warned during announcements as they had breakfast. "Twenty arrows in its hide, and we just made it mad. The thing was thirty feet long and bright green. Its eyes─" He shuddered.

"You did well, Lee." Chiron patted him on the shoulder. "Everyone stay alert, but stay calm. This has happened before."

"Aye," Quintus said from the head table. "And it will happen again. More and more frequently."

The campers started murmuring around Mirren and she locked eyes with Pollux. They heard of the nasty rumor : Luke Castellan (the apparent traitor) and his army of monsters were planning an invasion of the camp. Most of the campers she heard the rumor from expected it to happen this summer, but no one knew how or when.

"This is a good reason for new war games," Quintus continued, a glint in his eyes. "We'll see how you all do with that tonight."

"Yes . . ." Chiron said. "Well, enough of announcements. Let us bless this meal and eat. To the gods!"