Desolation [manxman] DRAFT

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"You have spent the entire day brooding over the statistics your sister sent you." My dad remarked, coming into my room. "How about you take a break and join the others outside? It's still nice and maybe you could get some dinner?"

After we had arrived in Chania we had rented a house which I had nicknamed the headquarters or HQ for short. The others used the excuse of having to scout the area to go to the beach and have some fun while I had gone to my room and tried to come up with a plan. The only progress I made was eating two packs of Oreos and a bag of Doritos, successfully scattering crumbs on the bed that would be a pain in my ass while sleeping later. They on the other hand had spent the entire day swimming and having fun.

"I don't see why this would be of help. Besides I can't go outside, I'm allergic to pollen and people." I huffed.

He smirked before coming over to me and snatching away my laptop. I groaned in annoyance and tried to take it back but he hid it behind his back and I didn't want to get as close to him as I would need in order to retrieve it. So, I was forced to just sit there and pout.

"Give it back!" I demanded not really in the mood for any of this.

"Go outside." He repeated. "One hour, that's all I'm asking for. After that you can go back to locking yourself in here."

I grunted but given that I hadn't made any progress in the past ten hours I might as well take a break instead of staring at the screen. Maybe I could find a gift for Aminta. Something that could stab people and was pretty enough to be considered a souvenir. An axe or something. A battle axe. A shiny, handcrafted battle axe! She surely would appreciate that.

"Fine." I huffed, scrambling off the bed. "One hour."

I almost teleported to the beach but caught myself just in time. Wouldn't want to scare the piss out of the mortals by just appearing out of nowhere, although most of them were probably at home with their families at this time of the day. My dad smirked satisfied and followed me, just casually strolling down the streets towards the beach.

All of us except for Alexios who looked human enough had cast a spell on ourselves to avoid mortals from recognizing us as foreigners that didn't belong in this world. My dad had switched his eye color to green and now just looked like a seven-foot giant towering over the crowd. Moros wasted a huge amount of energy in making the dragons scales, claws and wings disappear and changing his eye color to a brownish color instead of the molten gold one as well as his own to a green. I, on the other hand decided to be a little more sophisticated and simply forced people to overlook me. This way they'd just glance over me without paying too much attention. It cost way less energy than changing parts of my body. Alexios, Moros and I were still towering over the mortals with our almost seven feet.

"Can I ask you something?" My dad asked, stopping and making me bump into his back.

"Sure." I mumbled, stepping back from him uncomfortable.

He picked up on that movement and quickly looked away from me but I had already seen the sorrow in his eyes he tried to hide from me. I swallowed hard and rubbed my arm because I didn't know what to say and the whole situation was just so awkward.

"I wanted to ask you if you could tell me more about yourself." He muttered at last, almost inaudible, probably hoping I wouldn't hear it so I couldn't reject him.

But I did and I didn't know how to feel about that or what to say. I didn't understand why he would want to hear about my interests or things like that. He already knew everything he needed to know in order to defend himself against me and disclosing things like my hobbies wouldn't help him with battle strategy or anything else for that matter.