Signs of a Storm

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter 36: Cloudy With A Chance Of War Games

At dinner, I found Percy and quickly sat by him.

The order of things weren't that much different from camp, except that ghosts served you, and not a self-serve thing. Deep in my mind, I had hoped for grilled cheese as dinner, and it was served right up. Percy ended up with a blue cheeseburger.

"How was the rest of your day?" Percy asked the one question I had wanted him to avoid. I did not want to bring it back up.

"Awful." I said, telling the truth. "The stupid love goddess started screwing up my life. She controlled me like a doll." I said, without saying what she had really done. No one should know about what had happed on that hill.

"What did you do? Confess your love to a random stranger?" Percy began to laugh, and I tried to laugh along. It was fake.

"Yup," I replied, "Something like that."

We ate the rest of our dinner without any more inconveniences. When I was about to leave, Reyna went up to the front and announced our plans, the prophecy, and the sort of thing we had to prepare for. She made it sound bad.

Reyna may as well said, "Hey campers! Guess what?! We're gonna be attacked by monsters! Have fun fighting and dying!"

After that was over, someone mentioned a game of war games out in the field. Everyone who wished to play were divided up by placements. I ended up being put on the same teams as Reyna and Hazel. Much to my luck, Leo was on the opposite team with Percy. Although I wished I could've had Percy by my side, he needed to help out his own team. It looked like a few of them could seriously use some more training.

I followed the rest of my team to the armory and got situated. Unlike the games back at camp, we had serious armor. When they had said, "war games" I had thought it would be like the games back at Camp Half-Blood. I was wrong.

A giant field was set up with war elephants at the ready, campers in armor, and a fort at each side. This was less of a stealth mission, more like a full-on war. But if that was how the Romans played, I would too. Hazel had said that she was offense, so I stuck by her side. Whatever she did, I would do too just for the beginning. Iwanted to live.

Everyone huddling around Reyna and listened to the battle strategy. It was the first time I had ever not been the leader. And even though I sound spoiled, I hated it. Everything she said, I wanted the opposite. "We shall storm through the gates and collapse the fort. In the chaos, someone go in and grab the winning possession. The eagle. Third and Fourth cohorts will try and bring us down, but you must stand strong-" I zoned out.

Apparently we would be doing something like capture-the-flag. And if I was correct, her strategy sucked. "And then we-" I cut her off.

"You seriously think we can manage to just do all of that? Wrong. Split it up. One stealth team, and one decoy team. That will assure victory." I said.

Reyna glared at me, and others just stared at me. I crossed my arms and waited for her to challenge me back. "Tara Evelyn, you are dishonoring the whole Fifth and First cohort at the moment. You are not praetor or leader."

I raised my brows, "Who said I was the leader here? I'm offering advice." I snapped. "And if you want to get past that gate and even into the fort, you need to first crash down the defenses. And I'm guessing it's the Third cohorts by looking at them. You need to fake them out. Trick them." I finished, hoping she'd agree with me.

"No. I disagree." She spat, "My plan is guaranteed. You just arrived here. What makes you think you know how to lead a legion to victory?"

"Well, I for one know that it will work." I retorted, "So go ahead and ignore the Greek. But you'll find out that I'm right. You need to split up."