charm(less)

octō

—— o c t ō ——

KOREY SAT CROSS-LEGGED at the peak of the sand dune and drew patterns in the sand with the tip of the dagger Park had given him as he waited. Sarpei, which Park had explained were sand spirits, apparently had no reason to show themselves without provocation. They weren't monsters who attacked demigods mindlessly without reason. Korey appreciated them for that, especially considering he essentially had a death beacon hanging over his head giving every monster in a ten mile radius permission to kill him, so it kind of sucked that they'd have to kill them. He'd been given strict instructions to stay out of the way and do nothing while Park tried to draw them out.

"This seems like an awful lot of effort just to find out where this camp is," Korey said. "Shouldn't that kind of information be public knowledge?"

"They're a group of demigods trying to evade detection from all the things in the world that want to kill them," Park said, popping the tab of the coke can they'd just bought and pouring the contents out onto the pale sand. "Making their whereabouts public defeats the purpose."

"Fair enough. Sarpei really hate fizzy drinks?" Korey asked dubiously.

"No. They hate pollution and litter." After a moment's hesitation, Park tosses the can over his shoulder and picked up a sprite can from the haul of drinks and good they'd just bought. It seemed like a waste to Korey to be throwing away perfectly good soda but it had to be done. "I'm trying to piss them off enough to come out."

Korey, bored of drawing shapes, began stabbing holes into the sand as Park opened a pack of crisps only to toss them out across the sand. Korey was thinking about the encounter with that green lady in the sea, what she'd said about Park's mom but more interestingly, his reaction to it. He hadn't said all that much about but Korey knew there was more to it than the careful blankness in his expression whenever she was brought up in conversation. He wondered whether his own dad had realised he was gone yet. Probably not — it had been less than twenty four hours. It would probably be at least three days before he suspected something.

Korey absently dug his dagger into the sand and frowned when he found he couldn't pull it back out. He tugged as hard as he could yet it still didn't budge, as if it had buried itself in stone. The dagger suddenly slipped from his fingers as it was yanked down into the sand and Korey barely had time to open his mouth in surprise when the sand began shaking beneath him, as if something was coming to life within it.

"Park," he said slowly. "Something's happening."

The other boy didn't even glance up from where he was scattering Oreos across the slope of the sand dune. "What now?"

"I don't — "

The words were ripped from his mouth when he was suddenly tossed up into the air by the sand and then he was being carried, moving so fast the world faded into an indistinguishable blur of colour. Korey tried to sit up but the hands — hands, he realised with dawning horror, he was being held up by dozens of tiny little hands — gripped him in place, so he couldn't even think about moving beyond awkward squirming. He opened his mouth to yell for help but the wind tore away the words on his tongue. He didn't even have his dagger because it had disappeared into the sand so he was entirely weaponless. Korey had no idea how long he was travelling for but he knew it had to be far, considering how fast they were going.

He came to such a sudden stop that the momentum threw Korey forward and he went crashing headfirst into a prickly tangle of grass, the rough long kind found at the base of sand dunes. "Ow," he groaned, rubbing sand from his eyes as he straightened up into a sitting position.