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Alex must’ve been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. He still simply couldn’t process everything he was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture, an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Hank’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless he was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.
Speaking of Hank, “Sorry, Charles should be here soon enough. He normally is quite pontual.” The satyr started to fidget, yes satyr, if the hairy brown goat legs were true and it seemed like they were.
Alex chose to ignore Hank’s rambling to focus on his surroundings. He had just got out of the solitary in the youth detention center when a weird looking guard had cornered him, talking about half-bloods and gods. Alex thought maybe the guard had just smoked the wrong kind of weed when the man had stopped looking like a guard and started looking more like a monster from one of those horror movies that his little brother liked so much.
“Oh, here he is,” Hank smiled, waving excitedly to a young man walking towards them, next to him was a blonde woman looking like she didn’t wanna be here. That makes two of us , Alex thought sourly.
“Afternoon,” the man greeted sweetly as he stuck out his hand, “My name’s Xavier, Charles Xavier. You must be Alex Summers, it’s a delight to meet you. I’m sorry for my tardiness, I had some problems to solve in my cabin.”
Alex accepted the handshake. Charles for some reason had a british accent and wore a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. He was also wearing an ugly sweater in the middle of the summer. “How do you know my name?”
“You didn't tell him?” the blonde woman asked Hank. Now looking more closely, her hair color seemed to be changing constantly, even her features looked different the moment she tilted her head.
“Oh this is quite alright, there are so many new things to introduce you to…” Xavier smiled broadly, “I´m a son of Athena and my mother gifted me the power to read people's mind,” at Alex flinch, the man raised his hand soothingly. “don´t worry, I try not to go too deep, I understand most people don't feel comfortable” his smile turned self-deprecating before it brightened again. “And this is my wonderful sister, Raven. She is a daughter of Aphrodite and has the ability to shapeshift. Quite wonderful what demigods can do, don’t you think Alex?”
Alex kept quiet, thinking about the destruction he caused at his last school because of his so-called “gift”. It didn’t matter though because Charles seemed to talk enough for the four of them. Soon enough the son of Athena was guiding the group through the camp while waving his hands excitedly.
The tour began at the strawberry fields and from there they went through the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables, the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where the not-always-blonde-girl said they held sword and spear fights.
"Sword and spear fights?" Alex asked.
"Cabin challenges and all that," she explained. "Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."
The daughter of Aphrodite pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were at least twenty stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.
"What do you do when it rains?"
The trio looked at him as if he'd gone a little weird. "We still have to eat, don't we?"
Alex decided to drop the subject.
Finally, they showed Alex the cabins. There were twenty of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U and were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings Alex's ever seen.
Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more his speed).
Charles ignored all the cabins, guiding the group to an outside of the circle building. It looked more like a little house and had a huge stone-lined fire pit in the front and even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. It had the number twenty-one on its front. “Please come inside, it's been a while so I’m sorry if the place is dusted.”
The inside of the little house was extremely cozy, with few bunk beds and candles lighting the place. The air for some reason smelled like cookies freshly baked. “So this is the place I’m going to live now?” It didn't seem bad at all.
“Oh no, this is just a temporary house. This is the Cabin of Hestia, you know, the virgin goddess of Hearth and Home. We built this place with her blessing after the last mission I took. Now she takes all of the undetermined until the godly parent claims them.” Charles smiled warmly.
Raven jumped in one of the bucked beds, happy to lay down after the long tour. “It was Charles´s idea. Before that the Hermes cabin was kinda chaotic. Now everyone gets sorted out quickly since Hestia doesn’t let any god take too long to claim their child. They said she can be quite a bitch when angered,” Charles shot Raven a disapproving look. “What?! You know I’m right. Anyway, it won’t take long till you’re claimed so don’t worry too much. Soon there will be annoying half-siblings you just met to share a cabin with.”
“So I’m stuck here,” Alex says. “That’s it? For the rest of my life?”
“It depends,” Hank said. “For some of the campers, it’s too dangerous to leave because of the monsters. They’ll ignore demigods until they’re old enough to cause trouble, but after that, either they make their way here, or they get killed off. We satyrs have the mission to locate and bring them to safety before this happens though, like your case”, Hank says with pride. “If you train enough during the summer, you might be able to survive outside and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. Or you could be like Charles and Raven, they’re year-rounders!”
Before Alex could ask anymore questions, Charles interrupts.
“Well we should probably let Alex rest. It's been a long day and we can finish the tour tomorrow morning,” he turns another one of his blinding’s smiles to him. “Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow the others to the mess hall, we´ll see you there."
Following a line Charles, Raven and Hank said goodbye, leaving the new kid alone with his thoughts. Fantastic. He looked at his bag, contemplating if it was worth organizing his things in drawers knowing that soon enough he would be moved to another cabin, finally deciding it would be a waste of time. Only retrieving his cellphone from the front pocket, he began to stare at the lock screen photo of him and his little brother.
It had been a good day. The photo was taken days before he was sent to the youth detention center, he could tell because both he and Scott were smiling. His little brother was holding his favorite superhero toy that Alex buyed with his money from working as cashier at the supermarket. They probably think I just ran away.
He locks his phone and closes his eyes. He’ll just have to train every day till he gets strong enough to kill the monsters coming after him, then he will be finally free to go back home after summer’s end.
-----------------
Alex wakes up with the sound of a horn blown in the distance. Somehow, he knew it came from a conch shell, even though he'd never heard one before. Looking at his phone, he knew it was dinnertime.
In the commons yard, campers came from their cabins, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.
They all marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined them from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods, literally. Alex saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.
In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.
At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Alex gets nervous not knowing where to sit until he sees Raven, Charles and Hank waving to him to come sit besides them. Once all campers were seated the sound of the horn echoed again, making everyone raise their glasses. "To the gods!"
Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread and even barbecue. Alex looked at his empty glass, next to him Charles instructed him, "Speak to it. Whatever you want - nonalcoholic, of course."
Alex murmured, "Cherry Coke." The glass is instantly filled with sparkling caramel liquid. Soon the boy starts loading his plate until he notices everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion.
"Come on," Charles guides him.
As Alex gets closer, he sees that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.
The son of Athena murmured in his ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."
"You're kidding."
Charles looks close to start a sermon but before he could open his mouth, a voice interrupts him: “Don’t bother with it. The gods don’t deserve it anyway.”
Behind them, a tall man with green-gray eyes and a threatening aura stands. Alex takes a moment to be jealous of his cool leather jacket before focusing in the conversation.
“Please Erik, not with the new campers.”
“He needs to know the truth like everybody else, Charles.”
The son of Athena takes a deep breath. It looks like a conversation they had before. “Just let him be claimed before you start recruiting him to try to kill literal gods, yes?”
This man, Erik, looks like he wants to argue more but, at Charles' pleading look, he stops and goes back to his table.
“Ignore him for now, okay?” Charles approaches the fire, bows his head, and tosses in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Athena."
Alex looks at fire wishing he knew what god's name to say. Finally, he makes a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please. He then scrapes a big slice of brisket into the flames.
As Alex turns to look at their table again, there is another person sitting there - a blind woman to be specific. “Hello Alex, it’s nice to finally meet you. You and your brothers have a bright future ahead of you.”
Alex decides to not correct her on the fact that he only has one brother. “Okay… so are you a mind reader like Charles?”
“The Oracle of Delphi,” answers Raven. “and my beautiful girlfriend,” she smiles as the brunette blushes.
“Irene here gives prophecies to demigods who are about to go on quests. Apollo himself chose her” Charles claims with pride.
“How are you feeling about the capture the flag on friday, Charles?” Irene changes the subject and Charles immediately gets tense, which sounds ridiculous.
“I have a plan, don’t you worry. Erik will not see what’s coming.”
“Wait, why are you so tense about capture the flag? And who is Erik?” Alex asks.
Hank points to the guy with the cool leather jacket, “The one who talked to you and Charles before, remember? He’s a son of Ares, and he and Charles have this weird feud about capture the flag.”
“I know what you’re thinking Alex, and let me be the first to tell you that capture the flag is an extremely serious game here! The Hestia cabin is normally my ally, by the way, so you should take this seriously.” Alex could see Raven, Irene and Hank shaking their heads, like this was an old speech. From where he was seated, he could see Erik apparently doing the same with other campers.
Alex just nods off to their voices until dinner is over. Then, all the campers head down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin leads a sing-along. The loudest of them all was a ginger named Sean, whose horrible voice people could hear from far away. They all sang camp songs about the gods and ate s’mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, Alex didn’t hate it, he could even admit this was the most fun he ever had in a very long time.
Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and they said goodnight and filed back to their cabins. Alex didn't realize how exhausted he was until he collapsed on the bunk bed.
-----------------
The next few days he settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t count the fact that he was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and centaurs. Each morning Alex took Ancient Greek from Charles, and they talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. In the afternoon, he took fighting lessons with Raven, who had a nasty left hook punch. In the evening he took the free time to walk through the strawberry fields, sometimes accompanied by Irene. Finally, at night they would all gather for dinner and then the campfire.
Everything was going great, for Alex stardarts until it was the day of capture the flag.
Campers yelled and cheered as Charles and two of his siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Erik and his buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar’s head.
Charles had explained the other day that their main allies were Apollo and Aphrodite while Erik’s were Hermes and Hephaustus. All the other cabins changed their alliances often based on who had the best proposal at the time of the game. Alex wondered who he would end up with once his godly parent claimed him.
“Heroes!” Irene announced. “You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee. Arm yourselves!” She spread her hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, swords, spears and shields. For some reason, they were not made out of metal.
“Why are these weapons different from those on the training field?”
Raven looked at him as if he were crazy. “Nobody told you? Erik controls metal, it's his gift so you better not have any metal within you. Before Charles fought for the right to get these kinds of weapons, we were in a losing streak.”
What the fuck . “Is it too late to change teams? No offense to Charles, but I think I prefer to be on the freaking metallokinesis’s team. ”
“Very funny. Here-for you to protect yourself from the bullets. You’ll be on border patrol.”
Alex’s got a shield the size of an NBA backboard. It weighed about a million pounds. He could have snowboarded on it fine, but hoped nobody seriously expected him to run fast. His helmet, like all the helmets on Athena’s side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes. The only helmet who seemed different was Erik’s, whose color was a deep red with purple markings.
Speaking of Erik, he and Charles kept looking intensely at each other before the game. Some people take their rivalry too seriously , thought Alex.
When they finally stopped their staring contest, Charles yelled, “Blue team, forward!” The team cheered and shook their swords and followed him down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at them as they headed off toward the north.
Alex managed to catch up with Charles without tripping over his equipment. “Hey.”
He kept marching.
“So what’s the plan?”
“Just watch Erik’s metals,” he said. “You don’t want them close to you. Otherwise, don’t worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Raven given you your job?”
“Border patrol, whatever that means.”
“It 's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan.”
It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Charles stationed Alex next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then he and the rest of the team scattered into the trees. Standing there alone, with his big blue-feathered helmet and huge shield, Alex felt like an idiot. Far away, the conch horn blew. He heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of swords, kids fighting. A blue-plumed aly from Aphrodite raced past Alex like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory. Great , Alex thought. I 'll miss all the fun, as usual.
Then Alex felt a presence nearby, someone was stalking him. He raised the shield instinctively and on the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Three campers from team red came yelling and screaming out of the dark.
“Sorry new guy but we need the flag and you’re on the way!” Angel, a pretty girl Alex knew was a daughter of Boreas, yelled. The other two, Janos, son of Zephyrus and Azazel, son of Hermes, came after Alex, who raised his shield just in time to not get stabbed.
Three against one, fuck fair-game. He was lucky he had experience fighting bullies in his old school, but still he was getting his ass handed. It didn’t help that he heard screaming voices nearby, making him feel even more agitated. Inside himself, the same warmth he felt before destroying part of the school’s gymnasium was getting stronger. Oh no, not now please. Suddenly he could not keep the feeling in anymore and a flash of cosmic energy was shot through the creek.
Everything got quiet as Alex slowly reunited the courage to open his eyes to see the damage he had caused. The three campers he was fighting with were all down in different stages of shock. The trees around the area were all cut in half, some pieces of wood burning. Alex only let out a gasp though, when he saw the crowd that was once screaming surrounding him.
He could identify Charles and Erik next to each other trying to put out the fire on the flags to no avail. The silk banners that once represented their teams were burned beyond repair. Alex had officially ruined the game for everybody involved and they all seemed to know this from the looks the people kept giving him.
“Look, I’m really sorry. I swear it wasn’t on purpose, I can get my things and leave first thing in the moornin-”
“Alex, shut up and look above your head”, Raven shouted.
By the time Alex looked up, the sign was already fading, but he could still make out the hologram of yellow light, spinning and gleaming. A golden lyre.
“My father…”
“Congratulations are in order, Alexander Summers” Charles exclaimed, seemingly having given up on the burned flag. “Son of Apollo, the god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and-”.
“We will be here all day if you decide to recite every crap this god does, Charles,” Erik murmured irritatedly. “Anyway congratulations kid, but don’t expect your father coming for the holidays to bring you gifts. He still does not care.”
Alex finally gets up, feeling a meltdown coming but trying to keep it together. Raven and then Angel came close to him, giving him congratulation, and soon enough all the campers unite alongside them to express their approval.
“Cool gift Alex, it’ll come in handy for the next capture the flag, we’ll just have to train your aim, yes?” Raven smiles, like there’s nothing wrong with having plasma coming out of your body.
But looking around, surrounded by campers with different abilities and with the symbol of his godly parent above his head, Alex could not help feeling a little bit more hopeful. Only a little bit , he thinks smiling.
-----------------
“So what's the story between you and Erik, hum? When did you guys start hating each other?” Alex and what he was starting to accept as friends were celebrating around the campfire. Even though nobody had won the game, everyone seemed happy.
“What? Hate?” Charles frowned, “I don’t hate Erik, quite on the contrary actually, he’s my boyfriend.”
“What the fuck? No, you can’t be." Alex exclaimed. "I’ve only been here a couple of days but every time I see you two, you’re fighting”.
Raven began talking with an open mouth, burned s’mores visible in her chewing. “We from Aphrodite’s cabin believe that’s their kink,” Irene laughed at her side while Hank’s face looked sick.
Speaking of the devil, the son of Ares appeared, quickly taking a seat next to Charles in the campfire. The son of Athena smiled and Alex had to be subject to the disgusting scene of both demigods kissing.
The young boy shivered, turning around to see that the rest of the campers were used to their PDA. From his seat, he could watch Angel laughing alongside Janos, and Azazel betting on games with the Nike’s cabin. Unfortunately for Alex, he could also hear Sean's loud voice singing camp songs.
As if reading his thoughts. Hah. Charles turned his attention to him, “You do know, you’ll be sharing the cabin with him, right?”
Alex could only hope summer ended soon enough.