stollen things || c. stoll

4.3 ~ We Play Tag With Scorpions

Unfortunately, I did not get to deal with Madge after dinner. Nor did I get to speak with Connor. Quintus had us get ready for war games and didn't leave us any other details. So I suited up in my armor and grabbed my weapons.

"Gather 'round." Quintus was standing on the dining table. "You will be in teams of two." My heart sank. I didn't want to have to talk to Connor, but I wanted to see him anyway. "Which have already been chosen!"

People started groaning. I didn't like getting paired with random campers. With my luck, I'd get Clarisse or something.

"Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels. You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course... you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive."

Easy, we'd all slain monsters before. Not a hard task for trained demigods.

"I will now announce your partners," Quintus said. "There will be no trading. No switching. No complaining."

Beckendorf with Silena. I grinned at that, maybe it would do some good. Connor and Travis together. Clarisse and Lee. I got paired with Michael Yew. I liked him well enough, but we didn't know each other that well.

I went up to him after Quintus finished announcing the pairs. "Hey," I held my hand out to shake. "Ready?"

He had to be almost a foot shorter than I, but he still reached up to take my hand and grinned. "So ready. I think we should start in the trees. We're both long distance oriented and I know you can climb and track. I know this seems to be a more close range game but maybe if we could get directly above the creatures?"

I nodded. It was a good plan. I knew we'd have to eventually get up close, but maybe there was a way to drop down on top of them to get the packages. We waited for Quintus to blow the horn and scurried into the woods. Michael and I found the easiest tree we could and climbed up about halfway. We could still see the other campers tracking on the ground.

We hopped through the trees, following a pair of Athena campers silently. They seemed to be headed to the edge of the woods, by Zephyros Creek. That was going to be a long haul, and I could tell that the monsters were nowhere near there. I motioned to Michael to abandon the campers and get closer. We took a minute or two to reassess our plan. We couldn't just wait for another pair to come trampling through the woods, so we decided that I'd stay on the ground and track the monsters and Michael would stay in the trees for the element of surprise. I climbed down and drew my sword. Looking around the ground, I saw no tracks. Those Athena campers weren't as strategic as we'd assumed.

After about fifteen minutes of wandering in silence, I finally found some tracks. Going east. I looked up to find Michael in the trees to let him know, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"Michael?" I said, as loudly as I dared. Nothing. "Michael?

"You won't find him out here."

I turned slowly. "Lee..."

"It was Clarisse's idea. I'm just here to shoot." He shrugged.

"That's cheating! You guys can't sabotage other groups." I stepped backwards.

"Quintus never said that, so I think you'd better go look for your partner. Be careful, there are some deadly monsters out here." He flashed a grin before disappearing into the darkness.

"Fletcher, you're going to regret this little stunt!" I called after him. Or, at least where I thought he was. Lee was right, I was alone in the dark woods with deadly monsters on the loose. I heard a scuttling noise. "Oh, gods, this isn't happening." The noise got fainter, and I heard a stabbing sound, followed by a victorious laugh that could only belong to Clarisse.

Too many minutes later, I found Michael wandering, calling my name quietly. I apologized profusely for not keeping my eye on him. Clarisse had shaken him out of a tree and dragged him far from where I was. He didn't seem upset with me, but he was extremely bitter towards Clarisse. We ran back towards where I'd heard Clarisse kill the beast. Sure enough, there was a ten-foot long scorpion laying on the ground, four arrows in its stomach with its stinger laying a few feet away.

I stopped to reach out for more movement in the woods, but we heard the horn blow again.

"No fucking way." I huffed. Of course it had been Clarisse and Lee that had gotten the lucky scorpion. We trudged back to the edge of the woods to Quintus and his hellhound, Mrs. O'Leary. He was pleased to award Lee and Clarisse with the laurels. We all began cheering for them, but Tyson spoke up.

"Annabeth and Percy?"

We looked around. He was right. Neither of them were anywhere to be seen. We knew Annabeth well enough to know that she would've heard the horn and wouldn't have let Percy or herself linger. Sure, they were probably a bit discouraged, but they wouldn't be dragging their feet this much. It had been at least twenty minutes since the horn.

Chiron looked at Clarisse with concern, and we agreed to all go back into the woods and look for them. We arrived at Zeus's Fist, which was where someone had last heard them. They weren't there. Chiron was pale with worry at this point. Yes, we all cared for them but you'd think a man (centaur?) with this much experience training and losing heroes would be more calm in such a situation.

After ages of calling their names, they crawled out of a crack in the boulders.

"Where have you two been?" Clarisse demanded. "We've been looking forever."

"But we were only gone for a few minutes." Percy said. "We fell in a hole."

That was hard to believe. It's a pile of boulders, there's no holes in there.

"Honest! There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute."

"You've been missing for over an hour. The game is over." Chiron said.

Grover and Tyson started grumbling about being each other's partners.

"A hole?" Clarisse said suspiciously.

Annabeth's face was crinkled with worry. "Chiron, maybe we should talk about this at the Big House." Clarisse stepped forward and muttered something to her. Annabeth nodded ever so slightly.

Questions erupted in the group of campers immediately. Whatever this hole was, it couldn't be anything good. Even Percy looked confused.

Chiron held up his hand. "Tonight is not the right time, nor is it the right place. Everyone back to your cabins. Get some sleep, curfew is passed."

We all slowly drifted off, heading back to our cabins. It was a long walk back, so we all melted into our cabin groups as we moved. When we finally broke out of the woods near the arena and the end of the Zephyros stream, everyone's throats were hoarse from the theorizing and whispering. I made sure my campers were safely in the cabin and was about to go in and close our door when a hand wrapped gently around my arm.

"Can we talk?"

•

guys michael yew is canonically 4'6" and i'm hollering at this information