Blood Of The Hero

Chapter 3

The next day felt like a blur, the speed it was all moving was a little much.

To give you guys a brief idea of how it went down: I woke up, showered, but not for long, because we had to get to breakfast. Once at breakfast, we had to scarf it down because we were already late for archery. When we got to archery, I almost killed the Apollo Cabin instructors with the way I was shooting, Stevie Wonder could've done better. Thankfully though, that ended quickly enough, and I got through lunch without much problem, but as soon as we finished, everybody started to get ready for the Capture the Flag game, so I joined them, not really sure what to do.

And that's where we are now.

I shifted around with the heavy chest plate on my shoulders, and found a decent enough helmet with a blue mane to signify which team we were. After that, I walked over to the weapons section of the armory and picked up a few swords, testing out their weight and balance.

After that horrendous, almost-tragic archery lesson, I figured I'd stick to swords, but none of them seemed right to me. They were either too heavy, light, big, small or uneven, and for a complete rookie at swordsmanship, that didn't bode well for me.

I put some thought into it, and while none of them seemed great, I just figured to choose one of the heavier ones, because they would probably do a little more damage, even if they were harder to use.

"Hey, Luke?" I asked, equipping my sword into my sheath and picking up my round shield.

"Mm?" He hummed, not looking over, more focused on the straps of his armour.

"Are we seriously gonna use these weapons? Like properly?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, it's not that bad. We've all definetly been in more dangerous situations, right? So I don't see the issue."

"Well, we could die." I couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Nah, it's fine. No maiming or killing. Just a few cuts and bruises is the most you'll get out of this."
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After the trip to the armory, each team went their separate ways, heading to opposite ends of the forest to plant their flags.

It had to be clearly visible, but the Athena Cabin had the idea to hide it in the trees, just to make it that much more difficult. They were definetly children of the goddess of wisdom, I'll say that much.

After that though, a girl around my age departed from the rest of the Athena Cabin, climbing onto a boulder and looking down, ready to address us.

I couldn't see her too well initially, but when I rubbed my eyes a little and squinted, I could see her clear as day, and I wasn't complaining.

The first thing that struck me about her was her beauty. She was like crazy beautiful. As in, Helena of Troy, maybe even Aphrodite levels of pretty, and I know that's meant to be sacrilegious to say, but it was true.

She had long, blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, and slightly tanned skin. She was a little shorter than me from what I could see, but she had a massive aura around her, like a general in an army. The most prominent thing about her though were her piercing, stormy, grey eyes that were hard with confidence.

I nudged Luke's side and whispered. "Hey, who's that?"

He smirked, looking down at me. "Annabeth. Annabeth Chase. She's leader of the Athena Cabin, and because they're the leaders of our team, she's basically the commanding general here."

"Right." I muttered, not catching any of Luke's amused looks, focused on her and her only.

"Apollo! Stay in the trees, make sure to keep flanks, catch them by surprise with your arrows! Athena! Be our shock troops, hide behind rocks and trees, let them come to us! Hermes! You'll be the infantry, overwhelm them with numbers but make sure to stay in formation SIX. Never change it." She assigned each cabin their role, taking a deep breath as she did so.