Demeter's Dais: Regrouping

Awaken the Legends:

Demeter's Dais

Chapter Four

Cecilia Grant

Suffice to say, it's not fun roaming around looking for some person you don't know with only their first name to go on. Not even a surname. Great. Well, we also knew the kid was Atalanta's son, I suppose. But really, why did it matter who's kid it was if we had no chance of finding him? We were just lucky he wasn't in New York or Philly or L.A or something. I didn't mind big cities (quite the contrary, actually), but it would have made it that much harder to figure out where to start.

So where did we start, you ask?

Excellent question.

Mostly, we sort of just wandered off in the opposite direction as the other groups and hoped someone else would find him. At least, that's what I was doing. I wasn't paying much attention to the other's chatter.

Hazel, Laura, Lorey, and Gerald. I didn't particularly like any of them, but I really didn't like most things, so what did my opinion matter? Hazel was alright, I guess; I tolerated her, but mostly just because her brother was a decent person. Laura was too gossipy to ever be someone I could stand, though she came in handy in a fight. Lorey? He was just sort of there. And Gerald reminded me of a robot, all emotionless; it was a little freaky. Not scary, just freaky. Once you've seen the Feilds of Punishment, nothing in the world of the living scares you.

But anyway, I'm not into judging people, so I'll stop there. I don't voice my thoughts too often, especially on things that don't really matter that much. And what I thought about people didn't matter, because I'd have to work and deal with them either way.

But just because I wasn't listening to their words didn't mean I didn't register it when their voices changed from complaints and light-hearted banter to confusion and speculation. I decided that must mean something important was being discussed, so I better start paying attention.

"Hey, Atalanta is the goddess of running too, right?" Leroy asked, pausing to pull a colorful flyer off a phonepole, holding it up to his face, examining it carefully.

"Yeah. So?" Laura peered over his shoulder, trying to read the flyer.

He handed it over to her. "So, he'd probably be on his high school's track team. There's a meet today."

"Yeah. But how do we figure out where the school is?" asked Hazel.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, scrolling through my apps. I started heading off in the direction of the school.

"CiCi! Where are you going?"

I held up my phone over my shoulder for them to see, and continued on my merry way, knowing full well they'd follow after me. "Sprint Navigation. It works miracles."

* * *

They'd only bothered me half a dozen time about how monsters could find us with my phone out. No need to tell them about my IPod too. But I didn't really care because (a) there were over fifteen demigods wandering around nearby, and (b) I'd like to see any monster take down five battle-hardened demigods, most of whom had been on quests before and were veterans of wars. So yeah, we were fine. I was right; again.

It took us a little bit longer to get there then I had anticipated. But using my magnificant deduction skills (and the screams and the mortals running around in crazed packs), I concluded this was the right place. We drew our weapons and ran towards where we presumed the battle to be. I took an extra second to turn my phone off and put it back into my pocket, before bringing up the rear.

But as it turned out, there wasn't much to do by the time we arrived, which suited me perfectly fine; I didn't really like big, loud fights. I preferred quick, sneak attacks. But again, whatever; what I want doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Tora, Aaron, Pullox, and James Armstrong were just standing around with some other kid (Greg, probably), weapons still in their hands, panting, grinning, with piles of dust surrounding them.

James's grin widened as we approached. He chuckled a little. "You guys missed all the fun."