The Flames of Hope Ch 4

Chapter 4~The Child of Travel
We found Mike and hanging around his cabin, looking as confused as I had been when I noticed no one was here.

“Did everyone go on a field trip without us?” he asked, but we told him that everyone had been captured. He thought about this for awhile and the three of us sat around wondering what we could do. John also returned after he couldn’t find any of the other satyrs in the council, or any satyrs at all. During that time I had given him the chain link in the tree, and he tested it out and confirmed that it wasn’t a replica as those would break easily.

“Do we have the rest of the links still?” I asked Malcolm.

“They weren’t in the attic. When Chiron and Mr. D weren’t there I looked around the entire house including the attic, but I didn’t see them. The fact that everyone was missing seemed like a bigger problem at the time so I didn’t bring it up,” Malcolm replied. “What was it that Hermes told you, something about more friends if we knew where to look?”

“But where do we look?” I asked, as anyone that could help with a rescue mission was captured; Erika, Kat, even Megan. The first person I would have turned to would have been Megan, but she was gone and that seemed to hurt me a bit more than anyone else.

“Why not look over there?” John said pointing to a bunch of trees just outside the edge of the forest.

“Why look over there?” Mike said. “They’re just a bunch of trees.”

“But they’re new trees,” John replied. I tried to figure out what he meant when I noticed he was right, those trees hadn’t been there before, at least I hadn’t noticed them before today. We walked over and started looking around for any signs that someone was here, but we didn’t find anything.

“This was a dumb idea, dumb trees,” Mike said before breaking off a low branch of one of the trees and tossing it to the ground. The branch sat on the ground before turning into a small cloud and then disappearing. “Ok, I must be dreaming because last time I checked trees don’t turn into clouds. It all makes sense; everyone’s missing and captured, and I’m the only one that can save them. This has to be a dream and any second the hot Aphrodite girls will come out of their cabin and tell me how awesome I am.”

“Someone is dreaming, but I don’t think it is you,” I told him. I walked over to the tree and knocked on the trunk a few times. While it looked like a tree, the sound it made when I knocked caused a hollow echo inside the truck. It also didn’t feel like a real tree, more like one of the fake one’s that you see in malls or offices. Then there was a small grumble from inside the tree.

“Ten more minutes,” someone said. I knew what this was now so I took out my hammer and started hitting the tree like a lumberjack who was chopping down trees. A second later, the entire tree burst into a puff of smoke and Kat could be seen sleeping on the grass. A second later, two or three other trees turned to smoke revealing more campers. Several other trees seemed to unwind revealing that the Demeter and Persephone cabins had tried to save people by hiding them inside trees while Kat has made trees out of her dreams.

“Kat, wake up!” I yelled into her ear. She grabbed her arms and rubbed them a few times and then curled up into a ball as if someone had just taken the blankets off of her. She eventually sat up and saw me standing over her.

“Hey, you’re back,” she said with a yawn. “You know we could have used you a few hours ago,” she said as if I could have known this would happen. It also felt strangely hurtful, as if she were blaming me for this.

“We can’t do anything about that know,” came a familiar voice. A white haired beauty walked through the group of demigods. She brushed off a few leaves that had been stuck in her hair. “It’s about time you got here Slowpoke.”

She gave me a quick hug and then went back to being serious.

“Listen! As we all saw, Leiomenos is back and he wants to destroy the Olympian gods. It is our job as their children to help in any way possible,” Megan said like a military commander. It was actually a bit inspiring and she seemed to be getting the other campers into it, filling them with courage. “So…does anyone have any idea what we should do?” and just like that the courage was gone.

Everyone was quiet for a really long time and I looked around to see how many of us were left. Not enough to start a war as there were maybe 20 of us in total. Malcolm had walked around for awhile asking the Demeter campers about Erika, but they couldn’t look him in the eyes which answered for him what had happened to her. They did tell him that she allowed them to escape and gave them the idea of how to hide. Rachel was also ok, her cave was far enough away from the camp so that she saw what happened and met up with the fleeing campers. I kept walking around in circles as it helped me think while some of the others talked to Megan about some kind of plan, but most of them would just get us killed.

“What are we going to do now,” I said to myself not expecting an answer, but the universe had different plans and Rachel’s eyes filled with a bright green light and smoke came from her mouth.

''“Child of travel your time has come,

To lead a powerful group of some.

To free those that are captured is a must,

And the gods themselves bust learn to trust.

Belief and hope will be the weapons you need,

And with those at your side, the god shall be freed.

One will die and one shall live,

But the choice is something only you can give.” ''

Rachel then closed her eyes and the green smoke was gone. We all looked around as Rachel fell back and a few campers placed her gently against a tree.

“That sounds very ominous,” Mike said.

“When do they not?” Malcolm argued. Then, everyone turned to me as if looking for an answer.

“What?” I asked, just waiting for someone to say something as the attention was starting to get to me. I didn’t like being the center of attention. It was the main reason I was happy I wasn’t a child of the Big Three. Those children always got all the attention, they were the ones that everyone looked to when it came time for a life or death quest, but I was a child of Hermes, I wasn’t even a cabin leader and now everyone was looking to me.

“You heard the prophecy,” Megan said. “A child of travel will lead us. You are a child of Hermes, the god of travelers. As much as I don’t want to say this, I will follow your orders.”

She placed her hand over her chest and kneeled before me. Several of the other campers, some I knew and some I didn’t, followed Megan’s example and before long and entire group of demigods were looking to me to lead them.

Darkcloud1111 ~Fastest Hero Alive