by Melody Rose
Behind her was the Nero leader. She was Pacific Islander descent with overly round features and long black hair with a shine that would make a Disney Princess jealous. She had a sleeve of tattoos running down both arms, which made her all the more badass.
Finally, the Fotia leader entered last. His skin was as pale as the snow outside, with an angular face and a soldier’s body. He also had black hair, though it seemed to be made of raven’s feathers. Gray eyes were beneath heavy eyebrows that seemed to take in every detail of the room around him.
I leaned over to Annika, closing the distance between us so she could still hear me when I whispered. “I thought we had deployed all of the soldiers.”
“These four have been on the front lines for a while now,” Annika whispered back. “The General pulled them off for the time being, but I wouldn’t expect them to stay around for long.”
I pursed my lips, still disapproving of the General’s decision to deploy Ansel and the other branch leaders. Why not just keep those four out in the field and keep the leaders with us? It was selfish of me, I knew that, but I didn’t care. It’d only been an hour since I watched Ansel leave my door for the foreseeable future, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive the rest of the semester without him.
Lastly, the Olympic Officials entered the cafeteria. I found my place between Annika, daughter of Apollo, and Min, son of Athena. I didn’t know what this meant in terms of rank, but always figured it had to do with the level of importance of our parents, leaving the big three gods, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, for the very end.
The minute I crossed the threshold into the cafeteria, the crowd of demigods went silent. I did my best to stare at the back of Annika’s blonde head. I didn’t try to find my friends. I didn’t want to risk seeing the stunned faces of the student body.
But I could feel their eyes on me as I walked in line up to the platform where the teachers and Officials stood to make announcements and address the Academy. It felt as though I was walking through a minefield where one wrong step would blow me to smithereens.
Then the whispers started.
It was the sound of thousands of bees flitting around my head. I sang songs silently to myself to try to drown them out, but I couldn’t block the sound of rumors flying about. I allowed myself one long blink. A small sign of weakness that the voices were getting to me.
I snapped my eyes back open when I heard my name shouted amongst the crowd. It broke through the buzzing whispers like a broken plate.
“Cheyenne! Whoo! Go, Cheyenne!”
I recognized the voice instantly as Violet. She stood on her bench at our usual table, the one closest to the buffet. Her petite frame hovered over the crowd as she whooped and hollered my name. Mortification stirred in my cheeks, causing them to go beet red.
I wished she would sit down, but then Benji joined her. The two of them clapped together and whistled and cheered like they were at a football game. Darren wasn’t far behind, closely followed by Esme.
Then, as if I were the star in a movie, the rest of the student body got on their feet. Janet, my frenemy, stood and clapped her hands with an award-winning smile on her face. My other classmates, like Temperance and Jenkins, were there as well.
Some of the teachers, including Mac and Arges, added their voices to the wave of approval. I stopped in my tracks, just soaking in the admiration.
It was overwhelming. What had started out as a terrifying experience, it turned into something gratifying. If I stopped long enough to think about it, it was quite a feat. Not only was I the youngest Olympic Official in the history of the Academy, but my presence also completed the Official lineup for the first time in decades.
The students were witnessing history. Instead of bringing dismay, I gave them hope. If there was one thing I learned from my time at the Academy, it was the importance of camaraderie and teamwork. Despite the disagreements and embarrassments over the years, these demigods and I all had something in common. We were fighting on the same side of this war. I owed it to them to lead as best I could and to do everything I could to end this damn thing. They deserved peace. We all did.
Min bumped into me and glared down at me. “Move, Cheyenne.”
I did as I was told, but this time I walked with more confidence. My shoulder automatically went back, and my chin lifted. Even though the cheers and applause died down when I reached the stage, I looked over at my friends with a broad smile.
Violet threw me a thumbs up, Benji was the last one clapping, and Darren tipped an invisible hat in my direction.
As much as I wanted to throttle them at this moment, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way I would get through any of this without any of them.
8
To say that I was nervous would be an understatement. My leg jiggled as I stood in front of the General’s office while my palms felt as though I dunked them in a vat of ice water. I had never been in the General’s office before. It felt an awful lot like going to the principal's office. While I had never been there either, part of me wished that I had gotten in trouble at least once so I would have something to compare this experience to.
The difference would be that I wasn’t in trouble. Or, supposedly, I wasn’t in trouble. I got the impression that my new role as an Olympic Official didn’t thrill the General too much. I didn’t think it would surprise him that much. The demigod had offered me the spot once, though now I was starting to believe that was a joke.
Regardless of how the General felt, what’s done was done. I was an Olympic Official, and according to their laws, it had been my right to take the seat at the table. I was the only known child of Hephaestus on the planet. Therefore, I was the only one who could even take the seat.
My mind flashed to Ansel and his sad expression as we talked about this being a life position. I sighed and shook my head, trying to rid myself of the memory. Not only did it bring a wave of my own sadness, but it just reminded me that there was still so much about this Olympic Official business that I didn’t know. I could only imagine the surprises that lay behind that door.
But that’s what I was there to do. Learn what those secrets word and maybe bring about some much-needed change, like maybe ending the prejudice against the non-Olympic demigods. Benji brought up that notion at breakfast when I was lamenting about having to meet up with the General.
“Don’t you realize what kind of opportunity this is?” he said as he waved around his fork, bits of scrambled eggs flying off it. When a piece splattered on the floor, Violet looked as though he had killed her firstborn.
“Opportunity?” I asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Care to explain?”
“You have the chance to effect real change here,” Benji said as he slammed his hands down on the table with enough force to make his plate rattle. Startled and worried, Violet just slipped her hands around him and stole the plate. The son of Demeter didn’t even notice. He barrelled on with his impassioned speech.
“As an Olympic Office, you have a literal seat at the table. You get to be in the room where it happens. You can be a voice for the voiceless.” With each statement, Benji slapped one hand against the table for better emphasis.
“We have a voice,” Darren said as he rolled his eyes. “The problem is that they won’t listen to it.”
“But Cheyenne can use her privilege as a child of an Olympian to help now,” Benji said. He held out his hand, gesturing to me as if I was on display in a shop window. “This is the perfect opportunity that none of us will get again. Use it!”
My friend’s voice echoed in my head as I knocked on the General’s office door. I thought about how excited he had been for me, and how something welled in my chest like a balloon. Maybe some of his words had empowered me. I might actually be able to do good in this position.
However, the second the General opened the door, and I saw his scowl opposite me, all of those feelings of confidence flew away like startled flies.
The General was a large ma
n with his tree trunk sized legs and rounded upper body. He towered over me, not at much as Arges did, but the son of Zeus could give the cyclops a run for his money. He had a salt and pepper beard that covered his whole neck. This close to him, I could see that his nose had been broken at least twice, and there was a small spot on his face, up by his ear, where a patch of hair didn’t grow, as if he had been burned there.
As I stood so close to him, I realized that I knew very little about the leader of the Olympic Military. I didn’t know his history, what he had been like as a student. Nothing. I didn’t even know his real name, for Hades’s sake! He was always referred to as the General.
Suspicion crawled along my stomach like a parade of ants. I squinted my eyes at the demigod before me, not bothering to hide the change in my mood. The General caught on quickly, and his scowl deepened.
“Something wrong, Cheyenne?” he asked, his voice coming out as a growl.
“What’s your name?” I asked, a spike of boldness prompting my question. “Like, I get that everyone calls you the General, but that’s not what’s on your birth certificate. What is that name?”
The General grunted. Then he promptly turned and walked back into the office, leaving the door open for me.
I hadn’t really expected an answer, but it didn’t hurt to give the question a shot. So I shrugged and stepped into the General’s elusive office.
The first thing I noticed was the shrine to Zeus in the corner. A collection of lightning bolts made out of everything from cardboard cutouts, to metal, to little ceramic statues stood on a pedestal in the corner. In a bowl the size of a teacup, some of the Eternal Flame burned, releasing no smoke. An empty plate of food, with a few crumbs still on it, sat next to the bowl.
The rest of the office was dark and rather uninteresting. A single but full bookshelf sat behind his oak desk, which was completely clear save for a lamp and a stack of papers. There was one pen resting next to the papers and one of those forest green padded squares so that he didn’t write directly on the desk itself. The walls were bare, which was unnerving.
Two wooden chairs sat across from the desk. I took the one closest to the door out of instinct. I perched on the edge of it and folded my hands between my legs in an effort to stop my bouncing leg.
“The good news is that a lot of the duties of being an Olympic Official won’t fully apply until you graduate from the Academy,” the General said, jumping right in. He didn’t take a seat in his office chair as I had expected. Instead, the bulky son of Zeus paced back and forth behind the desk, leaving it as a barrier between us.
Wishing I had brought some kind of paper to write everything down on, I nodded. Part of me wondered if I could ask him to borrow some, but I refrained, biting on my own tongue to stop myself.
“You will be required to teach classes once you graduate,” the General continued, wrapping his hands behind his back. “However, lesson plans, office hours, and the like will not come into effect until that time.”
The General paused as if to consider something before moving on. “You will also be responsible for a staff of commanding officers that will report to you directly. You will consult with them on missions and battle plans. You will be required to visit their bases on multiple occasions throughout the year as well.”
The son of Zeus cleared his throat, putting a fist to his chest before speaking again. “However, if you complete the Ultimate Weapon, and end the war, that will be much less frequent.”
“So, what will I be doing now?” I interrupted. “Anything?”
“You will participate in the necessary ceremonies like the introduction at the start of each semester, as well as graduation,” the General said, ticking items off his list. “You will also attend all of the meetings each week.”
“There are weekly meetings?” I said in shock. I thought about the idea of having to sit in on those meetings while the Officials discussed things like whether to paint the armory pearl white or eggshell white.
“A lot goes on here in order to run the Military and the Academy,” the General said pointedly as he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye.
“Got it,” I grumbled.
“In order to account for this unprecedented new… event,” the General said, struggling to find the right word, “we will need to accelerate your studies so that you can graduate by the end of this semester.”
“You were serious about that?” I balked. “How do you expect me to do a year’s worth of work in a semester, while still taking the classes required for this semester? Oh and go to the meetings?”
“And still work in the forge,” the General added unhelpfully.
I pursed my lips together. “Seriously?”
“I thought you would be excited about that part,” the head of the Academy said, finally sitting down in his chair. He scooted it closer to the desk so he could rest his elbows on the top. “As you are the best blacksmith in the world.”
The last statement dripped with malice, and I rolled my eyes in response. “Are you ever going to let that go? I get it, you don’t appreciate my arrogance, but can’t we just agree already that I’m good at what I do?”
“I never said you weren’t a good blacksmith, Cheyenne,” the General said with a snort. “But the best in the world? I’m not sure.”
“Then who’s better?” I challenged, the nerves leaving my body in a flash. If there was one thing I did have confidence in, it was my skills as a blacksmith. No one could question that fact, and I never gave them a reason to. “Tell me, and I’ll prove it to you if I have to.”
“Your father,” the General said, overemphasizing every consonant.
I didn’t say anything, nor did I want to. I could have argued that Hephaestus was a god, and I was only a demigod, still mortal even. Of course, he would be better. But I didn’t say that. I said I was the best in the world, which to the General meant gods, mortals, and everyone in between.
“I think your theory on finding him is interesting by the way,” the General said, changing the subject so unexpectedly that I almost missed the sort of compliment he gave me.
“Thank you?” I wondered, still unsure if it was a compliment in any sense.
“It makes sense that the magic of the gods would be needed to defeat other gods,” the General continued as he pressed his intertwined fingers together so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Mortals don’t have a lot of influences over them.”
“That’s what the Ultimate Weapon is going to do for us,” I said. “Supposedly anyway.”
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the Ultimate Weapon once you manage to actually make it?” the General asked as he cocked his head to one side like a hungry bird. His eyes narrowed into slits so that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking by asking me this question. Not that I could ever tell what the General was thinking, anyway.
“That’s not my problem,” I answered right away. “I’m just supposed to make it. Someone else can wield it.”
“Have you given any thought as to who that someone should be?” the General wondered, an edge to his voice that I hadn’t detected before.
“I didn’t know I would get to choose that…” I replied hesitantly.
“You have to decide who to give the weapon to once you finish it,” the General said, as if this fact had been obvious all along.
“Really?” I asked with a slight protest in my voice. “I can’t just put it in a stone and say, ‘Whoever pulls it out will be king?’”
The General’s gaze narrowed on me, and I shrank back in my seat, realizing that I had done something wrong.
“Is this a joke to you?” the General asked, his voice sharp and loud as it echoed throughout the office. “Are the lives of your fellow soldiers, fellow demigods, a joke to you?”
“Sir, no, sir,” I said, slipping into my soldier’s replies because of the fear his glare continued to give me.
“This war has gone on too long, Cheyenne,” the Gen
eral snapped. “If we have a chance to end it, I’m not going to lose that chance because of Hephaestus’s untrained daughter, do you hear me?”
While fear was still at the forefront of my mind, clouding all my other emotions, something bugged me. It poked against the fog of fear, like a blinking lighthouse in the distance. Something in the way that he called me untrained and Hephaestus’s daughter, like he resented both of those things. Even though I knew the General disliked me, it was the first time he’d openly insulted me in that way.
Zeus and Hephaestus had a sordid history, considering that Hephaestus was only born as Hera’s retaliation on her husband for birthing Athena on his own. There were countless stories about the two male gods getting in one another’s way, never to help and always to harm. I resigned myself that the dislike carried down the bloodline to a feud between the General and me. But while that had always been a hunch, something in the way the General spoke my father’s name gave me more confidence in that hunch.
“What makes you think that I’m going to throw away that chance?” I challenged back, feeling the need to be defensive of not only myself but also of my father. “Have I given you any reason to think that I’m not loyal to the Academy or to the other demigods?”
The General didn’t answer right away. He reached up with a hand and stroked his beard as if considering my question. When he didn’t speak for a minute, I jumped back in.
“I’ve helped progress the war in our favor, even as a student,” I defended, no longer shrinking in my seat but sitting up straight. “I made alliances with the gods when they wouldn’t ever even visit the Academy before now. I’m responsible for the majority of the weapons out in the field right now. I even uncovered who was behind the whole war in the first place! I have no idea why you doubt me, but from where I’m standing, you have no reason to.”
A silence crackled between the two of us as if the General had released a bolt of lightning. I waited for him to speak with a challenging glare in my eye. My mother’s stubbornness came in handy in this situation. The General seemed to be using some of his own calming techniques because while his face was beet red, he didn’t talk. Finally, his hairy cheeks returned to their normal pale color before I ventured a question.