Chapter 7

The chilled air hit my face as soon as I opened the door, making me more awake than I currently was.

Now that there wasn't glass separating me from the outside world, I could clearly see a thin, blue aura right in front of me. It spanned from my left to my right for what looked like miles. Grim apparently woke up because he opened the door with a depressed expression. He shambled over and muttered a few words to the other "searcher" and looked back at us. The girl and I had walked to the front of the van and waited for them to get out. The girl probably stood there because she was confused. I stood there so it looked like I didn't know what I was doing.

I mean that's half true, I didn't know what I was doing. Though I was pretty sure I knew where to go. Oh well.

I stopped my train of thought and practically threw my bag on my shoulder. It was heavy so I didn't want to carry it for long, thus I went over to the "searcher" who was driving and asked, "Where are we supposed to go?" I think it was a valid question, most people would just see pitch black in every direction.

The searcher only laughed softly and said, "Right over there, straight ahead." He pointed to the blue tinted barrier and I nodded. I started walking toward the aura with the girl beside me. The driver went back to presumably park the car while Grim followed behind us. It was rather odd since instead of normal shoes I could hear hooves clip-clopping on the ground.

I was a bit curious but didn't question it, I simply didn't care enough after all. The girl probably didn't register the sound as being odd, since she didn't look back.

We walked through the barrier and I realized several things. One; the camp was literally a camp, honestly expected something more like a town. Two; there was a fucking wall with lava pouring down it. Three; there were about twelve cabins in the center of the camp with what looked like eight more being currently built. They had what looked like a large bonfire in the middle of the circle of cabins.

Are these people psychopaths? Why is there so much fire? I put my questions to the back of my mind for later. They could probably be answered tomorrow. If they weren't, I may ask the ones that interested me the most but otherwise I wouldn't care much.

Grim ushered us forward towards the circle of cabins. He stopped in front of one, it looked by far the most normal out of the other ones. Besides looking a bit beaten up and having the number eleven on the front, that is.

"This is cabin number eleven, the Hermes cabin." He muttered gruffly. "You'll stay here until you're claimed. Pick any bunk that isn't taken, we'll go over orientation tomorrow." With that he walked away to god knows where. I wondered if he'd drank a ton of energy drinks when we'd first met or something.

I stepped up the stairs and opened the door. There were a few people sleeping but otherwise the cabin was completely empty. My hair felt a bit gross so I redid my ponytail as I stepped inside. I set down my bag by an empty bed in the corner. I took out my phone, charger, and earbuds and pocketed them.

Who knows if these psychopaths would look through your bag at night.

The girl set her bag down on the bed across from me. Neither of us seemed tired so I decided to ask, "What's your name?" She looked up at me slowly and grabbed a notepad and pencil from her bag. I looked confusedly at this as she wrote something down. She handed the notepad to me and then a look crossed her face. She scrambled back to her bag and grabbed a flashlight.

I took the light from her and looked at the paper. 'My name is Ophelia, I am mute. I didn't know if you knew sign language or not so I wrote this. :)'

I smiled a bit at the smiley face at the end and said, "Sorry I don't know sign language. My name is Charlie though." I cursed myself for not thinking to learn it, but it never occurred to me that I'd need it.

She told me she was from even farther away from camp than I was. She apparently attracted the attention of Ronan, who was the soft-spoken searcher who drove us. We talked a little for the rest of the night and fell asleep sometime around 4:00 AM.

I still think that this place might possibly be full of crazy people, but Ophelia is nice so hopefully I'll be okay.