Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2014 1:25:31 GMT -8
with dreams to be a King, first- one should be a man,
I call them out and charge them all with a life that is a lie,
and in their final hour they shall confess before they die
It wasn't like legionnaires got a lot of time to themselves in the first place. Rome was a harsh mistress, turning demigods into precise weapons that would protect the citizens. Reyna had sworn her life into the legion, first as a member of the First Cohort, and then as a Praetor. She had become accustomed to having no time to herself as praetor. Leaders were considered royalty - Reyna had never been required to return her purple cloak - and there was no luxury attached to the station. Making decisions that controlled the fates of hundreds of demigods could drive a girl to drink. The most tempted Reyna had ever been was during the negotiations of the current treaty between Camp Half Blood and Camp Jupiter, when her advisers would have preferred to go to war.
For Reyna, the best form of stress release involved weapons. As a daughter of Bellona, she was particularly gifted with weapons, and over her five years at Camp Jupiter, she had become legendary with a knife. Her Obitus fit her palm as comfortably as her favorite sneakers fit her feet, its shape as familiar as her own eyes in the mirror. When her stomach turned too hard, stress cracking across her shoulders from constant vigilance, Reyna turned to the arena. There wasn't a demigod in the legion who wouldn't test their mettle against a former Praetor at least once, from probatio looking to gain credibility to demigods she had commanded during the march on Orthys.
Her problem was that she ignored the signals of her body when she wanted to lose her worries. She had lasted against titans, monsters, and primordial beings in battles that lasted hours. Fighting for her life was not new - hadn't been new since her father was killed by drug cartels in Puerto Rico and she and Hylla had gotten through Scylla and Charybdis to find Circe's island. It was supposed to be a day of rest - many demigods were visiting family, or shopping somewhere outside of New Rome. Instead of relaxing, Reyna put herself through endless drills.
Breakfast and lunch were skipped, ignored in favor of pushing herself harder. If she could just - there had to be a point at which her brain shut off, when she stopped seeing everything. The curse of a demigod - never being able to ignore something in favor of what she wanted needed to see. Broken brains, that's what they all had. Broken brains, parental issues, and somehow they were supposed to keep fighting monsters that previous generations had already conquered.
Reyna spun on the ball of one foot, moving her knife in a stab pattern, covering herself with the shield on her arm. Her transition was not as seamless as it had been hours earlier; she was getting sloppy. Her braid swung behind her, its weight colliding with her shoulder as she moved.
Obitus
Ensemble
Word Count 482
Tag Kyle West
