Thanks for keeping up with this rather sporadic poster, and for being willing to beta-read my fanfiction, The Gamble of Orpheus. So first, a few general tips and guidelines about the fanfiction:
- The Gamble of Orpheus is intended to be a full-length fanfiction of at least 50,000 words. Also, it is a sequel to a previously written work, The Son of Hestia. I will be happy to email the prequel to those of you who might be interested, but it is not necessary to read the works in order to follow the plot of either one.
- The Gamble of Orpheus contains the following additions/inconsistencies with the PJO canon:
- Children of the Big Three, though rare, are possible.
- The exception to the "Demigods can't use technology" rule is known as "godly immunity": if a half-blood is using technology to exercise a godly ability, he or she is shielded from the effects. As soon as the technology is no longer necessary to help with the godly ability, it attracts monsters again.
- The virgin goddess, Hestia, has claimed certain heroes (demigod and mortal) as her children. Together, these chosen by the goddess form a loose network of communication across the United States.
The ancient Greek myths are back, if anyone's there to watch them play out. Alex is Orpheus. Lauren is Eurydice. Kira is missing. And James is just about to lose it. Can an ending be rewritten thousands of years later? Can a teenager bargain with the Lord of the Dead? And can all four half-bloods stay alive long enough to see the end of the story? Not if the gods of Olympus have anything to say about it.
And here's the first two chapters (more to come later); enjoy! Please see the guidelines below the excerpt for feedback procedures before commenting. Thanks!
The Gamble of Orpheus
¨
The stars declare that all is well
Searching not the depths of hell
Where empires crumble, lives are lost
For a game of dice the demons tossed
¨
I hesitated in front of the heavy
gray door to which Lazarov had directed me. Then I knocked. Might as well get it done and over with.
“Come on
in, James”, a familiar voice rang out, cheerful in direct contrast to the cold,
forbidding efficiency of its surroundings.
“Lyra?”
I asked, opening the door and staring like an idiot, in disbelief. Sure, I had
known that Lyra served as one of the lab school’s student mental health
researchers, but somehow, I hadn’t connected that to this for so long.
She
peered at me over the rims of her green-framed glasses and grinned in
amusement. The purple streaks in her dark hair glistened in light of the
sunbeams streaming in through the half-closed window.
“That’s
Ms. Kazantzakis to you”, she corrected with a quirk of her jaw. “Lazarov made
sure I’d be filling in your preliminary mental health form. So come on in,
let’s get this out of the way.”
“Isn’t
your specialty computer science?”
“Well,
technically. Digital communications, to be exact.”
“So
you’re not exactly qualified to—“
“Please,
James”, she interrupted. “Were any of those previous quacks qualified?”
Unbidden,
memories of previous counseling sessions and mental health forms whirred
through my mind. The student researcher who insisted on asking me a series of
questions about my mom, even though I told him again and again that I had no
idea who she was. He had diagnosed me with the infamous ‘anger issues’ just two
sessions later when I yelled at him to stop asking about my mom.
“I guess
not”, I admitted, “but it’s not like I made their lives any easier than they
made mine.”
“What
kind of world would it be if people went around making people’s lives easier?”
Lyra mused. “Reality TV would disappear altogether.”
“Cynical.”
“Stalling.”
“I’m not
stalling, Lyra.”
But I
was. Even though I knew this little interview was just a preliminary that
neither of us would take seriously, I hated to become the patient again.
“You can
leave the door open, James. It’s stifling in here.”
She
looked at the chair across from her, then at me pointedly.
I left the door ajar and crossed to
the other side of the room in four steps, settling into the hard-backed chair.
It was too short for me, so Lyra waited patiently while I folded my legs under
it.
Then she handed me the manila
folder in her hand, one that I’d seen many times before in the school
counselor’s office.
“And before you say it; yes, I know
that students aren’t allowed to look inside their own folders. As long as we’re
having an illegal little therapy session, we might as well be totally illegal
in the way we go about it.”
“Spoken like a true Hermes kid”, I
lauded her.
“Oh, wait till you see the inside.”
I flipped it open and squinted at
the tiny print; which in addition to being ant-sized to ants, was faded as if
from repeated handling to the point that some spots were beginning to run.
“Someone loves reading about me”, I
observed.
“Oh, they all do”, Lyra answered.
“You’re the talk of the student research department. Chris, our head counselor,
calls you a ‘mystery wrapped inside an enigma, seasoned with a healthy dose of
devil-may-care attitude’. Thankfully, I convinced him to let me make you my
special project.”
“Should I be scared or relieved?”
“Just keep reading the rest of the
file.”
So I did, growing more confused
with each line I read. There was no mention of my ‘anger issues’, my ‘family
problems’, my ‘strained relationship with my father’, or any of the other
things previous student counselors had identified.
“You
rewrote my file”, I told Lyra, and she understood that the statement was a
question.
She
nodded.
“Yes, I
did. James, I’m convinced that someone in the counseling staff is out looking
for demigods. With your true file, the ADHD, anger issues, or whatever else
could be enough of a trigger for them to seek you out. I doctored Alex and
Kira’s files as well, just in case. The real documents are safe with me, but
these dummy files will keep you guys safe for the time being.”
If you don’t do anything stupid;
the tone of her voice carried an unspoken warning.
“Flip to
the last pages”, she instructed. “I marked them with a blue sticky-tab.”
I found
the tab and peered at the date on the top of the page.
“This is
a transcript of today’s mental health consultation, Lyra. A conversation that
never happened.”
“That’s
where you’re wrong, James. This conversation, the one we’re having right now,
never happened. You remember the mental health consultation that I recorded in
your folder. All those responses that prove you’re qualified to TA for Lazarov
next semester and then graduate from this miserable place. You remember every
response you made perfectly. Or you will by Monday morning when I need this
back so I can turn it in to Chris that afternoon.”
“Got
it.”
I placed
the folder between the pages of my chemistry textbook inside my backpack.
“See ya
Monday, Lyra. And thanks for saving my sorry butt, I guess. Again, that is.”
“Not for
the last time, I’ll warrant.” She sounded annoyed, but she couldn’t keep a
smile from breaking through her scowl.
I smiled
back and stepped out of the room with a wave. My hollow footsteps were the only
thing I heard as I walked back down the tiled hallway, back the way I came.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I could
tell myself that it hadn’t always been this way. That a few months ago I was a
normal kid, just trying to make it through my junior year of high school
without proving to be a complete and utter disappointment. But self-deception
isn’t particularly useful, no matter how comforting it is at the time. The
truth is, my fate was out to get me sooner or later. It had just happened to be
sooner, that’s all.
After seventeen years of living a
somewhat normal life, I had learned that the man who’d raised me that whole
time was not actually my father, that my mother was alive and living under a
slew of false identities, that my best friend was a son of the Ancient Greek
god of music and drama, and that the girl I’d had feelings for since the
beginning of the school year was a kleptomaniac with a talent for breaking and
entering inherited from her father, the god of thieves. As if that wasn’t
enough to turn my brains inside out, I’d also participated in a heist in which
everything went wrong, yet we still managed to reunite my mom and my adopted
dad, get a fugitive from the Russian mob safe passage to Canada, and plan a
wedding in the aftermath of the whole operation. I liked to think that this
meant my chances of ever having a normal life again were pretty much
nonexistent.
And yet, in the months after the
heist, life had sunk back into an approximation of ‘normal’, whatever that
meant. I had stopped looking over my shoulder wherever I went, suspecting each
passerby to be more than they appeared. Looking back on it, I regret that I
wasn’t as vigilant as I should have been. The truth is, I was tired. Tired of
constantly suspecting that everyone I met had it out for me, tired of searching
for double meanings and hidden truths everywhere, tired of forging my own path
instead of plodding down the one that had been marked out for me, and which I
had rejected almost a year ago.
Monday morning found me dutifully
trudging along to Grantham Lab School at the ungodly hour of six o’clock in the
morning to open up the building, checking each bathroom and trashcan before the
place opened for the day. It had been my job for the last two years and now I
made my rounds mechanically, my mind far away from the mundane tasks at hand.
As usual, Kira was waiting for me
on one of the benches that lined the open area leading to the school, formally
known as the Concourse but mockingly called a variety of things by student
bodies throughout the years ranging from “The Highway” to “Lover’s Lane.” This
year, in homage to the school play, Little
Shop of Horrors, which had garnered the school notice in the local news,
the walkway was unofficially known as “Skid Row”.
“You’re late”, she announced as
soon as I stepped within earshot, checking the ancient-looking pocket-watch she
always kept in her pocket. “By six minutes and counting.” This was the kind of
sweet, romantic greeting I had grown to expect from Kira in the months we’d
been together.
Inadvertently, I felt the corners
of my mouth pull upwards into a dumb grin.
“Your watch is early”, I countered.
“By six minutes and counting. Should’ve left it in the eighteenth century where
it belongs.”
She stuck out her tongue at me in
response. Typical.
“Here”, she continued, handing me a
lidded paper cup with steam wafting from it. “Since you’re basically useless in
the mornings till you’re properly caffeinated.”
“Thanks”, I replied, taking the cup
from her hand and sipping from it experimentally. The coffee was excellent.
I sat down next to Kira on the
bench and sighed.
“Where’s the file?” she asked,
prodding me with her elbow.
“Fully committed to memory. I
returned it to Lyra last night.”
“Nice.”
We sat in silence for some time on
the bench, looking out at the pale winter sunrise and feeling no need to say
anything. Then Kira sighed, abruptly rising from the bench.
“I don’t like this”, she muttered.
“I don’t like this at all.”
“By which you mean what, exactly?”
“This. All of this”, she answered,
waving her arms around to indicate just about everything. “It’s too quiet. It’s
like the heist never happened at all.”
I puzzled over that for a while.
“Isn’t that what we want, though?
The less people remember the heist, the more chance we have of, like, staying
alive and stuff.”
“Absolutely not. We have little
enough chance as it is. That heist was calculated to be extravagant, showy, and
unreasonable. Lyra knew someone was on our trail from the get-go and the heist
theatrics were meant to lure them out into the open.”
“And here I was thinking you guys
were just trying to help me find my mom.”
She glared at me, her eyes glinting
dangerously like daggers.
“Wallowing in self-pity suits you
even worse than your normal snarkiness, James.”
“Because using me instead for your
own purposes without telling me, while dangling my own mother over my head to
get me to cooperate, suits you just fine, doesn’t it?”
I stood up then too, facing her,
and she tilted her face upwards to meet my eyes with her darkly flashing ones.
Looking down at her, I knew then that we had nothing left to say to each other.
“Thanks for the coffee, Kira”, I
told her as I turned and left, stopping only to unlock the heavy double-doors
of the school before making my way inside. My footsteps sounded hollow behind
me.
..................................................................................................................................................................
And that's it for now, folks! Please leave feedback in the comments. If you're not sure what to talk about, please start by rating each of the following elements in these first chapters from 1-5 (with 1 as the lowest and 5 as the highest): Grammar and Mechanics, Opening, Character Development, World-Building, Word Choice and Usage. Feel free to include other constructive criticism and to cite direct quotes from the chapters if you point out specific things. Thank you so much!
--Clara
Email me the prequel please.
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