Demigods and Dimensional Warps

Peleus! Down Boy!

A/N: This chapter also starts with Adele and Raya, just to let you know. Carry on.

There was a strange magic trace all around the building. Looking up, she couldn't even see the top of it. The sun definitely didn't help. Adele sighed and kept walking. Whatever was going on with that building, it wasn't going to help her.

With her eyes shielded from the glare, she didn't even see the person in front of her until it was too late. Someone rushed out of the building in a panic and ran straight into her.
"Ow!" Adele cried out as she fell back.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." The person she had run into grimaced and held out a hand to help her back up. "That was my fault. I'm not from around here so I didn't know what I would see when I came out of that skyscraper."

"No, it's my bad. I should have seen you coming." Adele rubbed her head. Then she paused. The person in front of her definitely had plant magic, and a strong kind at that. Maybe third stage. "You said you weren't from around here?"

"No. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. My story isn't very common either." Adele's head snapped up and looked around. There was a cold presence, the kind she associated with devil magic. "Let's find somewhere else to talk."

———

Never in her life had Raya expected that she would be led around a city by a complete stranger. The other girl seemed wary. Though her left hand was occupied in dragging Raya around, her right kept drifting to the book she kept on her right hip. Despite her unease, she seemed to have a sense of exactly where she was going as the two of them left the city.
"Hey, uh, you never did tell me your name. Mine is Raya Tempest. You?" Raya started awkwardly. The other girl didn't answer. "Hey!"

"Sorry, did you say something?" she responded, stopping.

"I wanted to know your name."

"Oh. It's Adele. Adele Novachrono."
"I'm Raya." She didn't want to bother with saying her full name again. Adele adjusted her cloak. At least, Raya thought it was a cloak. It was short, only falling to about her mid-back. It was pitch black with gold trim and a stylized bull on the front.

"Come on, this isn't a good place to talk." Adele kept dragging her on.

"Mind telling me what's wrong?" Raya asked, peeved.

Adele looked around nervously. "I have this overwhelming feeling that we're being watched, and by something malicious. When I extended my mana sense, I was able to find a large, concealed area. I was kind of hoping that we'd be able to hide there for a bit. Surely, you can feel that presence?"

Raya shook her head. "No, I can't sense anything."

Adele looked confused then abruptly smacked herself in the head. "Right, we aren't from the same place. This all felt so natural that I forgot."

"You drag people around often to places only you can sense?"

"I do when it's Asta I'm dragging around." Adele muttered back. The girls kept moving. In the distance, there was a single pine tree on top of this hill. Something glittery hung in the branches and there was a coil of cable underneath. They were heading straight for it. Then she could have sworn she saw the cable move.

"Adele, wait!" Raya exclaimed. Her hand pulled out of Adele's as she stopped. The cables were definitely moving. No, not cables, coils of a dragon. "Be careful!"

"What?" She asked, turning back as the dragon reared up in front of them. They had gotten so close that the dragon didn't even have to leave the tree to attack. Had she been any slower, Adele would have been bitten in half by that dragon. Instead, she leaped back and the book on her hip floated up to meet her hand, open and ready. Raya grabbed a small branch off the ground and changed its form into that of a sword. Good thing she had gotten all those beatings trying to learn from that old man.

———

Opal had been confined to the cave for the past two days. The funny thing about painting her visions out was that she lost all sense of time, caught between the present and the future. Once, she had spent an entire week painting with no breaks and she would have continued if Teague hadn't barged into her room and dragged her out to the dinner table.

Something new was happening. Something urgent. So urgent there was no time to paint it out and see what it meant. "Hey!" She finally poked her head outside. "You. Go send a message to Isabel or Katie that the dragon is attacking the new other-worlders." Opal ordered the closest person.

Abby had been minding her own business when the so-called "prophecy loophole" poked her head out of her cave and ordered her to send a message to Isabel and Katie. If she hadn't been on her way to the training arena already, she probably would have asked someone else to send the message.

So she made her way down to the archery range where the two of them were shooting. "Hey!" Abby called to get their attention. "Opal says that some new other-worlders are being attacked by 'the dragon'." She didn't quite know what that meant, but there was a frightful roar in the distance.

———

Isabel's concentration broke at the sudden voice behind her, causing her to completely miss the target and hit a tree instead. That dryad was not going to be happy. She whipped around to see Abby and a plume of fire in the distance, "Schist... guess we need to go calm down a dragon."

The three of them ran across camp to Half-Blood Hill where sure enough, two otherwolders were fighting the guardian of the golden fleece. "Peleus! Down, boy!" she ordered the dragon. He looked at her, then back to the otherworlders and growled.