The horn echoed through the forest. The call to start the match.
Thalia's red team disappeared into the trees, melting like ghosts into the underbrush. Clarisse's blue warband surged forward, loud and proud, followed by the other campers which split into groups and slunk into the forest.
...
Clover and his siblings dragged themselves through the forest, guided by a voice that came through a small floating rainbow.
"Ahead is a small group of four, they are coming up on you."
The children of sleep stopped and decided to hide, and soon the group from the blue team came.
The Hypnos children exchanged glances before nodding, and silently cast their powers. A blue team member at the back of the group suddenly blinked and rubbed their eyes, yawning.
"Stay focused," her friend muttered.
"I... I am," came the sleepy reply, but her grip on her spear slackened.
She stopped paying attention to her surroundings and just followed those ahead, beside her, her friend; a child of demeter seemed to pick up something strange but before he could speak out his attempt at a cry of warning turned into a loud yawn, and like his friend his eyelids began to become heavy.
From behind them, Clover reappeared. He tapped one on the shoulder, just once.
The boy collapsed mid-step.
The other spun, but by the time her spear started rising Clover had vanished, seemingly absorbed by the shadows of the trees and hiding once again, instead another hand came from behind, bringing the girl into the world of dreams, another child of Hypnos had acted.
The two ahead seemed to hear the dropping and turned, spotting the two teammates sleeping on the ground, one of them seemed to understand, hearing the snoring of his teammates, and warned his friend, "It's Clover-"
Before he could finish his warning, they were gripped by tiredness and in that split second, the stoll brothers leapt out from the trees above and knocked them down, ending their participation in the game.
Seeing themselves having succeeded, the stoll brothers smirked at each other and reached into their pockets, revealing the lipstick they had recently stolen from the camp store. They stood over the two downed members of the blue team and started writing on their faces.
Clover stepped out from behind a tree with his siblings, watching the Stoll brothers mess around, but before he could tell them to stop it seems the voice through the rainbow beat him to it.
"Travis. Connor. You best not be messing around. Thalia's not going to be happy when she finds out."
Travis didn't stop, calling out to the rainbow "Butch, relax. As long as no one speaks of this, we can just say it was a different sibling."
Connor nodded, laughing along. "Yeah, who's to say it was us, you know how much our siblings love pranks."
Clover ignored the brothers and looked up to see an eagle flying down and perched on a tree branch, watching over them.
Connor was mid-lipstick mustache when the eagle above let out a piercing screech.
"Was that a warning?" Travis asked, squinting up at the eagle.
"It's fine, probably a random eagle," Connor replied, then paused. "Unless Thalia told her bird to watch us."
"She wouldn't," Travis muttered.
The bird screeched again.
"She definitely did," Connor sighed, pocketing the lipstick.
The stoll brothers turned on each other, blaming the other brother for the prank.
...
Caleb crouched behind a fallen trunk, whispering something low in Old Greek. His fingers moved through a small wooden hive he carried with him, coaxing life from within. A low hum emerged, then multiplied.
Over his shoulder, there too was a rainbow.
"A group of Apollo campers are approaching."
Caleb didn't answer, still communicating with his bees. The Apollo campers seemed to hear him as they drew their bows and locked their arrows, aiming towards the fallen trunk.
"Whoever is there, come out, you're surrounded." Their leader commanded.
Two hands rose from behind the fallen trunk. Caleb stood up and stepped out from his cover, he sidestepped around, keeping the campers in sight. One of the Apollo campers lowered their bow and stepped forward with some rope in hand, intending to secure Caleb as a prisoner and take him out of the game, but that's when the buzzing came.
The swarm of bees hit like smoke with teeth. Not normal bees either, they were larger, faster. They dove toward eyes, stung the backs of necks, swarmed inside armor gaps. Screams broke out as the blue team panicked, dropping their bows and trying to take off their armor, patting themselves and swinging their arms around to try and get rid of the bees.
One girl screamed and sprinted directly into a bush. Another fell to her knees, face buried in her cloak. The leader tried to rally, shouting commands, but a drone slipped into his ear and his words turned into shrieks. The formation dissolved in seconds.
Caleb watched as his bees took down the blue team, and smiled. Proud that his hive that he treated like his own family could accomplish this task.
"Honestly, just hearing them has caused goosebumps to cover my arms."
Behind him, he was joined by a group from the Hermes cabin. They were here to ambush the archers while distracted by the bees but it seemed they were not needed.
"Honestly this is terrifying," One of them said before his eyes brightened. "I have a brilliant idea, we can use your bees to prank the Demeter cabin."
That seemed to recover the attention of the other children of Hermes and they turned to Caleb with hope in their eyes. They started talking over each other, inviting the child of Aristaeus to join them in their chaotic plans.
...
Butch, perched on a high limb of a tree, had multiple rainbows floating around him. His lips moved nonstop, calling out the locations of the blue team. He muttered, "If they all talk at once again, I'm letting them get caught."
He glanced to his side where his two siblings were manipulating prisms to reflect sunlight, allowing them to cast their gaze across the forest, though not entirely accurate, as there were places the sunlight couldn't reach, they could see most of the forest, and with such an unexpected and unknown method, the children of Athena wouldn't have any counter-measures.
One image shimmered to life, a blur of bronze moving beneath ferns. "North quadrant, five targets. Moving fast."
Butch relayed it down to the Hermes line. Aiming to meet up with the Dionysus twins to take out the squad.
His sibling tapped the prism with his knuckle. "Ten drachma says the twins don't need the trio."
"I'll take that bet." Another called out.
Butch let out a tired sigh.