chapter one: a dark and not so stormy night

March 26th, 8:03 pm.
Bea Dalton walks through the forest, climbing over fallen trees and weaving around shrubbery. The sun has long set, leaving the only source of light in the form of a flashlight in her hand. Far away, she can hear the sounds of frogs as she nears the creek. Her kit, a small leather saddle bag, is slung over her shoulder. Why is she here? Well, its simple. The forest plus night equals trouble, and Bea Dalton lives for trouble. If only she knew how much trouble she'd be facing.

She can hear the sounds of frogs go louder, the only sign that she's actually nearing the creek. Her flashlight flickers a bit, and she pauses. She could've sworn she put new batteries in it. That's the first sign that something is not right. She can almost feel it, the sense of something to come, it raises the hair on her arms and makes her breathing so shallow that her lungs tighten. Something is telling her to turn around and run back. So she goes forward.

The light travels along the ground, only illuminating an area the size of a basketball, leaving the rest of the world in the embrace of darkness. She's afraid to make a sound now, and then her flashlight reaches the base of the tree. Something is telling her to look up, and she pauses, watching the light from the flashlight trace up the sides of the tree, until it meets flesh. In the light its almost white, all color drained from it. A hand, and then an arm, and finally a face. Eyes still open in shock, head flopped backwards. She knows this face. Her half brother, Alfred Thorsen. The light carries on past the tree, and suddenly Bea Dalton realizes theres another body. Blonde hair covered in dirt, eyes open, body half submerged in the creek. Astrid Thorsen. There are no marks on the bodies, no murder weapons laying around, just two bodies that used to hold life. No answers, just questions.

If this is a horror movie, Bea Dalton would've screamed by now. Except Bea Dalton does not scream. Instead she reaches into her bag, and pulls out a Polaroid camera, and begins to take pictures. Bea Dalton is a detective. She will approach this analytically. She will not cry, even though there are tears welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill over. She will solve this. She will find out what happened. Then, later, she can cry.

It had been a whirlwind of a trip. First Ophelia had been out on a combat mission for her legion. It had led her to the east coast of America where conviently the Greek Demigod camp would lay. She was about to finish up her mission, but she had some loose ends that she was still waiting on so she had some time to kill. That was when Ophelia decided to stay at Camp Half Blood, this would be where she met one of her Greek friends, one of her one and only friends actually. She was a daughter of Athena, something that didn't exist in New Rome. Children of Minerva didn't exist and even if they did she doubted that the legion would even be acceptable to them. Minerva wasn't viewed in the best lights it would seem.

Moments before they had come out to the forest she had been sitting down with Bea Dalton. She had been shuffling through her tarot cards, Ophelia loved her tarot cards and she loved connecting with the spirits when she could, it made her feel at home, especially when it felt like so many demons followed her, it was just easier to get in contact with good spirits to help her curse balance out and not have any role to play in the situation. As she had been shuffling her deck one of the cards fell out. It was the death card, which she didn't usually take lightly, but the death card wasn't an end all be all, it could actually just mean new beginnings and it could mean many things, but Ophelia didn't like the feeling she was getting. The daughter of Metus picked the card back up and put it in the pile and began to focus and channel her energy on the death card and the meanings the spirits were trying to send her.

As she continued to shuffle her deck some more she waited for cards to naturally appear or pop out to her again. She wanted to do a little reading to see what the spirits may be warning of. The moon and the justice card immediately fell out and landed in the reversed state and immediately she knew it wasn't a good idea. She sat on the floor of the Athena Cabin and continued to shuffle with her eyebrows furrowed together. The eight of cups shot out of the deck along with the ten of swords. Ophelia stopped shuffling and took a look at the cards and looked up to Bea, "The spirits aren't giving me good signs, there's some bad energy seeping in... We should go for a walk around camp." Ophelia wasn't sure what was happening or what even was happening, it could be anything but it could also be nothing.

Ophelia coudl contact the spirits and get their help, but it didn't mean anything sometimes. Every second was another second the universe could shift and change.

They eventually left and Bea Dalton was a ways ahead of her as they were walking around the camp, especially as they got to the forest. Bea had her flashlight out as she went walking off, it was as if she just knew where the paths were that or she was just really good at walking through the woods almost as if she belonged there. It wasn't long until she caught up to Bea Dalton and she realized why they had stopped, "Oh sh!t" she said looking at the scene in front of them.

"Well I guess you get to be Nancy Drew after all."

Bea straightens, wiping away the tears that have spilled over. She pulls the last Polaroid, shaking it and then putting it right into her bag. She doesn't want to look at it now, she doesn't want to look back at her half siblings, so she looks at Ophelia.

"We need to get someone." She says, and her voice shakes. She pauses, trying to compose herself a little more before saying, "Chiron or a counselor or someone."

She always wanted to investigate a murder. She had read so many books about murder investigations, she figured she'd be well prepared. She's not prepared for this though. She's not prepared to see her half siblings with their eyes still open, she's not prepared to have to face the fact that she'll never talk to them again. She wants to hit rewind, to go back and stop this from happening, but she knows she can't. Instead, she'll figure out who did this, and she'll make them pay.

She racks her brain, trying to figure out when she last saw the twins. She was talking to them earlier about something, she can't remember what exactly. It might not have been important, but she wants to remember every syllable, she wants that to be her final memory of them, not this.

It was a rush of things despite the moment being slow. Bea was taking photos of the scene as she had tears in her eyes, but when she turned to look at Ophelia it was like everything came at her at once. The still silent moment had broken and Ophelia knew she had to do something, death wasn't uncommon for Ophelia to be around, she had seen a lot of people die in her passed seventeen years of life, but it didn't make seeing dead bodies any easier.

"I feel like if we both leave the scene whoever or whatever did this will come back to clean up the mess or tamper with the mass amounts of potential evidence." Ophelia said as she looked over the scene in the forest. She knew the forest was riddled with monsters from what she had heard from some of the other campers, but she assumed if you went into the forest you knew what you were doing and you weren't going to be reckless. The two didn't look like they had been attacked by monsters, there just weren't any of the typical signs. "Do you want me to stay here or do you want to stay here?" Ophelia asked Bea.

"I honestly think I should stay here and you should go. I don't think being alone with this is good for you." The daughter of Metus was curious on whether she could get some answers from them even though they were dead. It was common that she would inflict terror in people, but part of her wondered if she could extract someone's terror from them, even if they were dead. It was doubtful and the thought of touching a corpse was madness in itself. "I could always take more pictures of the scene for you. "