Losing Love (And Lyres) {Private for Beanie}

Malcolm was running for his life. This was a stupid idea. He thought to himself. The girl ahead of him, the one he was chasing after, seemed to be intently running through the swarms of zombies into the Athena cabin. Malcolm pushed his way through the awful hoards of zombies, moaning their heads off, literally.

He had left seconds after her, but yet the zombies seemed to be closing in as night approached.
”Wait!” Malcolm screamed as fast as he could, hacking and slashing his way through the mob of the undead. His sword slashed through as many zombies as Malcolm could find. Although Malcolm killed most, he wasn’t aiming for their heads like he should in a real fight, which he was in.

After years of hacking training dummies to pieces, Malcolm had a pretty good aim. Yet, as he fought his way across the courtyard, Malcolm realized that bones weren’t as easy to destroy as the straw figures that were used during training. Malcolm had continually more difficulty pulling his sword out of the now permanently dead undead.

Malcolm didn’t have much experience with zombies. In the last few hours, he had barely had to do anything but run. As he was in the cabin when the zombie attack struck, Malcolm had a fair amount of time to grab all the things he needed and head over to the Ares cabin before he became in danger of being killed.

Finally, after around 20 yards of being outnumbered by an army straight from hell, Malcolm was almost able to reach out and grab the girl who so stupidly had run out of the Ares cabin.
”You forgot your weapon!” He said, drawing another sword from his belt with his left hand and attempting to hand it to her.

Why was he here? Why did he follow a girl that he barely knew across a camp full of the undead? This was the question that was eating away at Malcolm as he stared at the girl. She was pretty, he realized. Malcolm didn’t normally take note of appearances, since he normally looked like he had been asleep right until that moment, but in this dire situation, Malcolm started noticing little things that wouldn’t normally matter to him.

He didn’t want to play hero. Malcolm didn’t believe in fairy tales, and this most certainly wasn’t one. That wasn’t it. As he sliced through the zombies, Malcolm thought. In his heart he knew why he was here. It wasn’t anything to do with the girl standing to his left on the porch of the cabin. It was about the goddess who’s presence dominated this tiny portion of camp. Athena.

Her words from the solstice visit at the beginning of the summer still rang in Malcolm’s ears. ‘You will always be ruled by your heart and not your head. You will not be able to overcome your impulsive nature.’ Malcolm could picture the pitied expression that Athena had given him. He wasn’t good enough for her. He needed to prove himself to his mother. Malcolm knew that one clever situation wouldn’t be enough for Athena. Malcolm desperately needed his mother’s approval. And, yet again, he had proved her words to be right. Running after some random girl and putting both of their lives in danger.

Malcolm didn’t know why he still put so much faith in a goddess that barely answered back. He told his mother tons of things, muttered as a good night message. He hoped that she could hear him. She was all he had, and even if she was a crappy mom sometimes, Malcolm still believed in her. That, and his few friends (namely Annabeth), was the reason he was still at camp and not with Kronos.

”I’m Malcolm.” He bashed the head of a zombie that was getting far too close to him to be safe. ”And you?”