In which they play capture the flag because I've overdosed on Percy Jackson in my lifetime. 

In the muggy evening, Darius and Dale Draven docked their heavy wooden boat and lugged barrel after barrel of flounder and snapper up to the kitchen staff of Leida Castle. The fisherman were hot and thirsty. Dale's bones ached in a satisfying way. He washed down the deck one bucketful of water at a time and locked the supplies in the ship's cabin before joining his father on the dock.

Darius towered above a crowd of fisherman all laughing at a joke he had told. His girthy hand took hold of Dale's shoulder. "You hungry?"

They went to the Toasted Monkey, a pub at which they ate whenever they had extra money, which was almost never. But this new job provided a much higher salary. Outside, the sky was the color of a grapefruit. The doors and windows of the pub were tossed upon, and Dale and Darius had barely gotten inside when Darius ran into more jovial friends. Dale did not feel like being noticed. He sat alone in a corner of the bar, quietly watching people.

Dale, I admit, had promise. I always enjoyed being in his head and was kind of disappointed that he only got one POV chapter in the rewritten series. 

A hooded bartender Dale had never seen before lurked behind the counter, drying glasses. "What are you having?" asked his faceless voice.

Dale shook his head. "I'm waiting on my father."

"Two hard root beers. His favorite."

Dale was not taken aback. Everyone in the Toasted Monkey knew Darius Draven. He inspected the crowd again and reached for a mug when it was plunked before him, but when he could not lift it, he looked to find the bartender still holding it down.

Dale could see nothing but disheveled hair and a short white beard poking out from below the purple hood. "Stop waiting," whispered the urgent voice. "That is all anyone is doing. They're coming. Five thousand of them. Three more sunrises."

"Dale!" boomed his father behind him.

Darius was plowing through the crowd. He dropped loudly onto a wooden stool. "Sorry about that. Oh, you got us drinks."

In the split second Dale's attention had been diverted, the bartender had left without a trace. Even the dishes he had been drying were now scattered about the counter, dirty again. Dale went mute, trying to process all this.

"What's wrong?" asked Darius in concern.

Dale passed his hand over his eyes. "I'm tired."

"Well, then." Darius pounded his back and handed him one of the frothing mugs. "This will fix you."

Dale did not taste most of what went in his mouth. Finally, as he came out of the confusion enough to realize that he was eating a meat and vegetable pie, he began to truly believe that his bizarre encounter had not happened at all. "We don't have to rush to get back. The little kids are playing a game tonight." Darius referred to everyone but Dale as the little kids. "We could maybe walk around and see some of the city for once."

After the meal, Darius lingered to tip and speak to the bartenders while Dale slipped out of the dark, smoky room. The sun was completely gone now. It was windy and the bay's constant slap could be heard from here. He looked to his left to watch a man and his dog trudge home. Then he turned back to the right, and there was the hooded stranger again.

This time, out of reflex, Dale nearly punched him. His arm was clutched. "Remember who you belonged to," the husky voice hissed.

Meaning Catharine. Because she was a hero in this version. All hail Catharine. 

"Ready to go?" said Darius from the doorway.

The man was gone again. The streets seemed darker. A newspaper tumbled about in the wind.

"Let's go back," said Dale.

"Back where?" Darius's large frame was descending down the street. He paused. "Back to the pub?"

"To the castle. We have to go back."

"We will. We've got the whole evening to enjoy first."

Dale ran after him, fighting an anxiety he didn't understand. "No. Right now. We have to go back."

Under the streetlights, Darius squinted at Dale. "What is—?"

"Please!"

"All right!" Darius held up his hands, his eyes baffled. "All right."

On the grounds of Leida Castle, capture the flag was in full swing. Anyone who was anybody in the kingdom was involved. (So Darius and Dale are nobodies?) The lesser royalty of the Eastern Shore, fourth and fifth cousins of Elowyn and Wescott, had traveled here to join the festivities and play for teams red and gold, the colors of the Leida Crest. Hollis and Patch, in gold belts, spent most of the game fashioning traps in which to snare the red team. Elsewhere, arrows twanged and swords crashed. Gabriel was a prison guard for the red team. Wescott and Elowyn were scouts for the gold team. The two Huntians were together now, in brambles, fully lost in the game.

Elowyn was focused on a win for the gold team. Wescott was more concerned with a loss for Gabriel Draven. For now, however, the gold team was hopelessly outnumbered. Half its members rotted away in prison, with Gabriel stalking back and forth like a tomcat. The flag lay somewhere beyond that. Wescott and Elowyn were preparing an ambush. "Don't worry with the flag. Just get our members first," whispered Wescott.

"If we get the flag, they're automatically freed," argued Elowyn. "The game will be over. You distract them near the prison. I'll sneak for the flag myself."

"Fine."

"Just distract them. Leave the heroics to me."

"Enough bloody talking," said Wescott, creeping to his feet.

Directly above them, impossibly high in a tree, Ren lay flat on a heavy branch, so silent a chipmunk flittered by without ever noticing her. She did not care much for team games, but she had heard every word. The trees of the Huntians' forest were so tightly packed together that she reached Gabriel without ever touching the ground.

"Elowyn's freeing the prisoners," she whispered. "Wescott's coming to distract you."

With a quick nod he unsheathed his sword and turned Caper back to the prison. "Hold them for me."

Ren took her sword into her right hand and flattened herself again, waiting. The forest felt like home. She breathed in and out against the bark. Above her head came the cry of a nightingale. Then came hurried footsteps. Ren sat up, thinking it was the Huntians, but Dale's head appeared and he stood breathing hard.

"Ren," he called. "Listen to me. Don't think I'm crazy. Something bad is coming."

Wescott and Elowyn ran up behind him, coming to attack Gabriel. They skidded to a stop when they saw Ren and waited to see what she would do. She lowered her sword and looked at Dale. They hurried onward.

To be fair, off-brand Gabriel deserves it and more. 

"Who told you?" Ren asked.

"A man in a hood." He dug his palms against his head. "He kept vanishing and reappearing. It's crazy but it happened."

From deeper in the woods came the noise of the prison charge. Ren heard Gabriel shout. Then the ground shook with liberated feet and Elowyn and Wescott came tearing out with the gold flag.

"Game over!" Wescott thundered to the scattered participants.

Gabriel shoved through the crowd. He whipped his hair out of his eyes and faced Ren glaringly. "Thanks for holding them back!"

Ren stood on a branch now. Her height gave her an abnormal boldness. "Someone in a hood told Dale that something bad is going to happen."

The crowd fell into a skeptical silence as a few people exchanged glaces. They heard a pinecone fall.

"So?" asked Gabriel.

"And you believed him?" added Wescott.

"I've never had a reason not to," Ren said quietly.

"Someone in a hood," Wescott scoffed.

Elowyn looked at Wescott, who met her eye and shrugged lightly. Then she looked at Gabriel. Something in her glance gave him his own sense of urgency.

"What about Edem?" he suggested to Dale. "He's a what's-it-called, a seer. Maybe he'll understand."

Ren reached the ground without making the slightest noise. She stood nearly shoulder to shoulder to Dale.

"You can talk to Edem," Gabriel said again.

"Right," said Dale. He faced the younger crowd surrounding him and felt entirely unassured.

The hot day's cumulonimbus clouds flared into a thunderstorm overnight. Ren half-slept through its explosive beginnings. Sable was a tight, shivering ball against her legs under the covers. Every dragon's roar of thunder shook the castle harder than the last and the wind howled like an injured wolf. Then Ren's door opened hard and Patch stood there, ghost-like.

"Shut the door behind you," she said groggily.

He closed the door and raced across the carpet and dove into bed. In the darkness he misjudged the distance and ended up on top of her. For a moment he remained there with his head against her heart.

"Everyone says I don't have a mom but they're lying," he said completely out of the blue. "You're my mom."

She folded her arms around him. "I'm your sister."

"But Elowyn said her mom takes care of you and sings and cooks for you. And so do you, so you're my mom."

Ren opened her eyes. "You had a mother, Patch. It's not me."

"No," he said. "I wasn't born but you adopted me."

She nudged on him until he sat up. In a bolt of lightning she saw his two big eyes. "Patch," she said. "You had a mother. She loved you very, very much."

"Did she love you very, very much?"

She saw his eyes again. They looked at each other.

"Maybe," Ren said finally.

"And she maybe loved me?"

"No. She definitely loved you. And Dale and Gabriel and Hollis."

Don't you find it, I don't know, ODD that Ren routinely defends her mom? 

I never knew WHAT Catharine was in this version. Was she mean or not? I hadn't even decided. I just made Ren feel guilty about whatever it was. 

Patch rolled over and rested his head onto a spare silk pillow. Together they listened to the gush of rain on the bay windowpanes.

"But she doesn't count," Patch whispered, sneaking in the last word.

In the morning, Dale went out under a drizzling sky to talk to Edem, who started and ended each day with his horse. He had barely begun talking when Edem was finishing the story. "Did he wear a purple cape?"

Dale nodded, trusting his strange intuition enough to ask, "Was it Brim?"

Edem stared straight ahead. "I don't know." He drummed his hand on the wall. "Brim has not contacted anyone in twenty years."

"I know. He went into hiding because I was born and ruined the prophecy. So why would he come to me?"

"I don't know." He sighed and patted his horse and went to stand in the doorway. He and Dale watched the rain.

"It's been a long time since I was able to see anything," said Edem. "Brim can hide things from whomever he chooses. But I believe you. You should talk to Caine. He's the head of our army." He corrected himself. "Or, he's acting as head of the army. Our real leader, Legion, a Bellican in disguise, ran back to Bellica and took our king with him."

Caine Weatherby was forty years old with a scarred face and occupied two rooms in the south end of the castle. He half-listened as Dale spit out his story. "He's a child of the Low Country! What on earth is he even doing here?"

"He's twenty years old and he works for the palace fisherman," replied Edem.

Caine waved that away. "He's serving staff. Why would a revelation be given to him?"

"I cleaned oysters on the Eastern Shore before I was called by Brim."

Dale interrupted. "I just want someone to believe me so I can get on with my job."

Both the men eyed him. Caine crossed the room to idly examine the maps on the walls. "Say this infallible message (there's your utter misuse of infallible for the day) is indeed true and we are overrun by the entire Bellican army. A tragedy would inevitably result. Would you go to war?"

"No," Dale said.

"So you have no intention of joining the Terradonian army?"

"I'm just trying to warn the army." The men did not move. Dale felt his own words, his too-loud voice, castigate his ears in the quiet. "I'm only a fisherman."

Caine sheathed his sword and held open the door. "Well," he said, his tone suddenly, significantly calmer, as if he had resigned to something, "we must inform King Daley, if danger is coming in only two days now."

It took only the remainder of the morning for details of Dale Draven's potential lunacy to race through the castle. Servants and aides stepped aside and whispered as he passed. At noon he stood before Conrad Daley, flanked by Edem, Caine, Gabriel, and Wescott. Conrad drank wine during the briefly. "It's madness!" He gesticulated wildly. "Some phantom tells you that the Bellicans are coming to harm us for no reason, and you BELIEVE it?"

"The Bellicans attacked us for no reason the night my father died. They attacked us for no reason just last week," said Wescott, oddly siding with the Dravens at the last minute.

"They ALWAYS have had a reason! They're bored! They're angry with the common people of Terradon! I may even go so far as to say they're angry at YOU!" He jabbed a finger at Wescott.

It was not the first time Wescott had been blamed for terror acts. But this time it made him angrier than usual. "I'm not king," he snapped at his uncle. "I'm not even of age to be king. I didn't ask to have blonde hair. The people coming here are terrorists. That's their only reason. And if the ordinary Bellicans hate us, maybe it's because our king has done nothing to help them."

I actually like Wes in this version. He's the only one I like basically. 

"The terrorists have come to depend on us to do nothing. We have to retaliate this time," Edem spoke up.

Conrad redirected his focus to Dale and Gabriel. "Is that what you two Low Countrians came here for? Seeking war?"

"No," said Dale.

"I want to go to war," said Gabriel.

*Imagines the real Gabriel saying this and splutters laughing* 

"Yes, of course you do," said Dale in utter annoyance.

"Wonderful, the red-head again," Conrad spat out.

Dale shoved Gabriel into the doorway. "You don't know what you're saying. War is the last thing you want," he whispered loudly.

"Caine," Conrad bellowed, adjusting himself comfortably in his chair, "call off any rumors the military may have heard. There will be no war."

Out in the hallway, Wescott turned to face Dale. "I believe you," he said with a wary glance. "But you better not be wrong."

"But what good is it if we can't do anything?" Gabriel asked.

The three of them lingered at the window that took up one whole wall. The outdoor air was humid as rainwater evaporated from the courtyard in hot sheets of steam. Hollis and Patch were down there now, kicking a ball and running around with sweaty hair, having no idea they laughed and played on the edge of an attack.

"My sister is good with books," said Wescott, watching the little boys absently. "Maybe she can find something. Maybe there's a prophecy about this, too."

Gabriel and Elowyn spent the rest of the day in the library, a cavernous three-story room with balconies and ladders and a stained-glass, domed roof. "These were all written by Edem." Elowyn unloaded an armful of dusty leather notebooks onto the table. "Things Brim has taught him, dreams Brim sent him, things like that. If Brim ever prophesied anything about this terrorist attack, it would be in here."

They split the stack in half and sat across from each other, searching. If Ren was a slow thinker, who never laughed, only smiled at Patch, only spoke when necessary, then Elowyn was her reverse. Everything she did was fast. Her eyes scanned each page before she shut the book and started on another one. "There's some weird stuff in here." She rubbed a tense spot in her neck. "Ghost ships, skeleton armies—"

"Everything but real people," Gabriel agreed.

Elowyn looked steadily at him. "Maybe it's something different this time. Maybe it's not people at all." She turned to tackle another book. "I never heard anything about this in school."

"I would love to go to school," Gabriel admitted.

Neither of them knew what to say, so they went back to working. "Know something I've never told anyone?" Gabriel blurted, staring awkwardly into his book. "I almost want to be a teacher. But not a regular teacher. I mean a teacher who changes things."

"Like what?"

"Like..." He reached into the corner of his mind he rarely paused to access. "I mean, let the students decide what they want to learn." He looked at Elowyn. "No one has ever asked me what I want to do. If I didn't have to stay with Ren and guard the house, I'd be sent off to a fishing boat."

"I don't want to stay at this castle all my life," Elowyn burst out. "I hate it sometimes. Hate it most of the time. I want to go somewhere no one here has ever seen. Have you heard about the Highlands, what people think are bred there--"

"The dragons!" Gabriel interrupted in an excited tone.

"Yes! The ones they bred with Phoenixes--""

"They can fly and catch fire, and they're reborn out of the ashes--""

They talked until hours after dinner time, not once looking at the clock, and finally found the others in a large lounge room surrounded by the guest bedrooms. Ren, Dale, Edem, and Wescott were seated at a table, Ren eating Winter's steak bone stew. Patch was on the floor playing with the toys he had abducted while Hollis watched fish in a tank. "We should go back to the beach," he was saying. "But I still have sand in my teeth from last time." (Did you even brush them?) 

Elowyn laughed at that. "Get used to it."

Gabriel dropped into a chair beside Dale. "We found nothing," he said. "We must have read a hundred books."

"Would have been nice if this 'hooded man' offered a few more details," said Wescott, beginning to look doubtful again.

"I think the red-finned ones have conspiracies against the black-finned ones. They keep bullying each other," Hollis said to them, still watching the fish.

The older boys pretended to ignore him. But Elowyn laughed.

Hollis latched on to whatever attention he could get. "You'll see what I mean. I'm going to do a story about it."

"I'm doing the pictures," added Patch.

"Good," Edem said kindly. "Bookmaking, that's a lost art."

"You boys go play somewhere else," Dale told them.

"Get ready for bed," said Ren.

With Hollis and Patch gone, the atmosphere grew grave. Wescott turned his attention to the map on the table. "It does take three days to reach us from Bellica. That would be correct."

They could talk all day long, which they had, but nothing was solved. Edem went away to bed. Dale, Gabriel, Wescott, and Elowyn headed down the hall together, still plotting. And Ren was left tired, alone, and unnoticed, thinking of a battle. If one truly did come here.

She went into the blue guest room where the little boys were in bed and sat the end of it. "I love you, Patch," she said. (No mention of Hollis.) 

"Are the Bellicans coming here? Is that what you're talking about?" Hollis asked uncertainly.

"They won't hurt you," said Ren. "And how could you be scared? You're a troll-killer."

"I'm not scared of trolls or bears," said Hollis, "only people."

He did not look assured. Ren gave in to her weariness and laid down next to the boys, listening to the comforting sound of their breathing.

"Do we live here permanent now?" asked Hollis.

"I don't know," she said, half into the mattress. "Why?"

"I miss Fox Hollow."

There was nowhere she wanted to be more than home, in her own bed, with the boys secure in the next room, listening to the running water and the wind and the night birds. "Let's just try to get some sleep."

"Sing," said Patch.

She rolled over. "One evening as the sun went down," she sang, and then stopped.

Patch would not give up. "And the jungle fire was burning," he answered.

Ren relented and kept going, singing the words she had sung to Patch on his first night of life. She felt eleven years old again. The little boys slept but Ren kept her eyes open. As the yellow moon set, the Bellicans were moving swiftly across the black surface of the sea and she was whispering the lonely song to herself in the darkness, and the little boys dreamed through it all.