The Tyrant's Tomb

“The legion will fight them, though, right?” a faun asked nervously. “I
mean, they might win.”
“C’mon, Reginald,” a dryad chided. “You want to depend on mortals to
protect us? When has that ever worked out?”
The others muttered assent.
“To be fair,” Lavinia cut in, “Frank and Reyna are trying. They’re
sending a small team of commandos out to intercept the ships. Michael
Kahale, and few other hand-picked demigods. But I’m not optimistic.”
“I hadn’t heard anything about that,” I said. “How did you find out?”
She raised her pink eyebrows like, Please. “And of course Lester here
will try to summon godly help with some supersecret ritual, but…”
She didn’t need to say the rest. She wasn’t optimistic about that, either.
“So what will you do?” I asked. “What can you do?”
I didn’t mean to sound critical. I just couldn’t imagine any options.
The fauns’ panicky expressions seemed to hint at their game plan: get
bus tickets to Portland, Oregon, immediately. But that wouldn’t help the
dryads. They were literally rooted to their native soil. Perhaps they could go
into deep hibernation, the way the dryads in the south had. But would that be
enough to enable them to weather a firestorm? I’d heard stories about certain
species of plants that germinated and thrived after devastating fires swept
across the landscape, but I doubted most had that ability.
Honestly, I didn’t know much about dryad life cycles, or how they
protected themselves from climate disasters. Perhaps if I’d spent more time
over the centuries talking to them and less time chasing them…
Wow. I really didn’t even know myself anymore.
“We have a lot to discuss,” said one of the dryads.
“Peaches,” agreed Peaches. He looked at me with a clear message: Go
away now.
I had so many questions for him: Why had he been absent so long? Why
was he here and not with Meg?
I suspected I wouldn’t get any answers tonight. At least nothing beyond
snarls, bites, and the word peaches. I thought about what the dryad had said
about not trusting mortals to solve nature-spirit problems. Apparently, that
included me. I had delivered my message. Now I was dismissed.
My heart was already heavy, and Meg’s state of mind was so fragile…. I
didn’t know how I could break the news to her that her diapered little peach
demon had become a rogue fruit.