Midnight Frost

here!”
    I blinked, and the gryphons were simply stone once more. Well, the figures might be different, but it seemed as though these statues would be watching me as closely as the ones back home did. In a strange way, that comforted me.
    “Gwen!” Daphne yelled again.
    I gave the gryphons a little salute with my hand, then hoisted my bags higher onto my shoulder and followed my friends onto the grounds.

Chapter 14
    The more we walked, the more I got an extreme sense of déjà vu.
    Just like back home, a series of ash-gray cobblestone paths wound every which way across the grounds. I imagined that all of the lawns would be as smooth, green, and manicured as they were at Mythos, except for the fact that they were buried under a couple of inches of snow right now. We also passed several dorms that could have been carbon copies of the ones in North Carolina. So far, the only big difference I could see between the two academies were the dense pine trees that dotted the grounds like rows of soldiers, instead of the sprawling maples and oaks I was used to. Well, that and the fact that the hills were a lot steeper here. We’d barely been walking for five minutes, and I could already feel the burn in my legs.
    “What’s wrong?” Alexei asked, noticing me glancing around.
    “I think it’s weird how much this academy looks like our academy,” I said. “If it weren’t for all the snow, I’d think I was back home.”
    He shrugged. “They all pretty much look like this. Dorms, stone paths, a main quad with several buildings.”
    “Really? Every single one of them?”
    Alexei shrugged again. “All the ones I’ve been to. St. Petersburg, London, New York, North Carolina, and now here. But there are always some differences. You’ll see.”
    We walked on. We finally crested the hill we’d been climbing, and I blinked in surprise.
    Because before me lay the main quad of Mythos Academy—sort of.
    Like Alexei had said, it looked a lot like our quad. Five main buildings arranged in a starlike pattern, a series of paths winding in between the structures. Math-science, English-history, a dining hall, a gym, a library. They were even arranged in the same spots as they were back home, and the outsides looked remarkably similar. Same dark gray stone, same gloomy outlines, same statues covering them all.
    But the more I looked, the more I noticed the differences Alexei had mentioned. Instead of being smooth and unbroken, the stone of the buildings looked like boulders that had been piled on top of each other. The rocks were more black than gray and interspersed with dark logs that were thicker around than I was tall. Wide windows were set into all of the structures, I supposed to take advantage of the sweeping views of the pine trees that ran up to and seemed to merge into the mountain above. Everything seemed rough and raw, as if the buildings themselves were hollow rocks and tree trunks that had broken off the jagged mountain peak above and had finally tumbled to a stop here.
    A series of bells rang out, the high, clear sounds booming like claps of thunder throughout the quad and bouncing from one structure to the next. A minute later, the doors of the dining hall opened, and students started pouring out.
    “Breakfast just ended, and everyone’s heading to their morning classes,” I murmured.
    “That’s right,” Ajax said. “Come on. There’s someone I need to speak to about making the arrangements for our trip tomorrow.”
    The coach set off across the quad, and we all fell in line behind him. I wasn’t all that surprised when Ajax headed for the Library of Antiquities. A silver plaque on the front told me what the building was, but I would have known anyway. Oh, the shape was a bit different, since this library had three large wings joined together by a large, square tower in the middle, but it was still the largest and most impressive structure on the quad.
    The others trooped up the steps, but once again, I lingered behind. A pair of gryphons perched on boulders on either side of these steps, and they looked just as fierce as the ones I’d come to think of as my protectors back home. It took me a moment to realize they were actually a bit smaller, although their features were that much sharper, as if whoever had carved the statues hadn’t finished sanding down the stone and smoothing out the anger in the gryphons’ expression. But it wasn’t just their appearance that was different. It was the feeling