The December Sun heralded twenty girls in silver parkas running through a wildlife park, chasing after an animal which changed aspects: at one instant, when sunlight didn't fall on it, it seemed to be a mythical creature, a manticore; while when sunlight did fall on it, it was suddenly seen as a stag running through the wild. The girls that were chasing it made the tough deed of climbing over fallen trees, jumping from a tree, and barreling through the littered floor and dense vegetation look like easy. Leading them, was a twelve-year-old girl with auburn hair and a determined face, a silver bow and arrow in her hands. The manticore had reached a big oak tree, and the girls had trained their arrows on it. The manticore turned back and shouted,
"This is against the Ancient Laws! The demigod should've fought me! You have no right for intervention, Goddess of the Hunt!"
"I have every right." The auburn-haired girl said calmly, her silver eyes flashing. "As the Huntress, Goddess of the Hunt Artemis, I have all rights to hunt and kill monsters, them being chasing demigods or not. You will die."
And Artemis let loose an arrow which would've hit the manticore straight in the head, but for the dark aura that flashed around him, and entire radius of ten metres, making the huntresses of Artemis shiver at the death and desolation whispered by the aura. Artemis narrowed her eyes and notched five arrows at once, and fired into the dark smoke billowing around the Oak. No scream of impact came. Instead, the smoke cleared, and let them see a strange sight.
A man in his thirties stood where the center of the smoke had been. He wore long flowing dark robes; His hair was long and messy, and looked a bit unkempt. He had a light smattering of beard on his cheeks, and his sharp profile and quick, brilliant emerald eyes spoke of a battle-hardened man, as a hand that was raised in front of him grasped five arrows which was in the direction straight to his heart. Through the light, a faint, lightning scar could be seen in his forehead, though it was mostly covered by his dark hair. His pale face had an expression of curiosity, as he examined the silver arrows. Then, he lifted his gaze, and looked around, and the girls in silver, led by the Goddess of the Hunt, came into his view. He raised his eyebrows, and his face scrunched in concentration, like he was trying hard to remember something. Evidently he did remembered, for he turned to the auburn-haired girl with a wince.
If Artemis had managed to read through the man's mind which she was spectacularly trying and failing to do, then she would've been scandalized by what ran in his mind:
Ugh. Why is my life always consisting of a dangerous, redhead girl, always?
But since Artemis couldn't know this, she took her failure to scan his mind as indication of him being a Titan or a Giant or something more sinister, though his aura of death and devastation seemed a lot like her uncle Hades to her. But she could clearly tell this man wasn't Hades. And he clearly hadn't expected to be here, judging from his surprised face. Better to intimidate him and get the truth out.
She notched and arrow again, and asked, "Who are you, Stranger?"
The man regarded her for a bit, and then stepped forward, maybe to introduce himself. Wrong move. Immediately, twenty arrows (Artemis noticed later that the Huntresses had also fired) ran at him. What surprised them most was that he didn't duck or evade them, but like on instinct, raised up a hand, and a golden mist shimmered into existence around him, against which the arrows clattered uselessly and fell to the ground. His shoulders visibly tensed and his gaze hardened. Evidently, he hadn't expected to be attacked like this.
"You would attack an unarmed man who hasn't given you any offence yet?" The man, Artemis and her huntresses noticed, spoke in a soft, boyish voice. Unfortunately, it is only Artemis who could detect the undercurrent of a deceptive danger in his voice. She raised up a hand and her companions relaxed their holds on the bows a bit.
"You interrupted my hunt." The Goddess of the Hunt said bluntly.
"And you think it fit to kill a man for that transgression?" the man questioned in that same boyish voice.
Thalia Grace, Artemis saw, was asking for permission to speak; with a nod of her head, she granted it. The daughter of Zeus shifted a bit closer to the man, and asked,
"Since you're using "man" in asking us questions, can we assume that you are just a man?"
It was certainly an odd question but Artemis saw the logic of it. Thalia, as ever, had chosen to get the basics out of an unknown entity before judging them fully. Artemis was really interested in what the man might answer, however, because she knew perfectly well that the entity was certainly not a God, maybe not even a Titan, certainly not "just" a human being, could be a new sort of monster that Tartarus vomited out.
The entity, however, regarded Thalia cooly for a bit, then asked, "When can somebody become "just" a man? Or where can one start or stop being only a man?"
Thalia was royally confused by the rhetoric; she heard her Mistress answer though, "You ask the questions to wrong people. We are not authorities on men and certainly never care in being."
The man moved; arrows flew at him due to the unexpected movement, but met only thin air. The huntresses looked around in apprehension, till one shrieked at seeing the man not outside the ring, but inside it, towering over their apparently twelve-year-old Goddess. Arrows were trained on him with a lightning speed, till Artemis raised a hand to stall them; the man had not moved from where he stood in front of her and she had twin daggers ready in both hands if he tried anything.
However, the man did not seem to even notice the training of the arrows on him; instead, he placed his quiet, unnerving stare on her. Artemis felt a wave of apprehension wash over her; curiously though, it was not due to her detecting any lust in him which might have suggested his reason for him practically ogling her. She felt the apprehension because she could detect nothing. Nothing, except emptiness from this man. Or, not a man.
With that emerald gaze burning into her silver eyes, she heard the man speak, the boyishness in his voice now gone. Instead, antiquity entered the voice; it sounded distant, as though coming over from millions of years in the past and, in the same time, millions of years in the future.
"You are not a human being. You are seemingly immortal, death being temporary for your body, you mind, memories and thoughts surviving the regeneration process. You have not even had a temporary death yet. There is something…an immense power, sensible enough within you. What is this? You are one with the wild-I can smell the wet evergreens as well as dry cacti about you, if not the curious smell of the tiger and the dexterity of a gazelle. Your face is continuously shifting just as your body-you are a child and you are an adult. What are you?"
"Perhaps, stranger, we should be asking you the same question, though only the last part." Thalia tensely said.
The man turned towards her.
"You are also not fully human. I can see a woman in you….and something else. Not human. Your death will not be temporary, but you are still immortal. I don't understand this. This is a strange immortality…."he muttered off.
Artemis took the opportunity to question him,
"You sound well versed in the idea. Are you an immortal too?"
He brushed his hand aside, as if swatting an annoying fly.
"Neither does it have any use for me, nor do I have any use for it."
The enigmatic answer puzzled them all immensely; Artemis stored the conversation away; something told her to be distracted in presence of this man by his strange rhetoric would be suicidal.
"I am Phoebe Artemis, the Greek Goddess of the Hunt and these are my huntresses." She gestured around her. "Who are you, stranger?"
"A greek goddess? I remember reading about you. Do you not hate men in general?" The man asked, intrigued.
"They are too fleeting for outright hatred, but it is true that I hold no love for men or their affairs." Artemis replied coldly.
"Such strange is this world!" the man exclaimed with wonder. "I never did think I'd ever stand before any Greek gods or goddesses, much less the one most likely to attempt a butchering of me."
"Insult our Mistress, stranger and we will make that also come true!" Thalia hissed, hands shifting to her dagger at her waist.
The man's eyes widened and he raised up his hands in surrender. "I meant no insult, just surprise."
"Be that it may, one does not like to hear libel about them being wantonly violent." Artemis snapped, and continued, "We have had enough of your theatrics, stranger. You will give us a name and you will come with us to Olympus. Let the entire pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddesses meet you."
The man till now had been listening with a smile, but it turned down into a grimace and his eyes hardened. "Phoebe Artemis of the Hunt," he said, as darkness again began diffusing into the air around him, as the ambience of the setting became intensely threatening again, "I did not know you before. I did not attack you, I have no intentions to offend you except accidentally and I do not like being ordered. I am not an enemy to you to be snapped at or ordered along to meet your fellow immortals. I will go in my own time and I will give my name when I think it required. This has, in truth, been a most unpleasant experience I would not think repeating again."
He turned and a thin stick materialized in his hand and a red glow lit on it, which was the cue for many things happening: seeing the threat, Artemis immediately drew her daggers and sliced up with them, across his back, while five huntresses in front of him released five arrows straight into his front and Thalia tripped his leg, leading him to fall face first on the ground.
He lay there motionless.
Artemis rolled his body so that his face could be visible. He was a gruesome sight indeed. His eyes were opened in a glassy stare, while five arrows sprouted from his chest and stomach and twin slashes gouged deep into his back, his leg bent at an awkward angle from the fall.
Had they killed some being who they still did not know of? Had they killed a man, or had they killed a monster, or had they killed a titan?
Even as they watched, the body tightened and slowly turned, from flesh and blood, to stone and then broke apart into dust over Artemis's hands.
They rose, wary of the deed that had been done and no less befuddled or apprehensive.
Artemis commanded them to scatter the dust and return back to the camping site and they trudged back, all of their mood somber, thinking whether they had just transgressed or killed an unknown immortal, or whether they had committed a greater crime by killing a man. But they again thought of the thin stick and a red glow, and fear gnawed at their hearts at the possibilities those two happenings might have opened up.
Artemis was disturbed, not in conscience; she of all knew the best that it was a kill-or-be-killed world, so their acting upon the slightest chance of danger hadn't been a wrong choice at all. What disturbed her was her inadequacy of knowledge about the entity's identity in understating whether it had been a kill at all. Warily, she warned everyone to stay on guard and was startled to see shining green near her tent, in the dark. With a bow, she inched towards it, till Thalia emerged from behind her and shone on the torchlight-upon which the green was revealed to be the curiously emerald eyes of a black as the darkest night cat, that sat still and watched them , body tensed. Both Goddess and Lieutenant released a sigh of relief, the former returning to their camp, the latter shooing the cat off, which reluctantly stood up and walked away.
Thalia and the others sat up late that night, talking of the day's events when she brought up the subject of the cat and saw the other's furrowed eyebrows and rapidly widening eyes.
A moment later, Artemis had been roused from her sleep and all of them were out, scouring around their campsite for the cat. It was not found.
As Artemis went back to her tent, thunder crashed overhead suddenly with rain. She looked up warily. Her father was warning something through the thunder, which he rarely did. There was intent in that thunder rather than nature.
The dark tent was illuminated in the next crash of thunder and it only then that she saw it. On a lone wooden chair that had not existed before, a small, black cat, with eyes like emeralds sat still, watching her unblinkingly.
In the next crash of thunder that lit up the room, a naked, lean, man lounged in the chair, hands crossed, black hair clouding his face through which his eyes shined, emeralds. He raised a hand and though she could still sense the thunder rumbling and rain falling, the sound completely stopped, a deathly stillness around them. She inched towards the tent flap and threw the dagger at him only when she encountered the invisible force that prevented her from exiting the tent-for some odd reason, the dagger did not leave her hand. A small force, she felt, defied gravity and pushed the dagger back into where it came from. That is when Artemis became aware of the fact that she could not hear anything from outside, could not go outside, could not wield her weapons here, while the entity sat still as rock in the darkness, only the green eyes glowing.
With the next flash of thunder that illuminated the room, she saw another chair in front of him, definitely non-existent before. He motioned towards the chair and she gingerly sat on it, ready to bolt any second.
The man looked down his naked body, his gaze lingering, then looked up and surveyed Artemis. For a moment, it looked like he was contemplating something, but then he shrugged and left himself unclothed, and leaned forward just a bit, pushing the hair out of his eyes when he spoke.
"I'm impressed, Phoebe Artemis. And we have a stormy night to talk over what I do not know about this world. I'm known to some as the Master."
"Of?" Artemis questioned frigidly.
"If you have to ask, Artemis, you shall never know. But if you do know, you need only ask." Came the reply, as thunder flashed overhead, again. "We have much to talk about.