`Snow was howling through the air. The Hunt, maidens of Artemis, set up camp near a frozen creek. Their prey was approaching a nearby town and they were waiting in ambush, apparently liking to camp out in the wilderness instead of in comfy beds and sofas. They were waiting for Lamia, an ancient Queen-turned-monster, Eater of children. However, that isn't important yet. What is more important is the group of hunters who were hunting for actual game. (Even the immortal hunters of Artemis get hungry.) And what was more important still, then the hunting party, was who they ran into.
"I found a herd a couple miles north, Lieutenant." A girl said. She was of average height, with brown eyes and short red hair. The lieutenant was a bit taller, with olive skin, and had much longer, ebony hair. Her black eyes darted to the area the first girl had come from.
"'Tis good. How many didst thou find, Amelia?" She replied.
"I saw nearly two dozen, milady." Amy responded, holding her tongue. She didn't exactly care for the name Amelia. It reminded her of that "Bedelia" woman from her childhood.
The lieutenant gripped her bow, which had appeared out of nowhere to the casual observer. "Then let us fly!" She said, a rare smirk forming.
While they didn't actually lift off the ground on mighty wings and soar across the skies, the two girls moved quickly, but stealthily. Within an hour, they had reached the herd and planned their approach. Because they had focused solely on the animals in front of them, they would probably have missed another huntress if one had passed. There were no other huntresses around; however, someone did pass behind them without them noticing. Between the trees, a single figure stood, also looking at the herd. However, no one had gotten a good look at this figure so we don't know what it looked like.
The figure passed behind the two, ignoring them. It worked its way to a closer vantage point to the grouping of animals. The movement brought it into the view of the huntresses and their already quiet voices quickly quieted even more.
They watched as the figure drew a knife, just long enough to kill an animal with, and prepared to throw it.
The idiot! The lieutenant thought. Only Lady Artemis can throw a knife over that distance, and only because she is a goddess!
The figure gave no indication of knowing that it was impossible to throw a knife that over twelve hundred feet and threw it anyways. All three of them watched as the knife completely ignored gravity, flying straight at a single deer instead of arcing toward it like objects normally tended to do under the pull of an entire planet. When it impacted, gravity finally noticed and the deer fell, dead instantly. Only the deer closest to the slain deer looked up, and one deer walked over to the body, sniffing the blood. The deer backed away in fear and bolted for its deer life, several hundred feet out of the range of the smell. The rest of the deer followed, not knowing what to deerly fear but trusting that the fleeing deer had seen something deerly disturbing.
The two huntresses looked at each other in shock at how this lone figure had killed the deer.
"That's not- but you can't just-"Amy whispered. "That's just not possible."
The lieutenant said nothing, watching the figure with narrowed eyes.
What art thou? She thought.
The figure made its way toward the deer. Now that the huntresses could see it clearly, they noticed that it was wearing mortal attire. A black hoodie was obscuring their view of its head while its dark blue jeans made it obvious in the white snow. They also noticed that the figure walked to the fallen deer, not attempting to hide from the rest to the herd. Surprisingly, the herd didn't seem to make any notice of it, almost as if they couldn't see it. The figure knelt down and gutted the deer, then lifted the carcass onto its shoulders with some difficulty. It started walking away, carrying the deer. The lieutenant finally turned to Amy.
"Go and find Lady Artemis and tell her of what we have seen. I shall track this figure and try to discover what it is." She told the girl.
"Are you sure you'll be safe? I mean, you saw what it could do. I don't know of any monster that could match Lady Artemis' accuracy in anything, let alone throw a knife that far." The girl replied, more than a little fear in her voice.
"I shall be fine; I shall not let it detect me."
"A-all right, but please be careful, Zoë." Amy said as she ran back to their camp.
Zoë, as this girl seemed to be named, followed the figure stealthily, more so than she normally did. There was some sort of…presence to this creature that she had never felt before in the entirety of her long life. She was very wary because of it. She followed her thousands of years of instincts, being painstakingly careful not to alert it to her presence. She didn't know how powerful it was or where its allegiance lay. She followed it for quite a while, nearly three miles, until it stopped at a cave. Not a man-cave or a bear cave, just a regular boring ol' cave. Right outside of the mouth of the cave, the figure had set up a fire pit. She stayed back quite a distance, watching. The figure used the knife, cutting the skin away from the animal with, at least to her, a moderately skilled hand. Instead of tossing the skin, the figure placed it flat in the snow, bloody side up. She continued watching it until she was sure that she could sneak closer. Slowly, she approached it. The figure had just started to cook the meat from the deer when it spoke in a decidedly male voice.
"If you're hungry, the meat will be ready in a few minutes."
Zoë froze, slightly confused. She was hoped that it-no, he- ugh, how she hated that word-was talking to someone else in the cave. The figure turned around to face her. They stared at each other. She didn't understand how he could have known she was there or even how it could see her through the dense brush she used as cover.
It couldn't possibly have seen me. She thought to herself.
"Or you could just stay in those bushes until the rest of your group gets here. Your choice." He said, turning back to the fire and removing the meat, which was now completely cooked.
Her mind temporarily skipped over his apparent knowledge of the Hunters.
That is impossible, there is no way the meat could be…
But it was. The meat, in less than a minute, had become evenly cooked. He hadn't even turned it.
She didn't even know how cooking food like that, at that speed, was possible. A nagging worry started to worm its way into her. What if that creature had heated the meat, instead of the fire? Can it do that to me? She thought as she began to feel the somewhat unusual emotion of fear. Then, off to the side, she noticed another figure. She relaxed a bit. Amy had done her job and brought the rest of the hunt to her aid.
The figure spoke again. "You can come out now. We're all friends here."
It was working on the deer again, cutting more pieces of meat off and cooking them. Lady Artemis stepped out, her bow drawn, aiming at the male.
"Who are you?" She said, hiding any emotion from her voice.
The figure turned around, seemingly unsurprised by the weapon. He took a quick look at Lady Artemis and knelt. "I have no name, ma'am. But I'm known to some as Usul. May I ask who you are? You're...I can feel that you're exceedingly powerful."
At those words, Lady Artemis frowned. "I am the Lady Artemis, Immortal Goddess of the Moon and Hunt. Mere mortals would be unable to sense my power, much less my huntresses, and yet you have. Explain!" She stretched the string a little more, appearing more threatening to those weaker than her.
Unfortunately, Usul didn't even blink. "A Greek goddess..." He muttered to himself. He looked back up at Lady Artemis and held her gaze. "I've always been able to sense people, mortal….or otherwise." He gestured to the hidden huntresses. Standing, he moved to the side, revealing the cooked meat, his gaze leaving the goddess. "Are you hungry?"
Artemis was shocked. Not only that, she was intrigued. The boy's gaze held no fear. In fact, it had held nothing except a hidden tiredness. The moment he looked away from her, she struck. Leaping forward, she grabbed his hoodie and forced him against the rocky opening of the cave. Her bow had been replaced with a knife, which, at the moment, was against Usul's throat.
"Who are you really, boy?" She spat, her knife only millimeters from his throat. His face changed to look...almost scared. Frowning, she looked deeper. Having lived with her hunters for thousands of years, she became quite proficient in reading people. This boy wasn't truly scared, she had only surprised him. She threw him to the ground before he could answer, her bow out and aimed at him again.
"You are not afraid of me, that means you're incredibly stupid or you're much more powerful then you look." She said, slowly advancing on him.
Usul shrugged, standing. He looked back at Artemis, capturing her in his gaze. "I can be whatever you think I am." He said, almost smirking. It wouldn't do to laugh in the presence of an angry goddess. Or make slight innuendos. He closed his eyes, beginning to listen to the incessent tendrils of thoughts stemming from the girls behind her. They seemed annoyed and a little confused, but mostly angry. And that anger was pointed at him for some reason. He didn't know what he'd ever done to them to warrant that kind of anger. Or anger of any kind. He decided to speak, which he would quickly learn was a bad idea.
"Out of curiousity, why are your girls so angry with me?"
Usul thought it was an innocent enough question. Apparently Artemis thought otherwise.
Artemis was surprised by the question, but that quickly turned to anger as her mind began to think through different possibilities.
How did he…. He can't see them. He only said he could...sense them. Shit! He can't do that, can he? Hoping against her fears, she pushed her hand harder against his throat. "Tell me you didn't read their minds." Only gods were able to do that, or so she thought.
Usul chuckled. "I don't have to when their thoughts are shouting at me."
Her theory proven correct, she threw him hard. A few ribs snapped as he flew nearly twenty feet away into a tree. Her bow never wavered as she shot the boy straight through the heart. He looked down, almost incredulously, at the arrow.
Artemis lowered her bow, watching and waiting as the blood began to flow. And continued to watch. And continued to wait. Paling, she realized that she had been wrong. She had assumed this boy was a demigod, power radiated off of him like one. She and her hunters watched incredulously as the boy sat up and began to look at the arrow as it phased through him. He tried to grab it, watching as his hand passed through the arrow as if it wasn't there.
"Cool!" He said, sounding interested. His studies of the arrow were interrupted as Artemis grabbed him and held him against the wall of the cave...again. She grabbed for her "other" knife, the one that she had never used and never hoped to use. Artemis didn't enjoy killing other humans. Her hunters would take care of that and only killed the bastards who hurt one of their sisters. Artemis was making an exception this time.
Hiding her lips from the other hunters, she whispered to him before she struck. "No mortal can carry such power."
The steel blade easily penetrated the boy's chest, piercing his heart. She released him and moved away as the blood began to flow. This knife was made to kill mortals.
The boy fell to his hands and knees as the blade remained lodged in his chest.
"Lady...Artemis..." He spoke in a pained voice. coughing up blood. She knelt down to him, surprised that he was able to speak. Most people don't generally survive very long with a knife through their heart. "I hope...you...realize...you can't...kill me." He said, gasping. He lifted his head up to look at her. "I...I've tried...to die..before." Reaching to the knife, he pulled it out before placing it in front of her. "I always...survived." He said, gasping slightly as the bleeding began to slow.
Artemis slowly backed away, staring at him incredulously, even a little fearfully.
"Milady?"
She turned, looking for who had spoken.
"Milady...what's...what's going on?"
She recognized the voice now. As her hunters left their hiding places, one of the newer recruits had timidly spoken up.
"I'm not sure, Danielle." Artemis said, glancing back at the boy who was now starting to sit up. "I'm not sure."
Usul was in pain, but that was nothing new to him. He had tried to kill himself more than once and it had nearly always been painful. He always wondered what it would be like to be dead. He wanted to know what happened afterwards. He had nothing to live for so it never bothered him.
The first time he had jumped off a cliff. He woke up several weeks later at the bottom perfectly alive, other than several scars on his chest, torso and arms.
The second time he had tried to drown himself. He found himself on the bank of the river several hundred miles away from where he was before.
He even tried to poison himself, that had made him feel sick for a month. Overall, the poison was actually the worst. He couldn't stand for a week and could hardly catch anything to eat for a couple more after that. After that, he gave up trying and wandered the country. At least until these girls showed up.
These girls were new. He had never met anyone who felt like them. Most of them felt rather powerful, more so than normal people were. The Lady Artemis was exceptionally powerful. He wasn't sure that she actually was the Greek goddess, but he couldn't think of anything else that she could be. One of the things he knew for certain was they she didn't like him. The emotions he read off of her group seemed to be revulsion of some sort.
Sitting up painfully, he looked toward Lady Artemis. She had retreated a little to be with her group of….girls.
Interesting. It must be like a hunter group she made. He thought as she started to whisper with her girls. Artemis looked a little scared while the rest of the girls looked terrified. Usul pushed himself up and slowly went over to the meat. He had lost his concentration when he was stabbed but the meat wasn't badly burnt. He sensed everyone's eyes, and more than one arrow, aimed at him. He supposed it would be funny, but couldn't understand why. They were ineffectively trying to threaten him while he was trying to prepare food.
After a little bit of working with the heat, he finished cooking the entire deer. Turning back to the group, he saw Lady Artemis sitting, trying to look in control, and watching him, analysing him. Mentally shrugging, he grabbed a piece of meat and sat down in front of her, giving her plenty of space. He began eating as she stared at him. Well, her and everyone else.
Looking up from the food, he motioned to the meat sitting next to the fire. "Help yourselves."
Of course, no one moved.
Usul shrugged and went back to eating.