JOHN
Uncle Carl loudly cleared his throat.
"So, what your telling me, is that you need to find your friends who were in the crash so that you can find the "bloodstones", but you have no idea where they are. Hen you have to get back to New Rome and figure out how to use an ancient ark which may or may not work, And then it gets even better! You want to somehow find the bloody Queen of these lizards and you want to try to get close enough with the ark to use it on her, and if she becomes mortal you hope to kill her and destroy her armies, correct?"
"Exactly." said John.
"Well alright then." said Uncle Carl. "Its too late to go anywhere tonight, we'd get lost in the blizzard, we'll get our supplies and head out in the morning."
"What do you mean, we?" said John. "We'll stay here tonight yes, but you can't come with us into the mountains."
"John, you need me! Who else can guide you through the mountains? and if things are as bad as you say, you need all of the help you can get." said Uncle Carl.
"He's right." said Sunshine. "If he can see them, then he can fight with us. If the forgotten legion succeeds in destroying the demigods, they will find out about... Erm... Uncle Carl. His family won't be safe either."
"He has every right to fight for those he loves too." said Harley.
John knew they were right.
"Ok, you can come. You're right, we do need your help." said John. He grinned. "even if you are a bloody Campbell."
"Bloody MacDonalds." Uncle Carl said. "You're just like your father you know that."
"So I've been told."
"Right." said Uncle Carl. "let's get kitted up."
Uncle Carl reached down and pulled up the rug, revealing a trapdoor hidden in the wooden floor.
"What are you looking at?" said Uncle Carl.
"Oh, nothing." said John. "Of course you have a bunker under your cabin."
"If your going to build a house, you may as well build it properly. You never know when there might be a world war, or a CIA assassination plot, or maybe some crazy lizards who will try to kill you and your family."
"Ok first of all why would the CIA want to kill you?" said John.
"I don't know," said Uncle Carl. "maybe because I associate myself with people that have stolen from them in the past."
"Hey!" said Harley, "Nobody can prove that that was me. They had it coming anyway, that agent was asking for someone to break into his safehouse."
"Ok, just because Harley steals from everyone does not mean that we need to get hostile." said John.
"I don't steal from everyone!" Harley said.
"Then where's my Debit card?" said John holding out his hand.
"I was going to give that back." she said, handing it over with a devilish grin.
"You don't even have the pin, Harley." said John.
"Who told you that?" said Harley.
"You're good." said Uncle Carl. "Would you be interested in a job... Specifically stealing back my weapons collection that I lost after the last time I ran into you guys."
"I'll email you with billing information." said Harley.
"Ahem." said Sunshine. " Can we just go down already?"
"Of course."
They climbed down into the earth, and found themselves in a small room similar to the one at Uncle Carl's old house. The only difference was that instead of the walls being covered in firearms, this bunker was filled with different Greek and Roman weapons, as well as survival gear. The demigods loaded packs with new clothing and surplus military ration packs (Uncle Carl loved these, except the omelette, which was nasty). Also in their packs was a Coleman stove, an arctic tent, and a sleeping bag each.
After they were packed, the demigods took the weapons which they would use on their journey. John had his sword and his sheild, and he took two javelins and a dagger off of the wall and stowed them with his things. Harley grabbed a dagger, several throwing knives and a roll of extra strength duct-tape and put them away in her bag.
Sunshine took a new bow, some arrows, and a Greek short sword to use. Uncle Carl, of course, had his celestial bronze two-handed sword and his old buck knife, as well as a scoped hunting crossbow with celestial bronze bolts.
The Demigods m took turns watching the door while the others slept, and soon morning came. Uncle Dave sent them off in the morning, and they set off up the mountain, toward where they thought the crash site should be.
It was bitterly cold for the first day of travel, and by midday the companions were sore and tired from travel, but they continued on into the afternoon.
Th terrain became more rocky as they moved up into the mountains. It was not until the late afternoon that things started to go wrong.
Sunshine was leading the way when it happened, a black arrow landed beside John in the snow. Out of the rocks emerged several lizardlings, armed and angry looking.
"Lizardlings!" Yelled Sunshine as he knocked an arrow. John pulled a javelin off of his back as Sunshine fired. The Bronze arrow passed clean through a lizardlings head, causing it to dissolve into a pile of black dust. Uncle Carl loaded his crossbow as Harley pulled several knives from her belt.
Shunshine let fly another arrow as the lizardlings charged. As they got closer, John threw his javelin at the nearest creature, which dissolved as he was struck in the shoulder. Uncle Carl fired his crossbow at the advancing lizardlings before drawing his two handed sword.
"Come at me!" he said in his fake Scottish accent.
Harley started throwing her knives, bringing down lizardling after lizardling, adding more to the black dust that littered the snow.
John threw his second spear, which caught another lizardling in the chest. John armed himself with his sword and his shield. John locked eyes with Uncle Carl, and with a loud yell and a great bellow, the two of them charged forward, hacking and slashing their way through the mob.
Harley and Sunshine charged after them, launching knives and arrows toward the lizardlings as the group slowly made its way up the mountain.
Uncle Carl fought like a madman, swinging his sword left and right with a crazed look in his eye.
"Alright, come 'ere you!" he said to one of the lizardlings who had seen him and turned to run.
Sunshine put an arrow in his back, earning him a
"Hey! He was mine!" from Uncle Carl.
John ducked to one side as an axe narrowly missed his head. He swung his sword in a wide arch, sending dark green blood and black dust flying as a lizardling's head was severed from its body. As John slashed through another enemy, Sunshine called out a warning.
"Behind you John!"
John turned in time to see a sword swinging for his neck. John froze for a moment, was this the end?
It was then that Harley threw her last knife, sending the lizardling falling to the ground in a pile of black dust.
Oh gods.
John turned back toward the enemy, stabbing another of the lizardlings.
"Protect the sssscroll!" one of the Lizardlings said.
Whatever the scroll was, they wanted it; It could be valuable information.
"Don't let them escape! We can't let them get back to their masters!" yelled John.
The demigods gave chase, and it was only a matter of time before the last of the lizard-men fell.
"Search the remains; take anything valuable, but make sure you find the scroll."
"On it." said Sunshine.
They searched the black dust for valuables, but the only thing they found was an old scroll.
John carefully opened the scroll, scribbled inside was a message to the lizardlings, and a map.
"What is it?" said Harley.
John carefully studied the map. It was of the mountains, and John knew just where it led to.
"Well?" asked Uncle Carl. "What the bloody hell is it?"
"It's a map." said John. "It leads to the first bloodstone."
"Well now we're getting somewhere." said Sunshine.
"There's a problem though," said John " One of the Forgotten queens generals is after it too. He's he one who shot down our ship."
"Oh." said Harley. "Then if we find him, we kill him too."
"Fair enough." said John. "But let's find the others first."
As the companions continued to trek up the mountain, John Wondered about the others, was William ok? And Zoey, he'd had a Crush on her ever since he met her a over a year ago. If she wasn't safe- no, stop, he told himself. Don't think about it. But of course he couldn't stop thinking about it. If He found Zoey again, could he tell her how he felt? He decided against it, She'd given him no indication that the feeling was mutual. If he told her it would make things awkward between them. Evening came, and the companions set up camp. They set up one of their tents (which was big enough for the four of them) and used the Coleman stove to heat the inside. But John couldn't sleep. He was busy thinking about the others. Somehow John knew that William wasn't dead. William was Alive, and he was waiting for them. John realized that he was not the only one awake. Somewhere in the dark, Harley was softly crying. John felt guilty, like he had been spying on her. He also knew that Harley would want to be left alone. So John Waited, until finally Harley had fallen asleep, and then he too closed his eyes.
It seemed only a fraction of a second later that John woke up to uncle Carl shaking him.
"Come on John! What are you doing lying around for, we've got to find your brother!"
"Uggh, it's morning?" John had never woken up late.
"No, it's bloody midnight, that's why we're all bloody packing up." Uncle Carl said. "Get a move on! Let's go!"
John got up, and packed up his things. The group was ready to move. Harley was pacing the camp, no doubt eager to continue searching for William.
"Harley," John said. She didn't respond. "Harley." he said again.
"Yeah." she stopped pacing.
"It's going to be ok Harley."said John. "Williams ok."
"How do you know?" Harley asked.
"I just do, somehow." he said. "Do you remember, after I fell down niagara falls, I just somehow knew you guys were ok."
"But what if youre wrong?"Asked Harley.
"I try not to think about it." said John.
There was a long pause as the two of them looked up into the mountains.
"Come on!" yelled Uncle Carl. "we've got to find William and the others before they bloody freeze!"
They continued their trek up the mountain all morning, until they were high up, looking into a valley in between two other mountains. Down below them was the wreckage of the ship. It was Damaged beyond repair, and John began to wonder how anyone could have survived the crash. John wondered if there was any way he could contact William from up here. He looked down into the valley, the ship was in a clearing bigger than several football fields. Surrounding it was a forest of tall conifer trees. Moving around the ship were tiny figures, John guessed it was the others. John counted the tiny figures, three of them had survived the crash. But they were not alone.
Moving toward them from several miles to the west was a large group of lizardmen. John drew his sword, and watched as his shield shimmered into being on his wrist. He had to get down there before those lizardmen did. John watched as one of the figures moved away from the ship, toward them. Could John contact them somehow? John remembered uncle Carl training them to build signal fires to contact people if you were lost. They couldn't make a signal fire though, the lizardmen would see it. There had to be another way. But William was down there, now they just needed to go get him