"What the heck was that?" Cranky shrieks, and I sigh and stand up.

"That," I say, "was a clue."

"But to what?" Xenia asks.

"Whatever we're searching for," I say, resisting the urge to tell them they're both idiots. How did Xenia get mixed up with the Hunters of Artemis, anyways?

I decide not to worry about it too much and focus on the trail. "I think we should split up."

"Since when did you get to be in charge?" Xenia says, and I glare at her.

"Since you two started fooling around and not focusing on the task at hand. Which is usually what I do. Hmm, I guess being dead has an effect on you."

"Alright, well since he actually has a plan, let's listen to it," Cranky says.

"Finally, I get some recognition around here! I was thinking that whatever just happened with the flowers, they must be some sort of path. Like, a group of people are working to make these monsters, so they have a system where in case someone forgets where the secret entrance is, they can just mess around with the petals of one of the flowers, and viola! Trail to secret entrance discovered. But presumably they would know which direction to go. We don't. So we need to split up. Say I went that way and Xenia went the other way, while you stay here. If I discovered it, I would Iris message Xenia, who would come find you, and then you would both come to me, or vice versa."

"I didn't realize boys had logic in them," Xenia says, which makes me snort.

"I guess life is filled with surprises," I say, and then Cranky yawns.

"Well, should we get started with the plan? I'll go that way," she says, pointing behind her.

"Great, I'll head in the other direction," Xenia says, leaving me to sit and figure out what to do with my life. I notice other flowers around the path, and pluck one from the ground. It's a real flower, but something feels off about it. Man, I never thought I'd be studying flowers.

"So what exactly are we looking for again?" I ask as we practically climb through a metal forest on a mountain. It isn't quite as pleasing as you'd think it would be, surprisingly enough. "Like, a trapdoor?"

"That could be it, yeah. I was thinking more of a cave, but a trapdoor seems more likely," Adelphia says.

"That could be it," Clarisse says, pointing out scuff marks on the ground. She gets down and begins to tap around the area, and a rattling noise echoes through the area. She grabs at a loose root and pulls at it, grunting. Adelphia and I pull with her.

Dirt flies into my eyes as the door pulls out, breaking off its hinges and leaving a gaping hole in the ground. "I should probably call Thalia and let her know we found it - or something, at least. She'll want to know," Adelphia says, brushing dirt off her pants and pulling out a drachma. "You guys just stay here, I'll be back in a minute." Clarisse groans but nods. Once Adelphia leaves, Clarisse crawls closer to the opening and looks down.

"Why would someone go through all this trouble?" she asks, throwing a pebble down.

"I didn't-" I start to say, but Clarisse puts a finger up to her mouth. She holds her spear in a way that is very threatening, and I look down the hole, pulling out my dagger. A creature comes barreling up the steps, and Clarisse engages in battle with it, using her spear to wield it off, and I stab it in the back, ichor flowing out. It falls to the ground, and Clarisse grins. "I didn't know you had a dagger."

"Yeah, well, I didn't know you had super sense, or whatever that was."

"I - Super sense?" Clarisse laughs, and then covers her mouth. "I mean, that was just - I didn't hear the pebble fall so I thought..." she trailed off, and then frowned. "Never mind. It was nothing."

I nod, and then sit back, fiddling with my dagger. Adelphia comes back. "Thalia says we should go ahead and check it out. She's sending another group our way, they'll be there for backup if we need it."

"Great. Be cautious going down, though. We had a run in with one of the new things while you were gone."

Adelphia nods, and then begins to walk down the stairs, motioning for us to follow. Clarisse takes the rear, me in the middle. I hold out my dagger, looking around, trying to let my eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. Once we are down far enough that the darkness completely surrounds us, Adelphia stops. We hear a clattering noise, and she whispers. "There's something just left of us. We're near the end of the stairs. When we get to the very end, stand back to back."

I nod, even though she can't see. Adelphia continues forward, and then turns left. I follow her, and we begin to get in position. She walks briskly toward the noise, now getting louder. I can hear her pulling an arrow out of her quiver, and loading her bow.

Snarling echoes around us, and I hear Adelphia release her bowstring. I close my eyes, knowing keeping them open doesn't do anything, and follow the sound of snarling, slashing my dagger at the noise, feeling it make contact with the enemy. Clarisse's grunts begin to sound louder as the monsters are steadily taken down. When there is no more snarling, I open my eyes. I turn around, grinning. "We did it!"

"That was just the first wave. There are bound to be more coming," Clarisse says. "We need to keep advancing."

"Follow me, I think if we just keep to this path we should find something," Adelphia says. We press on through the darkness, and as we go further, feeling the walls, they begin to turn to stone rather than metal, and the faint sound of water dripping rings in my ears.

My hand bumps into a wooden frame, and I run into Adelphia. "I'm sorry for this," she whispers, and I feel a fist hit my stomach as I collapse on the ground.

Cranky comes back pretty quickly, and I stand up. "I think there's something else hidden in the flowers."

"I'm sorry, what?" she says, putting her hands on her hips. "While we were off walking around doing something productive, you were playing with the flowers?"

"Yes, I was playing with flowers," I say, rolling my eyes. "I found the real flowers have been damaged by the metal flowers. Somehow, the liquid from the metal flowers was spreading into the flowers surrounding it. What if they just put in one original metal flower, and it slowly turned the others into metal?"

"So what does that mean?"

"It means that the original flower would be the central focus, and exactly where their location is. The trail must be toward the central flower. I guess Xenia found it?"

"She found something. She said it wasn't exactly what she thought she was looking for, but it could be the entrance."

"And she found it that quick? That's lucky."

We walk in the direction Xenia went, mostly in silence. Not because there was lack of topics, but because I really don't think we like each other.

Xenia is sitting on the ground when we meet up with her, and she stands up quickly when she sees us. "This is what I found."

She points to a single flower in the middle of the path, different from any of the ones we have seen so far. It is completely silver, and very obviously metal. I pull out my shears and hack at it. It breaks off and the ground collapses underneath us. I land underneath the two, and groan. "You guys weigh more than you look, did you know that?"

"I think we may have bigger problems on our hands currently," Xenia says, getting up and drawing her bow, shooting at the monsters that surround us. Cranky pulls out a boomerang and starts throwing it at people. I manage to find a scalpel in my tool belt, and use that as my weapon, brandishing it at the creatures and trying really hard to kill them, but a scalpel doesn't actually do as much as you think it would, and I dig around in my belt for something else. And then I remember I can just set myself on fire, so I put away the scalpel and run at them while I am on fire. Which is a mostly good idea, but there are walls that have wooden boards covering them, which makes it a partly bad plan. Long story short, I end up setting the whole place on fire, leaving Xenia and Cranky no place to go. Which is very bad.

Thanks for reading! Once again, so sorry for not getting this up sooner!