The Hippocampi were fast, as they should have been. And as they crossed the Sea of Crete, Lauren remained hyperaware of the surrounding water.

She felt deeply responsible for what had happened with the yacht, primarily because so many people had almost died because of her carelessness. She should have been more mindful; she already knew that Khione was protecting the area around the bane.

The closer they got to Crete, the more dangerous it was going to be.

Her eyes kept darting around. Her hands itched to let go of the reins and wrap around the figure of a bow, but she knew that doing so would give Cyrus the false perception of being free to move however he wanted, which would more than likely result in her falling into the water, and she didn't want that.

Alexis seemed to be gliding through the water beside Cyrus, swimming in a more controlled manner. Barton had calmed down and found peace with the fact that he was riding a literal sea horse. But since they left Proteus' sea palace, he hadn't said a word. Perhaps because the sound of splashing water was too loud for him to be heard—Lauren couldn't be sure.

Minutes before, the island of Crete had only been a speck in the horizon. Now, it was a large stretch of land between the sea and the sky. Catching the light of the morning sun, the island looked quite beautiful.

Many tourists were sure to be there, which was why Lauren was going to make sure that the Hippocampi were going to drop off them off at the least populated area. And as soon as they set foot on the island, she and Barton were going to make a beeline for the jungle.

There was no more time for sightseeing. They had to find the Anegnoro tree, and they had to find it soon.

They reached the shores of Crete in a matter of minutes. Lauren was surprised that neither of the Hippocampi seemed even a bit winded. They were neighing and bucking quite fervently—particularly Cyrus.

Lauren and Barton quickly dismounted, unclasping their bags from the saddles and shouldering them.

"If you can understand me," Lauren said to the Hippocampi, "Give Lord Proteus my thanks. And swim carefully."

Cyrus had already turned around and disappeared beneath the water's surface before she had even finished speaking. But Alexis stayed and acknowledged her statement with a hasty bobbing of her head; then she trailed after Cyrus, sea foam appearing in the wake of her multicolored tail.

As Lauren watched their glittering bodies swim into the deep, she could have sworn that she saw something peek out from the surface of the water several miles off from the island. She frowned. "Did you see that?"

"Damn right I did," Barton replied. "How many sea monsters are there?"

"Not many around the world, but here in Greece, there could be no shortage of them." She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and found that he was glaring at the sea. "Come. It will have no chance to attack us in the forest."

"Why do I have a feeling that things will only get worse 'in the forest'?"

"Because they will."

"Great."

Smiling humorlessly, Lauren led the way up the beach. The sand was fine and pliant beneath her feet. Too fine, and too pliant. It was difficult to walk up the dunes to be able to reach the tree line, but their determination won in the end.

Lauren stared into the jungle, apprehension gnawing at her. There were sure to be monsters. Many of them.

"Once we walk in, we have to keep moving," she said.

"We don't even know where this Anegnoro is," he pointed out. "How are we supposed to find it?"

She just looked at him and offered no answer; she didn't have one. She had no idea what they were walking into. Ever since she had accepted to partake in the Quest, she'd had no idea. Her mind was still dazed from the fact that she had nearly died—she had literally met Death.

And the memory of it wasn't very comforting.

As she unslung her bow from her shoulder and gripped it tight in her hand, she gazed into the woods, finding solace in the fact that she had practically been living in the wild for the better part of 24 years. She knew how to move in it, how to track, how to protect herself from predators.

She waited for Barton to equip his bow as well before stepping past the tree line and venturing into the jungle.

The trees above glistened with dew, and their branches were so wide that accompanied by the clumps of snow, only little sunlight could pass through and illuminate the path. Luckily, Lauren felt at ease with such conditions, and Barton didn't seem very uncomfortable either. They were going to be fine.

They were treading through the thick undergrowth when Lauren heard a sound very similar to the growling of a wild animal.

She started but made sure not to bring her bow up. Any sudden movements would notify the animal that she was hostile, and she certainly didn't wish to be. She scanned the immediately surroundings with trained eyes, yet found nothing.

"Sorry, that was me," Barton suddenly said, making her frown in confusion. She turned and noticed that he was clutching his stomach with his free hand.

Realization dawned on her and she asked, "When was the last time you ate?"

"Had to have been last night." He thought for a moment, and then nodded. "Yeah, that bag of chips we shared in the cargo hold."

"You must be starving."

Lauren had forgotten all about that: she could last for days without eating anything (though perhaps not without drinking anything), but mortals were not the same as she was. Barton said that he could keep going without food, but the grumbling of his stomach effectively cut off anything else he was about to say.

With pursed lips, Lauren looked up at the sky and did her best to judge whether smoke could be very visible at this time of day. After a few seconds, she decided that they could risk it. Lauren could tell that Barton wasn't going to be able to hold out until evening. At least not without losing his strength. And she needed him to be at his full strength, in case any monster decided to attack.

Or if the monster decided to attack.

"We cannot risk lighting a fire in the evening," said Lauren. "So we will hunt for breakfast and lunch, but no more until morning comes again."

"That's good enough for me." Barton looked at her questioningly. "Should I hunt or would you like to do the honors?"

She glared, offended. "Why would I hunt for you? You are the one who was hungry in the first place."

Immediately, he brought his hands up as a sign of goodwill. He seemed to be doing that a lot recently. "I didn't mean it like that. I just thought you wouldn't trust me to hunt, especially when there's so many monsters around, like you said."

She thought about it for a moment, and his reasoning was completely right. If a monster came out of nowhere, she would have more chances at killing it with her bow than him with the sword. Also, she was positive that she could hunt faster than him.

"What would you like to eat?" she asked, a small smile on her face.

"I guess there aren't going to be any turkeys, huh?" he asked, to which Lauren shook her head. "Too late for Thanksgiving anyway." He shrugged. "Whatever you can find, I guess."

If that was the case… "I'll only take a few minutes."

She returned to their site with her fingers wrapped around the tails of the game she had caught; she held her bow in her other hand. Barton was sitting on the ground with his legs stretched in front of him. A small fire had been lit in the middle of the clearing, with a spit already set over it.

Lauren dumped the fowl in front of Clint. "Do you know how to skin them?"

"Sure."

"Well, get to it. That sword won't make it very easy for you."

He held up a finger, as if he was saying, Wait a moment. Lauren watched as he dug around in his pack for a few moments before he pulled out a sheathed Celestial bronze dagger.

Surprised, she could find no words and could only look on as he unsheathed the blade, picked up one of the fowls, and began skinning it. He smirked at the astonished look on her face. "No problem."

Swallowing back the lump in her throat, she turned and moved a few ways away from the site. As she stooped down to pick up sticks for the fowl, a thought occurred to her.

Very subtly, she pulled her bag off her shoulders and dug around until her hand touched something metal.

Proteus helped us more than I thought.

She closed her eyes, sighing. He must have seen her as such a shallow person. She could only hope that he had noticed the earnestness in her voice when she had thanked him, for she'd truly been grateful, and she still was now.

Barton had finished skinning the game by the time she returned with an adequate amount of sticks. She set them down and hastily began peeling off the bark with her newly acquired dagger. It was sharper than it looked.

When she was finished peeling and sharpening the edges of the sticks, she impaled each of the fowls with the thin pieces of wood, setting them over the fire one by one. Barton watched with patient eyes, and they quietly waited for their meat to finish cooking.

She tended to the fire with a long stick, while he turned the fowl from time to time to make sure that they were cooked evenly.

In the stillness of the forest, the unrelenting grumbling of his stomach was difficult to ignore. He hardly seemed embarrassed by it though. He just looked absolutely famished. And Lauren couldn't lie: the smell wafting off of the meat, however unseasoned it might have been, was making her hungry as well.

Once the game finally looked cooked enough, Barton immediately reached for one of the sticks of meat, and with careful, dignified movements, he brought the meat to his mouth and tore off a chunk. The bird was surprisingly fatty, but not disgustingly so. Juices from the fat dribbled down Barton's chin and he quickly wiped it with the back of his hand.

An image of Thalia popped up in Lauren's head, and she froze. Thalia used to do that all the time, no matter how clean her face already was. Lauren had deducted that it was a habit of some sort, perhaps something she had picked up in her childhood of being on the run. The act had been strangely endearing.

But watching someone doing it who wasn't her… It didn't feel right.

In an effort to banish the memory from her mind, Lauren gripped one of the sticks on its pointy end (effectively burning herself slightly) and threw the whole thing into the fire. Barton stiffened a bit and looked at her.

"For the gods," she explained. "No matter how much they don't seem to care, they still need to eat."

She then picked up another stick for herself and chewed on the meat. It was good. She knew something else that would make the meal even better, and that was nectar. A few tiny sips wouldn't hurt, she supposed.

As soon as the food had been finished, she took out the bottle of nectar that Proteus had so generously included in her bag, brought the rim to her lips and let the liquid flow down her throat. It warmed her immediately.

Meanwhile, Barton was staring at her. "Does that really taste like anything you want it to taste like?"

Lauren nodded.

"Damn. What I would give for a good meal right now. Some expensive wine from Tony, too."

"When this is all over, you may return to the life you once had."

"You don't think it'll really be that simple, do you?"

"No." He looked at her, and she evenly met his gaze. "It never is." She instantly became aware of the silence that threatened to settle over them and stood up. She put out the fire and disassembled the spit, saying, "We should get moving."

Clint shouldered his bag and buckled the sword onto his hip. "You have no idea where we're going, do you?"

"I don't, but I do know that the bane is here. In Athens, I felt some kind of magical force beneath the ground. The pull of magic and the power of the gods. Here it is no different. If anything, the pull feels stronger here."

As soon as she said this, the tugging in the center of her belly—something she had constantly been feeling ever since they stepped foot on Athens—became particularly insistent. But it only lasted for a second before it reverted back into a dull, throbbing annoyance.

"This way," said Lauren, walking towards where the force was pulling her.

For three hours, they walked west. Nothing happened. But eventually they both tired out and opted to rest for a bit.

Ten minutes later, they continued walking again. Another two hours passed and again, nothing happened. They came across nothing of interest, just wildlife and several kinds of flora.

As the day grew older, the chill of the winter air became harder and harder to ignore, not to mention the fatigue in their bones. Lauren tried to keep her mind on something else, but her body had other ideas. Her teeth chattered a bit, and her hands, bare to the cold, trembled. She was fairly certain that Barton was experiencing the same.

With every step that she took, the familiar sense of trepidation grew within her. The tugging she felt in her belly felt much too similar to how it felt like in one of her dreams: standing in a cold, desolate place, watching herself step into a polluted river, and hearing that scream… The memory of the dream reminded her that it had been her screaming.

She felt like she was leading Barton to their deaths.

Her train of thought stopped there when she heard the snapping of a twig in the distance.

She and Barton halted in their tracks. Immediately, Lauren began scanning their surroundings. Night was yet to fall completely, but the sunken sun offered them little light, especially considering the thick shrubs of the forest. Lauren made sure not to make any sudden movements—in case the animal would only become hostile once it was threatened.

But the looming, oddly placed shadow several meters away from them was far too large to be just any animal.

Lauren reached back and pulled an arrow from her quiver, letting it fly a millisecond later. There was a sharp clang, and Lauren realized it to be the sound of her arrow scraping against something hard and smooth.

The monster's protective armor.

The same one she had encountered in her dreams.

"Run!" she yelled, though Barton had loosed an arrow as well, meeting the same result. Quickly, she grabbed his arm, turned them both around, and sprinted into the undergrowth.

Tiny branches scratched Lauren's face, but the cold air rushing against her skin soon numbed any pain. Behind them, she could hear the quick, thundering steps of the scorpion.

She glanced over her shoulder and was dismayed to find that nothing was there. Just empty air—or what seemed to be empty air. Snow was being kicked around in all directions, the result of several legs scampering across the ground.

Lauren risked another moment, staring harder, and found that the monster was indeed there. Barely visible, but there. Its tail was bent over its head like a curved dagger; the tip glinted whenever sunlight would hit it.

A sense of déjà vu settled over Lauren, combined with deep fear. How were they going to kill something they couldn't see?

The lines from one of the prophecies rang in her head: But in order to see the bane of Gaea's son, they must first find trust where there is none.

Had Apollo been drunk when he created that prophecy? It wasn't the bane that couldn't be seen, it was the monster.

Barton twisted while running and shot an arrow. There wasn't even the telltale clang of the arrow hitting its target. He had missed.

He cursed. "Where the hell is it?"

"We can't risk trying to figure it out," said Lauren. The tugging in her stomach returned threefold. It hurt. "We have to get to the tree!"

She didn't wait for a reply. Pulling an arrow out of her quiver, she rammed it into the trunk of a tree to her left and propelled herself sideward.

There was the sound of something whistling through the air. The ground shook. Lauren spared a glance back and found an inch deep hole in the ground. Snow flew and Lauren assumed that the monster had pulled out its stinger. A few yards away from it, barreling towards her, was Clint.

The dull throbbing in Lauren's sternum confirmed that they were definitely heading in the right direction.

Lauren ran faster than she ever had in her life, knowing that the monster was incredibly agile. Hopefully Clint could keep up. If he couldn't, she didn't know what she could do.

That thought was banished from her mind when he was suddenly running at her side, out of breath but no worse for wear.

"Where's the goddamn tree?" he demanded.

Just as he said that, they spotted it.

A massive tree with roots buried in the snow. Its branches gathered together at the base to form the trunk, which was a swirl of wood and bark. It was as large as she recalled, but the roots were thicker and more elevated. As if they were covering something.

They entered the clearing where the Anegnoro was. Clint sped up.

"Get your sword up!" said Lauren. "Distract the monster for me."

"Easier said than done," he grunted, but nevertheless slung his bow over his shoulder and unsheathed the sword. "How do I go about this?"

Before he had finished speaking, Lauren heard the monster scuttle into the clearing. Barton immediately took a large step forward and swiped his blade, and it looked like he was attacking the air. The sword didn't hit the monster.

Barton jumped backwards, shuffling on his feet, incredibly alert but never staying in one place. Considering their circumstances, it was the best he could do.

"You got my back, right, Lauren?" he said, sounding a bit shaky.

There was a ripple of light a few ways in front of him.

"Dodge left!" Lauren shouted. Barton dove to the side just as another hole appeared in the snow.

Lauren slid onto her knees in front of the Anegnoro and got an arrow out of her quiver. She used it to slice at the tree's roots. The shaft broke within seconds, barely causing a dent. And then she remembered the knives Proteus had lent to them. She got it out of her pack and hacked away at the roots.

She twisted her abdomen and immediately said, "Dodge right, stab left!"

There was the crunch of snow and the sound of bronze hitting armor.

Snow and splinters of wood were soon shooting out everywhere. Lauren didn't stop until she had cut away two of the tree's roots—only stopping every now and again to aid Barton. In the end, it looked like she had forged a small door for her to crawl into.

"I'm going into the tree!" she yelled. If Barton thought that sounded odd, he made no comment.

The tree was hollow—or at least the base of it was. The ground beneath it was bare of snow. As Lauren got her arms and knees through the opening, she looked behind and saw Clint jumping around in the snow.

He was fast, and he was using his sword well to deflect attacks, but Lauren knew that he would make a mistake sooner or later. She wiggled around in the tight space, searching for a hidden plant or some kind of weapon.

It came to her attention that there was another layer of roots just beneath the middle of the tree. Strange. But it made her search easier.

She had just cut through the second wall of timber when she heard Barton scream in pain. It didn't sound right when she knew that he was a professional government spy.

Lying on the ground beneath the base of the tree was a sword. But it didn't look like Celestial bronze. If anything, it looked like a regular, iron sword.

There was a series of thuds followed by the trembling of the ground. Not knowing what else to do, Lauren retrieved the sword and scrambled out of the tree and back onto her feet.

Agent Barton was on his back. In front of him, the scorpion's trail abruptly stopped. That meant it had to be towering over him.

Defiantly, Lauren surged forward and used the metal sword to slice at the monster's side. She felt the blade pass through its armor and cut through flesh.

A wail rang across the woods. The sound made Lauren's ears ring. The sword may not have looked like much, but it was obviously lethal to the scorpion.

Lauren hacked at its side again and vile-smelling, black blood came pouring out. This time, the scorpion retaliated. Not knowing what to expect, she felt something thick and elongated smack her square in the stomach.

She was sent flying across the clearing. Lauren thought that the monster only wanted to get her away enough to be able to kill Barton, but she had obviously angered it. She had the feeling that its beady eyes were trained on her.

Soon, it continued its trail once more, this time heading straight towards her.

She pushed herself off the ground and ran.