Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson & the Olympians or Naruto. Percy Jackson & the Olympians and Naruto are the property of Rick Riordan and Masashi Kishimoto respectively and are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
-|Breathless|-
"It's not Gleeson."
Thalia sighs in relief at Zoe's words. "That's good." She stays beside Shinobu and doesn't come closer to confirm the news. Their whole ordeal in Tartarus has gone sour from the get-go. She'll take whatever reprieve she can get from its horrors.
Zoe doesn't reply, but the grimace on her face makes Thalia uncomfortable.
"I mean it's bad that someone died." It doesn't make her a bad person to be thankful that it was a stranger rather than a friend, right? Her eyes dart between Zoe and Shinobu as if waiting for them to say no, it doesn't make her a bad person.
"It is not Gleeson."
"Hey. I get you're not fond of guys, but-"
"Thalia."
Dread creeps into Thalia's gut. Her left hand reaches for Shinobu's, a tether to hold her ground.
Zoe points to the corpse. "It is a satyr. We have another satyr down here."
Thalia's chest tightens with every word, and her hand clenches around Shinobu's.
"One is an accident."
"Two can be a coincidence!" She doesn't understand her own outburst.
"There are signs here of two others. Both satyrs."
Thalia's eyes dart around the small clearing in the forest of rocks. They glimpse hoof prints. She guesses they differ from each other.
"They didn't take your satyr friend by accident."
Realization dawns on her in full. "They didn't take Gleeson by accident." Her grip on Shinobu's hand slackens, and her body goes limp. Her knees wobble, but she remains upright. When Gleeson and Phoebe were first taken, Thalia blamed herself. Was self-centered of her to think so? It made sense to her. Hades wanted her dead, they got caught in the crossfire. This news goes against that belief. "They were targeting satyrs. But that means..."
"They might not have taken Phoebe by accident either." Zoe clenches her fist and turns her head away from Thalia. "They might be taking Hunters too."
"The hellhounds could be after demigods. They were after me too."
Zoe chuckles. "What makes you so sure Phoebe was a demigod and not a mortal or a nymph? She is older than me and was with the Hunters when Orion came."
Thalia raises a brow. "How is this relevant?"
"The hellhounds were after you because Hades sent them after you."
"But he didn't send them after the satyrs and Hunters."
"Hades would never be this brazen."
"Because of Artemis."
"Yes." Zoe's face scrunches up as if she tasted a lemon. "Apollo too. Perhaps more so."
"I'm surprised you'd give him praise."
Zoe shakes her head. "His temper and recklessness make him dangerous to his enemies and his allies. Apollo killed all seven of Niobe's sons after she insulted Leto, his mother. He asked Hades to torture Tityos for eternity for harassing his mother. If Artemis and Hades come to conflict, Apollo will involve himself."
"So he's protective of his family." Thalia saw little problem with that. She'd fry anyone who came after hers.
"Both of you are hot-headed idiots. There is a reason Zeus decreed war between gods forbidden. No doubt his son would disregard such sensibility and make the situation worse."
Thalia bites her lip. "Hades isn't stupid enough to risk it." She prefers thinking of Hades as a stupid bully, but a comfortable lie is unhelpful. "I guess Nyx is."
Thalia grimaces. Nyx is not enemy she wishes to face. They hoped to avoid Nyx altogether. Their plan is to get in and out. Thalia doesn't care if Hades gets his hellhounds back. If they were lucky, the hellhounds might try to track them back to Hades, and the mission is over. The plan was stupid, but it's the best they got.
Thalia stills. "This changes everything."
Zoe nods.
They have a haphazard plan to rescue two people. "I am not sure we can make a clean escape with more than three others. What if we can't save everyone?" Is it wrong if they give priority to Gleeson and Phoebe because they know them? Her heart twinges.
Zoe shakes her head. "I will not leave a Hunter behind."
Thalia winces. She forgot that, if the others are Hunters, there's a high chance Zoe would know them. "If the others are not Hunters?" Will Zoe let them die?
"It does not matter if we can't find them to begin with. I suggest we focus on that before anything else."
Thalia turns away from Zoe but accepts the shift in the subject with a nod. Is she a coward for avoiding the hard questions until she has no choice? She makes a show of glancing around, but her mind is not with her sight. "Are there other tracks to follow?"
"None I can see. It would not matter anyway. If there were tracks, there is no guarantee it would lead to everyone. Nyx might hold them in separate locations."
"So how do we find them all?"
Zoe stares her in the eye. "We get a bird's-eye view."
"I thought we were trying to be stealthy?"
"It is a risk we will have to take. We move too slow in this forest of boulders. It will take forever at our current pace."
"What's your other idea?" Thalia is sure Zoe has one.
"The one remaining alternative is to run in blind and hope for the best."
"That's not too bad."
"Thalia."
"I know." She hates flying, but she can't come up with a better solution. Her fear will not stop her from rescuing her friends. She inhales. "Give me a second" She exhales. Thalia almost doesn't notice Shinobu give her a pat, muffled by the fur coat, on the back.
Zoe gives her a smile. "Do not worry. I will catch you."
Thalia chuckles. She doubts falling into Zoe's arms from three hundred feet will save her. The crash might kill them both. Warmth spreads from her chest. "Thanks, both of you."
Thalia takes a deep breath. Winds twist around her legs and lift her inch by inch. She exhales. Her arms spread beside her to keep her balance. With each deep breath her speed doubles.
Before she reaches the boulders' full height, she slows her ascent. She inhales. The flight risks alerting the enemy to their location, but she can lower the risk if she is careful and lucky. She resists closing her eyes and forces her gaze downwards. Her gaze lingers to a few white strands floating away from her coat. She exhales.
Thalia pulls her eyes from the strands and scans the area. Her brows furrow, and her lips press together. The boulders are too tall for her to see enough from this altitude. A rush of wind boosts her higher, but her search remains fruitless.
She inhales. As she rises higher, the boulders obscure less of her vision. Instead, their shadows do. The terrible view is unnatural. Zoe and Shinobu are straight below her, yet they are mere blobs of black and white.
Off in the distance, a group of black blobs is by a mansion's silhouette. It must be the Mansion of Night. Are those blobs hellhounds? Is every hellhound by Nyx's mansion or just some? They might be shadows with how bad visibility is.
The corner of her eye glimpses red, but a quick glance reveals nothing. Sparks and bronze catch her eye. She squints. There's a dark spot near it. More hellhounds? She exhales.
The breath that escapes her is rough and dry. She coughs. The world swims beneath her. She gasps, greedy for air. Has her fear of heights caught up with her? How humiliating would it be to die of acrophobia? Her chest hurts. A white strand flitters down from her hood. Is the coat failing?
Winds rush by her, no longer lifting her up. The ground spins counterclockwise over her then under her. Her mind screams at her, but she doesn't understand. Someone is screaming. Who is screaming? Her throat aches. Is she screaming? A gust hits her. Is the wind screaming?
Flesh and bone slam into her, or she slams into it. Pain flares on her arm and on her chest. She tumbles into the dirt. A thud announces her sudden stop.
"Thalia!"
"Ugh." Her body throbs and sharp pain spikes in her arm.
"Thalia!"
It takes her a second to notice pressure on her shoulder. It takes another second to notice the pressure around her waist.
"Thalia, are you all right?"
She attempts to say yes but lets out a pained moan instead. It dawns on her that two hands grip her shoulders while a second pair of arms wraps around her.
"Thalia?"
"Zoe?" If Zoe is talking in front of her, then the person behind her must be, "Shinobu?"
"It seems she is unconscious. The gust you sent out did not slow your fall enough before she caught you. That was a rough fall."
She doesn't remember using the wind to slow her fall. A subconscious defense reaction? She is glad she didn't send out a burst of electricity instead. Her first accidental frying of Shinobu was bad enough. She is not eager for a repeat.
Zoe's hands go under her shoulder and give a slight pull. "Come on. If you are well enough to stand, get off Shinobu. Your weight will not help in her recovery."
She winces as another surge of pain sprouts on her arm, but she complies with Zoe. If Shinobu caught her, Shinobu might be in a worse state than her.
Zoe's eyes and hands roam over her. "Are you all right?"
She winces when Zoe checks her arm.
The oversized coat offers no resistance when Zoe pulls up her sleeve. Zoe pokes around her arm until she hits bull's-eye three inches above the elbow.
"Ouch."
"Good news. You do not have a broken arm."
"You can tell by poking?"
"The pain would be almost uniform across the entire bone if it was. If the bone was not intact, the poking would make unnatural shock waves throughout the arm. Pain distribution from a broken bone would be the same anywhere along the bone."
"A simple yes would suffice."
Zoe grunts. "Does it hurt anywhere else?"
Thalia checks her ribs but finds nothing. "Not that I can tell."
Zoe nods and rushes to Shinobu. Zoe keeps her attention on Shinobu while she asks Thalia, "What happened?"
Thalia's lips press together in a grimace. "I fell."
"Why?"
Her eyes drop to the ground on the far right. "I don't know. The coat, maybe?" She hugs herself. "There was a lot of fur falling from the coat." Her hands rub her arms. "One second, I'm fine. The next, I'm out of breath."
"We need to get out of here soon."
Thalia turns to Zoe and Shinobu. "Will she be okay?"
"She is fine, a concussion at worst. Saw anything useful?"
Thalia rests her head on her right arm which her left supports by the elbow. "Where was I facing when I flew up?"
Zoe points behind Thalia.
Thalia gives the direction a glance but averts her eyes when she glimpses the corpse. "If that's twelve o'clock then the Nyx's abode is at ten. There's a clearing in front of it which might have most of the hellhounds."
"Might?"
"I can't be sure. The view is garbage up there." She'd curse out Tartarus' name if she was not afraid it'd worsen their luck. "At one or two o'clock I saw a glimmer. It might be celestial bronze. That's all I got before I dropped like a rock."
"If we are looking for demigods, celestial bronze is a good start."
Thalia resists saying they should seek silver if they're looking for Hunters of Artemis. "There might be hellhounds near it."
"We will have to be cautious either way."
A soft groan alerts Thalia to Shinobu's awakening.
Shinobu takes a quick scan of their surroundings before she accepts Zoe's hand up.
Zoe purses her lips in contemplation before showing Shinobu a thumbs up. "Are you okay?" She turns the thumb down. "Are you not okay?"
Shinobu responds with a thumbs up of her own and takes Zoe's whispering as a cue when she responds. Though Shinobu keeps her response's volume low, her enthusiasm shines clear.
Zoe bites her lip. "We will have to take her word for it." Despite her words, she gives Shinobu a quick pat down before continuing on. "Let us go. We are on a time limit."
Thalia asks, "No one saw me up there. Do we stay in stealth, or do we make a break for it?"
"There would be more of a commotion if they spotted you, but we will try stealth either way. If they saw you, it will still take them a while to find us if we move now."
Zoe takes the lead. Shinobu follows Zoe's example and sneaks after her. Thalia tries to remember Shinobu's lessons and brings up the rear.
They stalk through the rocky maze for a minute before Zoe whispers to Thalia. "After many lifetimes with Phoebe, I do not believe she would leave others to their deaths."
"What?"
"You asked if I would anyone behind if they are not Hunters."
"Even if they are men?"
Zoe rolls her eyes at Thalia.
"I don't think Gleeson would either." She lets off a soft chuckle. "He's into survival of the fittest. The idiot might ask us to save him last just so he can have more time to fight his captors."
Zoe shakes her head. "We would be lucky if the other satyrs shared Gleeson's courage. Foolish as that courage might be, it is better than cowardice. Our rescue of the other satyrs will be risky. Satyrs in dark caves are panicky. We might need help herding them to safety."
"If the Hunter is young enough, they might panic too." Thalia hopes Zoe isn't being sexist as satyrs are male.
Zoe halts and then retreats a step. She peeks then turns to Thalia and Shinobu. "There is a clearing ahead. Daedalus' body, or what remains of it, is in the center. No other humanoid forms, but there are three hellhounds asleep around it."
"Should we turn back?"
Zoe shakes her head. "His body or the clearing itself might have clues. It is the best lead we got unless we want to roam around. We need to kill the guards."
That is one way to send the hellhounds back to Hades. Or would they end back in Tartarus?
"If I had my bow, I could snipe them from here." She brings out her bone sword.
Thalia brings out her shield and spear.
Shinobu nods to both of them and brings out one of her bone swords. Zoe's bone sword is wide for cutting. Shinobu's is narrow for thrusting.
They sneak into the clearing when Shinobu overtakes Zoe and stops them with an outstretched arm. Zoe and Thalia halt in surprise. Before they can react, Shinobu continues forward. When Thalia steps forward, Zoe stops her.
"Listen."
Thalia raises a brow. "To what? I don't hear anything."
"Neither can I."
"I don't-"
"I cannot hear Shinobu."
Thalia opens her mouth to argue then freezes. Her gaze turns to Shinobu tiptoeing towards the hellhounds.
Zoe, the Lieutenant of Artemis, cannot hear a girl walking an arm's reach away from her.
The blonde stalks forward like a wraith. Thalia stares at the ground hypnotized. The soft dirt beneath shows no sign of Shinobu's passage. Blood in her ears thrums louder with each pulse than Shinobu's footsteps.
Her breath catches in her throat and for a second she wonders if she is about to fall again.
Zoe nudges her back to reality. "You okay? Is the coat acting up again?"
Thalia nods. "It's not. I'm okay."
"Then let us get moving."
Thalia turns to Shinobu. The blond wipes the blood off her blade, but the bone stains red. Thalia's eyes roam the clearing. She didn't even register Shinobu killing the hellhounds.
"Impressive."
The voice shocks Thalia and Zoe. "Daedalus?"
