Alexandria had never known her mother. Her father had been a tailor in the village she had been found in, and they had had a good life together. Until these barbarians had invaded, and killed him right in front of her. Three minutes too late was the first time she killed a man. Eight minutes later was the second. She had rushed into the square, saw the man that was the leader, undoubtedly. Another man was fighting with him.
She didn't think, she didn't plan... she just... reacted. It was unlike her, really. She was so used to planning everything out - she had always helped her father design new clothing and customize apparel. But something told her to move... so she did. She had put the sword through the man's neck before she could even notice what she was doing. She wasn't sure how she had lifted it, for the gods' sake! It was too heavy for her to even carry. She had found it on the ground, and perhaps she had been blessed to wield it for a moment. Perhaps her mother was watching over her...
And then... the man. He looked at her, but not in fear. She knew how she looked. A vagabond, a lunatic. He looked at her in appreciation. And then he offered her his arm... and she took it.
His name, she found out, was Perseus Jackson. He was tall, muscular - quite, and his jaw was chiseled as if out of marble. His dark hair, and eyes that seemed to shimmer between blue and green enraptured her. He was, indeed, not unlike the tales her Pa used to tell her, about Adonis and Theseus. Greek heroes, Greek gods... things that, if the government had every truly cared about what its people thought, would've gotten him killed.
He was, to be fair, the opposite of her in many ways. She was short to his tall, blonde to his black, grey to his green, and... She giggled. Smart to his dumb. Intellectually, at least. But the first time she was hungry, he found her a doe, and in the time she could've done a small alteration to a dress, he had it caught, skinned, and cooked. He hadn't known his parents, either. He was Greek, indeed! Delos... she tried to imagine a place other than the village she grew up. A place with lots of sun, beaches... the ocean... She envied him.
He was on a quest, too. He had told her that as well. He had taken time out of his travels to take down the Germans who were upset with the government's rules and intolerance, and so had gone off on their own. Just in time to save her life, really. She wouldn't have been able to fight off all of those brutes alone. She looked up at him. Currently, they were travelling southward, to the city of Pompeii, or so. The sun was shining through the trees - forestry she had never seen before, as she had never left her village. It glinted off his hair, his bronze skin.
She smiled. For the first time in a while, life seemed good.
The man being thought about was enraptured in telling the tale of his first fight in the Colosseum to his newcomer of a friend. He had deduced that talking about sprinting through the alleys of Rome to deliver messages to his old Lord's women that he bedded without his own's knowledge... wasn't the correct path to go. However, Alexandria seemed to be engrossed in thinking. She did that a lot, he noted.
He had also finally figured out who he had gained the approval of when he had been in Rome - Ares. The God of War himself. It made sense... the boy he had spared was most definitely a child of Mars. The story of the farm and the war... it all added up. His new knowledge showed, as well. When he thought about efficiency in battle, it was there, such as knowing to target the joint when separating the German's forearm from the rest of his body.
Back to Alexandria, who had insisted that he call her Alex, he had already started to think of the girl as a little sister. She was fourteen to his seventeen, he found out. And... he was starting to have thoughts about who her mother was. He was aware that missing a parent didn't always mean a demigod, but Hestia had been free to converse with, and she had confirmed his thoughts with a wink.
Athena. Alex, the daughter of Athena. Minerva wasn't as well-known of a god in Roman culture as she had been in Greek culture. But that didn't mean she was any less powerful. However... Athena was a goddess bound to be against him in voting for his immortality. Hestia had informed him of as much. While he didn't appreciate thinking that way, logic told him that helping her daughter might be a way to gain her favor. Conversely, if she died under his care... No. That was not going to happen.
His journey, however, seemed to be becoming more dangerous. He did his best to keep watch at night, making sure monsters didn't disturb her sleep. The last thing he wanted to do was explain that she was a demigod... but the attacks were becoming more and more common the closer they got to Vesuvius. And he was getting less and less sleep. At the moment, the last time he had slept was two days ago. The circles under his eyes were becoming more pronounced.
Speaking of, he had received more details about the quest, and they only made the protective instincts he had that were growing towards Alexandria spurt. He would more than likely leave her in Pompeii while he braved the forge. As it was, it was clear that the automatons hadn't malfunctioned due to the heat... No, someone had sabotaged them, and now they were using them to produce weapons for unknown entities.
Perseus sighed to himself. Of course, nothing could ever be so simple as to just shut the factory down. No, now he would have to find the perpetrator and bring them to Hestia. He stopped, making Alex bump into him, breaking them both out of their thoughts. He twirled around and caught her, keeping her from crashing to that ground.
"Sorry, Alex!" He laughed, the noise somewhat foreign to him, which was a sad thought. "Thought I saw something in the soil..." He told her apologetically.
Her eyes widened. "Well, did you?" She questioned.
"Yep... grass." They both laughed, and she thumped him good-naturedly on the shoulder.
"You prat!" She called him, still smiling. He smiled at her too, but his held a bit more sadness. He couldn't afford to let her know about the true details of his quest... not with such a high chance of failure.
That night, Perseus stood watch over their makeshift camp. Alex was sleeping under a little covering made up of leather purchased from a city a while back. He hated to admit it, but the little blonde teen was already worming her way into his heart, although it had only been two weeks. He didn't know if it was the way she asked for a piggy-back ride when her legs got tired, or maybe her aspirations for being an architect when she grew up... but he felt himself growing very attached to her.
A snarl. For the third night in a row, monsters had attacked. However, these monsters were not the mythical kind. Rather, they were simple wolves, attracted to the heat of their covered fire that Apollyon had started, which utilized leaves to filter out the smoke and most of the light. He cleanly dispatched them, quickly skinning them and then preserving the meat with salt he had purchased from a trader who had come from the land of Africa, named after the Roman general Scipio Africanus, who had defeated the mastermind, Hannibal, in the second Carthaginian War.
Perseus thought about that. He wanted to travel to Africa, one day. If such a great thing like salt was there, no doubt all of its people were rich and sophisticated. He smiled at that thought. Perhaps humanity would be kind to that one part of Earth. Perhaps.
For the first time in nearly three days, the son of an unknown god drifted to sleep around a covered fire, someone who meant a great deal to him snuggled up under leather beside him.
I am so very sorry about this being late! My stupid head fell asleep at 6:30, and I woke up at 11:40 PM just thinking... Roar of Destiny! I have made this chapter a bit longer than normal to make up for the time difference, sorry again!
