Chapter 3: The promise
Autor's note: Hello guys, bet you weren't expecting that plot development, right? Anyway, this is going to be a exposition chapter on Clio and her sister's life and thus a much less action-packed chapter. Remember to follow and review if you like what you read and let us dive in.
Clio pulled back from her sister's hug and in the saddest voice she could manage told her "I didn't find anything valuable today." Tessa frowned immediately but before she could say anything, Clio continued: "But I did find this cool sword!" She exclaimed, turning her golden bracelet back to his sword form.
"Whoa!" Exclaimed her sister in awe, examining the sword: "But Sis… you are hurt." Clio cursed herself after realizing that she had, inadvertently, exposed her acid burned hand.
Before Clio could reassure Tessa that she was fine, her sister grabbed her right hand and, with impressionable strength for a 9-year-old, forced Clio inside the house.
While Tessa looked around the dusty drawers for some bandages and for their, ever dwindling, stock of ambrosia, Clio watched her search with a smile on her face.
If Clio had inherited her looks and arrogant personality from her father, Tessa was a mirror image of their mother, with her light brown hair and her dark green eyes she looked more like her mother every single day.
Tessa was sweet, caring and a much better healer and housekeeper than Clio could ever hope to be, and Clio was very grateful for that.
As much as Clio liked to think she was taking care of Tessa, most of the time it was the other way around.
Clio had lost the count of the many, many times she came back home with severe injuries caused by fights with monsters, criminals and sometimes the owners of the houses she had broken into.
While Clio was still thinking about this, Tessa came back with some bends and a small cube colored with a soft shade of gold that Clio recognized as ambrosia.
"Sis, you need to be more careful when you go out, what if… what if you get injured and d… and d…." Tessa suddenly broke into crying.
Clio suddenly felt like a huge jerk, sure Tessa might have been incredibly mature for her age, but she was just a child and Clio was always getting injured and while she couldn't care less, her sister always had to deal with the terrifying thought that Clio might not survive her most recent injury and leave her alone, just like her mother had done.
Clio hugged her sister tightly: "Calm down Tessa, don't worry, I swear on the river Styx that I am never going to leave you alone, okay?"
As Clio uttered the word Styx, she felt her very soul being tied to her promise and intuitively realized that if she ever was to break the promise she would suffer, suffer a lot.
After a while, Tessa broke free from Clio's hug and started tending to her injury silently.
Clio could see that she hadn't yet fully recovered from her earlier breakdown so instead of trying to talk to her she focused on the injury on her left hand.
Even though Clio had eaten a lot of ambrosia, the injury looked a lot worse than it did a couple of hours ago and despite herself Clio started to worry that she might be in trouble.
As Clio opened her mouth to reassure Tessa once again, she heard a knock on the door.
That was weird, usually salesmen didn't have the courage to knock at their door, especially after the teenager had beaten the crap out of a robber that had tried menacing Tessa.
Ignoring her sister's protests, Clio got up and opened the door with the intention of verbally abusing the poor knocker, but as soon as the door opened, Clio shouted and almost fell to the ground.
Standing in front of the door was a thin man with a huge beard and brown eyes but in the middle of his head two giant horns sprouted and instead of normal foots his legs ended in hooves like those of a goat.
Before Clio could say anything, the man looked at her with a grave look and started talking into some kind of earphone:
Yeah Percy, I told you I wasn't high on enchiladas, should I …."
He stopped talking, his eyes dilated: Call you back soon, I smell monsters, tons of monsters nearby."
"Hurry up, we need to leave this place before they find us." He said to a still shocked Clio.