The Hunter
OK Capture the flag continues! Not much to say this time oddly.
Nico: Gods you say enough as it is...
Me: You know as author of this story I could feed you to a drakon. Are we clear?
Nico: ….dictator...
Orion and Kimberley slipped through the trees and brush as quickly as snakes through grass, intent upon their prey close at hand. The edge of the trees were nearby and through them Orion could see the moon dancing upon the water, a glowing marble orb suspended in the sky. They padded among the twisted oaks and towering poplars that spread a malevolent presence over them. Kimberley peeked around the trunk of a tree and then spun back around the trunk and motioned Orion over. "Demigods?" he whispered. Kimberley shook her head. So carefully, slowly, Orion peeked his head around the wide trunk. There, in the shining moonlight, were five gleaming scorpions tearing at a strange animal corpse in the middle of a clearing. Orion motioned that they should edge around the clearing. Kimberley nodded.
Slowly they moved in the edge of the clearings boundary, careful to be as quiet as possible. The scorpions didn't seem to notice them for almost the entire journey around them. That is until one obnoxious twig decided to snap under Kimberley's relatively light step. Well, light compared to Clarisse's. Most of the beastly insects didn't notice, but two of the arachnids scurried their way in curiosity. "Oh, Hades." Orion muttered. Then he whispered hurriedly to Kimberley. "Quick, up a tree!"
She shoot him an are you crazy? look but began to scramble up a nearby oak anyway. Orion did the same on the other side of the trunk, after sheathing his sword of course, using low limbs to swing himself up and over the others into a comfortable perch in the tree. Then he heard Kimberley give a slight scream from the other side and he rushed toward it. One of the bronze beasts was snapping at Kimberley who was screaming because of the others lashing barb having ripped into the bark less than a foot from her ankle. He grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her up into the tree, leaving the scorpions angrily attacking the tree with their tails and him a little out of breath from the adrenaline shot. Orion reached behind his back and grabbed his bow and two arrows. He quickly shot one arrow, then the other, and was answered by the soft hiss of the dying arachnids. Hopefully their relatives were the non-vengeful sort. Then he turned to Kimberley, quickly surveying her to make sure there was no bleeding. "Not wounded right?" he queried to be sure. She shook her head no as she peeked down at the still twitching legs and pincers below. This reminded him, it was quickly apparent that travel by foot would slow them down at the least, get them killed at the most. But he had an idea. "OK this time we're not going by foot, but by branch." Humph, it appeared Kimberley was getting used to him. She didn't even flinch at the thought of jumping limb from limb. But then again it was better than being torn limb from limb.
Experimentally, he nosed one foot out on the limb he sat on, and then crouched, tensing and then releasing his legs muscles to sail into the next tree. The branch shuddered initially but held his weight after the first collision. He crouched, and then repeated the process. Sounds of similar jumping and leaping sounded from Kimberley behind him, but he didn't dare look back, seeing as he was twenty feet in the air and monsters might be roaming around looking for vengeance.
For most of the time they proceeded without alarm and Orion relaxed his guard, settling into a familiar pattern of jumping, surveying the next tree, and jumping again. But that was a huge (almost fatal) mistake. On one jump the branch swayed under him and he stumbled, falling to his knees and slipping a little. When he raised his head up, a pair of piercing green, cat slit-like eyes glared into him the rest of the body was hidden from him, hidden in cold shadows. Orion slowly tried to get into a standing position, while drifting his hand to his knife hidden in his boot. However before he could reach it, a second shape thudded into his side and he fell off the branch, spinning off into darkness...
He slammed into a lower branch, thudded into it directly with his armor taking most of the impact but leaving him gasping all the same. But now he could tell what his attackers were. They were small, like a large household cat, but scaled all over with thick black scale. They were unlike anything Orion had seen before. But he had heard of them. They seemed to be Tigris drakon, which were small drakon used by the titans in the first war to hunt down their foes, mainly by the Drakon Lord, that horrible beast of a Titan. But this was impossible. Artemis and her hunters had exclusively hunted these monsters for over two decades to eradicate them. Well tell them that and see what they think about it. He thought grimly. One of the scaled feline-like drakons leaped down onto a branch directly behind him. Perfect. For them. He would die and not even know it. The other remained on the other branch, pacing back and forth, its razor sharp, and obsidian colored claws scarring the tree. Then he remembered one more thing about Tigris drakon. Their packs always consisted of four, never less, never more, for only one hatching could survive each of each year's brood. Then by the second year of the hatch-lings lives they wandered off, to create their own pack. So where were the other two?
All of a sudden the pacing form in front of him stopped and its head swiveled around to the tree behind them. Then Orion's heart went cold. Oh Hades. Kimberley doesn't she's walking right into a trap. The two beasts made low growling noises in their throats and then disappeared into the shadows of the tree trunk. Kimberley jumped onto the branch Orion had stood on moments before and peered around as if she knew the drakons were there. And they were. Now, directly above her was one of the scaled felines, positioned for the kill. Orion struggled up onto the branch fully, feeling the bruises making his muscles stiff, and grabbed the knife out of his boot just barely in time he thought. Or was it too late? Didn't matter. He threw the celestial bronze blade and it nestled into the scale gap right under the drakon's shoulder. The body hit the branch Kimberley was on and stayed down, its body swirling away into dust. Kimberley spun around in shock and stared at its dissolving form. "Trinian? Where are you?"
He gritted his teeth. Great I'm all helpless. "I'm down here."
She looked down at him...shaking with laughter? "Ha-ha, not funny. We need to keep moving." He balanced on the branch carefully, and leap into the next tree. His midsection quaked with pain. Kimberley followed landing on the branch next to him. Kimberley handed hi knife back to him. "Watch out for those things, there should be three or so more." She smirked. "And let me guess, they're the reason you ended up hanging ten?"
Orion twitched slightly, not enjoying remembering the fall. "You'll never know will you? Come on." Once again he went back to jumping, though he was careful to keep nearby his partner in case of more ambushes. However their journey was peaceful this time (though heavily accented with tension) and they reached a tall oak overlooking the enemy flag set up in the middle of a thick grove of brambles. There two guards to be seen, right at the edge of the thicket, one heavily armored, the other lightly armored, one to chase and hinder as they run, the other to be a wall between the enemy and the flag. A huge, armored, ax-wielding, wall.
"Alright! This is where I come in!" Kimberley whispered excitedly. "See yah on the other side; just make sure you get that flag!" With that she jumped out of the tree and began running full pelt toward the guards. She immediately clothesline the first light armored one with the flat of her blade, but followed plan with the second and fled in "terror". Ha-ha. The "wall" and the now bruised scout ran after her, in their rage at letting the enemy escape after heavily wounding one's pride erasing their caution. As they disappeared into the forest, Orion slunk out of the tree and cross the clearing with an arrow already on the string. All was quiet as he slipped through the brambles. All was quiet. Except...a faint whistling noise...! He spun around and shot an arrow while ducking to the ground, presenting a smaller target. His arrow glanced off a blade he was sure of it, from the angle and ping of metal on metal. But there was nothing there. It seemed like it at least. Orion took one cautious step backward, while on hand gripped the bow and the picked up a handful of the loose soil beneath him. Then he stood and quickly hurled the handful of dirt, then drew another arrow, notched it, and waited for the dust to clear. Orion smirked once it had, having just revealed his aggressor. He loosed his arrow, making the dirt outlined shape of a boy just younger than himself shifted to one side trying to avoid the shaft. Then the dirt figure charged at him with his sword and Orion managed to fire off one last arrow before drawing his own blade.
The arrow hit an object on the warriors head when he ducked, a baseball hat, and suddenly the figure was clearly apparent. It was the black haired boy from earlier, the one who sat alone at his table. Except now he was covered in dirt and in full armor.
The boy was much better than Orion with a sword, which was apparent. But still Orion could hold his own for long enough, and his mind was already spinning with ideas. Finally he saw it. A sudden lunge at him, making him stumble slightly, and he'd fall on the root behind him. Simple, but elegant.
However as he moved to enact his plan, a huge roar and a colossal ball of fire erupted from the direction of the camp boundaries. Both he and the boy turned to each other and nodded. Orion understood that the match didn't matter now, obviously something was trying to destroy the camp...Leaving the demigods without a safe haven to return to.
As he ran through the woods he was notching an arrow, and all around him the sound of clanging armor and stomping feet informed him he had close to forty or so warriors close at his tail, ready to fight. And directly behind him, Orion could hear the armor clank and foot trot of the formidable warrior who less than two minutes ago was his enemy. He quickly ducked under a branch; while his mind drifted to the Tigris drakon...It was strange, them showing up and the camp getting attacked.
But all thought vanished from his mind as he burst from the trees and sprinted over the strawberry fields, he could see the monster attempting to destroy the camp...and the brave guard dragon trying to fight it off. The monster could have Peleus's brother...if Peleus had regularly drunk a steroid milkshake for breakfast. And if Peleus had been born a wacky version of triplets gone bad. The beast had three separate heads; each oozing either fire, poison, or acid, and each of these three heads were trying to kill the other dragon. The titanic lizard used two of its heads to pick up and throw the guardian dragoon away, landing over thirty feet away. Orion quickly notched two more arrows, praying to the twin archers this would work. He suddenly felt as though the world had slowed down, and his senses were put into over-drive. Orion loosed the arrows, which sped through the air and thudded, quietly for such a momentous moment, into the eye of one head, the eye of another and the nostril of the last.
"Rakkkk!" The beast screamed in agony, mostly he thought at the loss of two eyes, for the eye is the highest concentration of nerves in a dragon's body, followed closely by their wings. Speaking of which...He notched another arrow and sent it into the dragon's wing. The scaled creature screamed again. Then it's horned, fire breathing middle head swiveled around toward him and hissed. Oh and that hiss was shortly followed by a big mushroom cloud of fire. Orion ducked under the fireball, rolling into a crouch and sent another arrow toward the beast, but this time the beast incinerated it in mid air.
Then all three of the head glared real pointedly at me like, You're next punk! But when it opened its mouths a chorus of arrows soared at them, most pinging off scale but some hitting weak spots or going down its gullet. Talk about a sore throat.
Orion ducked down close to the ground to notch his arrows and take a battlefield glance of the hill. It was not a pretty sight even to him, who barely knew what the hill was supposed to look like. A large amount of it was burning, with swathes of grass yellowing by the florescent green poison, and holes were eaten into the hill by acid. Dryads and satyrs rushed back and forth frantically to wash away the acid, poison, and fire. Meanwhile he was still the dragon's main target, no matter how many arrows hit that weren't his own it seemed convinced that he was the threat.
He tumbled backward after a fresh spurt of flame, warming his toes in the process, and shot once again. Unfortunately it appeared that his luck failed this time, and the dragon caught the arrow in his mouth as it sailed past him, then immediately spit it out at the campers. And while it was distracted the rest sent arrows at it, and a couple of brave (or foolish) Ares warriors charged at it, hacking at its scale plated chest and snout. It eyed them contemptuously for a split-second before swishing them away with its tail. They fell, screaming, into a hole made acid. It amused its self for a minute by snorting fire into the hole and watching them screech.
And behind the beast, lit up by the roaring flames, were two human figures, but adorned with spines and scales like that of the beast they fought. The creatures were heading for the Fleece, obviously with evil intent. Orion opened his mouth to shout a warning to the camp, but the problem was solved before he could. Peleus, with the swordsman warrior from before on top his back(He'll get crisped for that later, dragons hate that even in emergency) jumped upon the figures, one being mauled by the guardian dragon, the other being slashed in half by celestial bronze. Orion felt a sigh of relief escape his chest. But then more than just a sigh was forced out of his chest, as yet again that day something slammed into him and he was thrown to the ground, his bow landed nearly ten feet away from him. Standing over him was an armored warrior, with richly adorned armor with images of a ball of light shining brightly commonly appearing on the forged metal. He also had a fine blade of celestial bronze, a katana fashioned sword and this was barely an inch away from Orion's throat.
The warrior lifted his helmet partial on his head so that it merely rested upon his forehead, and he audibly sniffed the air. "Well, well, you are unusual aren't you?" Orion got a clear glimpse of his eyes and his mind was blown into astonishment. They were pupil-less, instead having just golden irises that seemed to emit a faint light.
Orion gasped for air that was not permitted by the warriors boot upon his chest into his lungs. "You might work even better than that ragged old piece of wool. You're coming with me, the Alpha, now. And be quiet about it or there'll be trouble."
'Alpha' hauled him to his feet, and Orion leaned on his knees as if heavily in need of breath. In truth, he did need air, but instead he grabbed his knife again and swung wildly at the attacker, who not expecting a swift attacked like that, stumbled back and back again as Orion used three swift jabs to throw him of balance. The dragon behind him roared in pain and both Orion and Alpha turned at the sound. The swordsman from earlier had managed to get close to the beast and scored a hit, his sword having sunk into flesh in a scale gap under the arm. At the same time Peleus raked his claws upwards on the dragon's side, ripping up scale and reaching flesh. With another roar, this of rage, the dragon unfurled his wings, and the force of the draft from them sent both Peleus and the warrior flying backward. Alpha ran toward the beast and was allowed to climb on, startling Orion. As the assailant and the beast started to fly away a rain of arrows soared after them, most being batted away by screaming winds; in desperation Orion attempted to throw his knife but the wind blew it far off course. As the beast rose into the air it loosed one final burst of flame, scattering the camp forces.
'Alpha' turned around and smirked very openly at the enraged hunter behind him and waved. He also called out something that was snatched away by the roaring wind, but in the pit of his stomach he felt it was something along the lines of "See you soon!"
Ok, so that wraps up this chapter, which personally was one of my favorites.
And you have met the first of the antagonists, and mysterious half-blood named 'Alpha'. The first person who PM's me the right guess about who his parent is will get and exclusive look at the other two half-blood antagonists.
Oh and I will soon release a new fic about the two pranksters of camp, Travis and Connor! It will be called "Pranks and Stolls" and a sneak preview of the first chapter's title… "A Pinch of Wealsey"