1 year later
I breathed in a deep breath, the fresh air of the forest entering my nostrils, and relaxing my whole body like I was getting a massage. My sharp ears were listening for any noises, anything that would give my opponent away. I was determined to find her. A normal person would have given up, but I was to stubborn, and I didn't want her to have the bragging rights that me giving up would give her.
I wasn't allowed to use my powers over tracking for this, but I was using every other power I had. My senses were magnified to ten times more than a normal Gods, and as the God of Hunting I was trying to find something to hunt.
My eyes shot open as I felt a presence closing in on me, and I turned to intercept a well-placed kick that probably would have smashed my face in. I smirked up at Artemis, and tightened my grip on her ankle, before turning on my heel and sending her flying like a sack of potatoes.
Artemis blasted through two trees, and I heard a low thump as she hit the third one. I resisted the urge to burst out laughing, and instead slid into a defensive position. I knew Artemis wouldn't be to happy about my throwing her like that, and although it would make the fight a lot more fun since an angry Artemis usually meant certain death, an angry Artemis was also very scary.
I mean, sure she couldn't kill me, but let's face it, Artemis was an Olympian Goddess, which meant no matter how strong I got I would never be able to beat her. Well, perhaps I could if we weren't using any powers, but with powers, which was what we were doing at the moment, I had no chance.
Anyways, I frowned as I heard no sounds coming from Artemis, she couldn't have actually been hurt by that could she? I waited a few more seconds before slowly beginning to walk forward, staying in my defensive position of course, but stopped as I heard a soft shing! Sound coming from the direction Artemis was.
I couldn't tell exactly what the sound was, but I had a feeling it was a sword, and I slowly began walking backwards. Now, I'm not exactly a pro when it comes to identifying weapons by their sounds, but when I heard a dull thwack sound I immediately turned and tried to begin running. Tried being the key word in that last sentence.
I grunted as a blunt-tipped arrow hit me straight in the head, and I was sent flying down to the hard, packed-in dirt of the forest with an 'oomph'. That was a total cheap shot, I don't care what you say.
I didn't have time to comment on her cheap-ness as I felt her presence above me, and I rolled over to see her floating in the air, her normal hunting knives in her hands. My eyes widened, and I felt a slight tugging in my gut as Riptide appeared.
Celestial Bronze met, sword on knives, and I grunted as she pushed Riptide down and against me, well tried to push Riptide down. My hand trembled, and I could tell that she either wanted to end it right there, or she wanted to beat me to a bloody pulp for throwing her through some trees.
I wasn't sure which one was better.
I stared into her cold silver eyes, and focused my entire being on them. It would be hard to do since she was an Olympian, but if I concentrated hard enough I could probably make her go blind, if only for a few seconds. A few precious seconds to be exact.
I felt sweat bead on my forehead, weather it was because of the knives that I was just barely managing to keep from impaling me or the fact that I was using so much power I didn't know, but as I watched, Artemis' eyes became distant and her brow knit in confusion. The pressure on Riptide eased and I knew that my plan had worked.
I hit Artemis' foot with my leg, hoping she would be disoriented enough not to be able to catch herself, and smirked triumphantly as she stumbled backwards.
"Percy!" she screamed, and I couldn't help but release a laugh as she reached, blindly, towards me. Normally, I would have been afraid of her, but she was blind, Artemis, the mighty Goddess of the Hunt was blind. I'm sure you would have momentarily forgotten about your fear, and watch her instead, too.
"When I get my hands on you..." she trailed off as she reached around for anything that could guide her.
"Good luck with that, O' Great Goddess of the Hunt." I said sarcastically, I probably shouldn't have been taunting her, but I just couldn't resist jibing at her a little.
"Percy, I swear to myself that if you don't give me my vision back I'm going to have every wild animal in this forest maul you until your 'pretty little face' is nothing more than bruises and scratches." I could hear the air quotes around her 'pretty little face' bit.
"How do you plan to do that?" I asked, but then I remembered that she didn't need to see, to control stuff in her domain. "Oh, right." I said, just as her eyes became focused and cold once again.
"I gave you your eyesight back." I said, and gave her my cheeriest smile. Her silver eyes glared in return, and I winced as her hunting knives, once again, appeared in her hands. The Celestial Bronze weapons were truly a sight to behold, short but elegant, stretching to just past her elbows, it would probably be an honor to die by their blades, but I didn't plan to die, honor or no.
"No you didn't." she growled, and lunged at me, her silver eyes full of murderess rage.
"Okay, so maybe your right, but that doesn't mean you have to-." I stopped as I met her blade with Riptide, sparks flew around us, and I hissed as I felt a sharp pain in my side. How could I have forgotten about her other knife?
I pushed her roughly away with Riptide, before jumping up and onto the nearest tree branch, putting space in between us so I could give her a proper glare.
"I win," she said triumphantly, and I glared at her. Her knives disappeared from her hands, and I found myself slightly at ease as that happened, if she attacked I would have a lot more time to block her.
"That's great and all, but you cheat-." I was cut off as a sudden crack of thunder rang though my over-sensitive ears, and a lightning bolt shot out of Olympus. I watched with slight amazement as the blue streak of lightning split up into multiple streaks, the lightning hitting the sky above, and rebounding around the sky, like there was a magical force field stopping it from going into outer-space.
"I must go, we shall continue this later, Percy." Artemis said, and I looked down at her to see she was glaring up at the lightning. "Lord Zeus has called the Olympians together." her silver eyes looked down at me, and her eyes met mine for just a second before she suddenly disappeared in a bright silver light.
I stared at the spot she use to be for a second, before slowly turning back to Olympus. The lightning had dissipated, but if Zeus had to do that to call all the Olympians than it must have been important, because he never would have drawn that much attention to Olympus.
I reluctantly turned away from Olympus, I wouldn't be able to hear what was going on from the two or so miles I was away from the palace, and I knew Artemis would tell me what was going on later anyways.
I jumped down from my tree, landing gracefully on the dirt-floor of the forest. Pain ran through my legs, telling me to get my butt in gear and get hunting, but as I closed my eyes to find something to hunt I found I couldn't focus on the monsters. I was to worried about what was happening on Olympus.
I knew Zeus was pretty dramatic and theatrical, but I didn't think he was would draw that much attention to Olympus unless it was super important, and besides that, Zeus normally would have had Hermes or Apollo go and get the other Gods. But as I stared at the golden lights of Olympus in the distance I got a strange feeling, my senses roared out of control, the animals in the surrounding forest began howling and screeching, and I covered my ears to stop the noises from getting in. Then, everything froze, the howls stopped in mid howl, and I felt my stomach drop.
The earth began shaking, but it was only the Earth, the trees staid in the same spot, not moving. I looked back down at the Earth, and even with my Godly balance and strength I found myself collapsing to the planet as it shook. Was it my father causing this quake?
I quickly decided that it wasn't him though, he never would have caused an earthquake that close to Olympus. Zeus would kill him if he did.
I felt my hands get wrapped in something gooey, and I looked down to see mud surrounding them, slowly making its way up my arms. I was sinking.
I quickly tried to pull my hands out of the mud, but found I couldn't, it was to strong. Something was controlling it, something was trying to get rid of me. I kicked my legs, or tried to at least seeing as they were covered in mud, and began struggling as much as I could. But all my struggling seemed to do was make me sink even further, and I groaned as I saw that there was nothing that I could try and latch on to, no sticks, no plants, nothing.
It's not like I could grab them anyways, but still...
My legs were fully covered now, it seemed as if the dirt had wanted to bring me down feet first, which was fine, the extra time gave me time to think.
What could I do? My brain was running in over-drive, trying to think of something, anything, that I could do to not only save myself, but to warn Olympus. They needed to know to be weary of the Earth, and I was starting to get a feeling in the pit of my stomach that the Earth Mother was behind all of this.
"Perseus." a soft voice suddenly said from below me, and I looked down, searching for a face or something that I could use to place a face to the voice. "Give up, I will have you." the voice was soft and whispery, almost as if it wasn't use to talking.
"Who are you?" I asked, and began struggling once again. I wasn't going to let that woman have me. Not without a fight at least.
"You know who I am, Perseus." the woman's voice was lulling, and Percy almost felt like giving up, and resting in her earthen hold.
"No," I said, and closed my eyes as I concentrated. I felt the usual rush of power that meant my true, Godly form was coming out, but as gold started to peek out of cracks that had formed in my skin I felt the dirt around me tighten considerably. She wasn't about to let me go.
"You will be mine, Spawn of the Sea, but until then, go and warn your precious Olympians. Tell them that they shall feel the wrath of the Earth." and with that my Godly form was fully released, a gold light surrounding me, and I flashed to Olympus as fast as I could.
I landed on the marble floors of the Throne Room with a low 'oomph, and let loose a groan. I was use to landing on my feet, so you can imagine it sort of hurt after landing on the hard floors, I mean seriously? Who makes floors that hard anyways?
There was no talking coming from the Gods around me, and I didn't know if that was a good thing or not. But as I stood up, I decided it was a bad thing, as Zeus was glaring at me with his electric blue eyes, and the lightning bolt in his hand was crackling with a little bit more energy than normal. I immediately hopped up upon seeing this, and bowed deeply to Zeus and my father, Poseidon.
My father said something, but I found I couldn't hear it, and I picked at my ears to clear them. Mud fell from my ears, and I stared in disgust at the ground, I had a high-tolerance for gross things, but I was pretty sure there was worms in the small piles of mud at my feet.
"That's gross." Aphrodite said, and I nodded in agreement. Aphrodite and I didn't agree on much, but that was pretty dang gross. I looked away from the dirt piles, and up at my father instead.
"I'm sorry, but can you repeat that, My Lord?" I asked, I knew I had to call him My Lord in front of the other eleven Olympians, my father may have been one of the most laid-back and relaxed Gods, but he had just as much pride as the others.
"What happened to you, Percy?" he asked, and I rubbed my ear against my shoulder to try and get more dirt out, how did the mud get in my ear anyways? My head didn't even go under.
"Um," as the God of senses the dirt in my ear was getting really annoying. "Well, it happened as soon as Lady Artemis left," and with that I began retelling what happened, adding as much detail as I could, because I knew every little thing could end up being big.
The Olympians were silent when I was done, nobody moved, I looked around at all of them. Finding a range of emotions as I did so, my father was scared although he was trying to hide it, and so were Aphrodite, Demeter, and Hera, heck even Hephaestus and Lord Zeus looked a little scared.
My eyes met Artemis', and I could see she was thinking of all the hunts we would have to go on because of this, and next to her, Athena's gray eyes were swirling like storms, and I just knew that she was coming up with battle plans and strategies.
On the other side of the room, Ares was smiling slightly, and in his flame-filled eyes I could almost see green explosions,(perhaps from Greek fire?) and the deaths that a war with Gaia would cause. Next to Ares, Apollo's clear blue eyes were staring straight ahead, searching for the future, and, for once, his playful demeanor that annoyed Artemis to no end was gone.
"Wait, I thought Gaia was like to powerful to stay awake or something long the lines of that." I said, and looked at my father for reassurance, but I was immediately disheartened to see that his green eyes were grim.
"That's true Percy, but I'm sure she has a few tricks up her sleeve that will throw us off. When Gaia wants something she'll stop at nothing, ever since we chopped Kronos up she's been bothering us, promising revenge." I had never seen my father's eyes so dull, and it almost scared me to see him this way.
"Well, maybe this is just another one of those threats." Artemis said, and I nodded to show my agreement.
"I fear not," Zeus said, and we all looked at him. His blue eyes were staring at nothing in particular, but it almost seemed like he was staring at all of us. "Gaia has never been able to swallow any of us, minor God or not. Just as I said earlier, we shall wait until the Winter Solstice to decide anything." Zeus raised his Master Bolt and it crackled with electricity once again. "Meeting dismissed." and with that he flashed out, Hera going with him.
I stared at his throne for a second before turning to my father who was scratching his beard thoughtfully.
"Father?" I asked, and the sea-green eyes that were so like mine looked down.
"Leave Percy, get some rest. We will discuss this at a later time." Poseidon gave me a small smile, before disappearing in a sea-breeze. The rest of the remaining Gods followed his lead, well except for Artemis and Apollo.
They looked at each other, the twin archers seeming to come to a decision through telepathy. Artemis looked over at me, and slid gracefully from her throne.
"Let's go for a hunt, shall we Percy?" she asked as she walked up to me, and I quickly nodded my affirmation. I needed a good hunt anyways.
"Sure, why not?"
Hey Guys! All of your reviews made ms so happy! XD
To answer some questions:
Percy doesn't have a connection to the Earth, although he might later on.
I haven't decided if I want Artemis to love Orion, but Orion will die at some point in this story.
I haven't decided yet, but yes I might add the PJO series, I don't know how I would do it yet, but chances are it will be in there. Oh, and I don't care if you use a guest thing.
And to Avardsin, Percy won't go missing, but something else will happen that's quiet close to that.
And last, but certainly not least, DragonPrinceNaruto, you, are my first reviewer, and for that I thank you.
Anyways, my internet sucks, I have Midcontinent, and it cuts in and out some times, so it might be awhile between updates, it depends on how much Hermes loves me that day.
-The Produca