The Second temple was ominous in its appearance. A grand sweeping structure of some flat black stone with two huge braziers at the entrance crackling with green fire. Just standing in front of it made Tracey's skin crawl, it reminded her of the fortress where Artemis had been possessed by Dahok. She glanced at Artemis but if her friend felt the same she was hiding it. "So who's next?" Autolycus asked.
Amphiaraus eyes were transfixed and he spoke as though each word was being dragged out of him. "The warrior woman with the heart of a lion, tested in battle and bereft of people she will stand before her greatest foe."
Artemis raised an eyebrow and glanced at Atalanta. "I think he means you."
Atalanta snorted. "It could as easily be you, you're a warrior in every way that matters."
Artemis glanced at Amphiaraus but he shrugged and she sighed. "Let's both walk up and see who gets to enter the Fortress of Creepy Doom."
Before they could go in, Tracey quickly swept Artemis into her arms and held onto her for a long moment. She whispered into her ear to be careful if she was chosen.
"I can't keep trekking these worlds without you... I need you to come back to me."
Artemis gave her a little smile as she thought back to the deal she'd made back in London, she hadn't told Tracey about that. She squeezed Tracey gently. "Don't worry hon, you won't have to."
She walked towards the temple with Atalanta but when she tried to enter only Atalanta was able to pass through the door. Artemis walked back to Tracey and patted her shoulder. "Guess it's not my turn yet."
Tracey let out the breath that she didn't realize she had been holding and grasped Artemis's hand with a smile.
"I would've described you differently, though you do have a heart of a lioness." She said with a small laugh. "But you've got much more than that."
Artemis chuckled. "Yeah, I've got you. Come on, let's go make something to eat, I wonder if I can find any rabbits around here."
Tracey started to laugh quietly and then it grew louder.
"You stick to cooking the rabbits and leave the hunting to me." She said, her eyes dilating yellow as she grinned wolfishly at Artemis. "I'll have the better nose between the two of us anyway."
Suddenly Tracey's head and neck vanished from her cloak and it fell into a heap that started to move around until Tracey popped out in her grayish wolf form and looked up at Artemis. Peeling her lips back over her fangs, Tracey tried to smile to the best of her abilities in her wolf form, but she really came off as creepy. She trotted off into the underbrush and disappeared, using her nose to sniff out the scents of rabbit.
Autolycus swore briefly startling Artemis. "That's not natural." He grumbled.
Artemis laughed and he frowned at her. "Autolycus, saying that Tracey and I are unnatural is like saying water is wet. We were brought here by the Gods, what is natural about that?"
She knelt down and started piling firewood in neat little pyramid. Autolycus glanced up at the sky and sighed, it would be dark soon, it had taken hours at the first temple and then hours more to get to the second one, Gods alone knew how long it would take Atalanta to come out of this temple. He watched Artemis as she whispered a word and the fire roared to life without her having used flint and steel. He swore again and the others looked over, they gathered around the warmth of the fire and Hercules gave his friend a concerned look but Autolycus shook his head.
The dying squeal of Tracey's second kill wrent the darkening sky as she snapped its neck in her tight jaws. She hadn't realized that she had been gone for so long, the thrill of the hunt and the smells of nature filled her nose and excited her greatly. Tracey picked up both rabbits in her mouth, disregarding the slight trickle of blood running down her chin and trotted off quite pleased with herself. She ducked under some final brush as she came to it and walked into camp, depositing their dinner down beside Artemis, looking up at them all and tilting her head to the side and blinking.
'Look! Look! Look what I caught! Be grateful humans for without me you would starve!' Tracey's look seemed to say as she began to wag her tail. 'Dinner is served.'
Artemis smiled and scratched her ears for a minute then leaned down and picked up the rabbits before producing a wickedly sharp little knife and set to work cleaning them. Hercules produced a pot and some water and Amphiaraus brought a handful of vegetables from his pack. After setting the skins aside Artemis started carving the meat from the bones and laid it on the extremely hot rocks beside the fires where they sizzled and made smells that set Tracey's mouth to watering. She noticed in a strange abstract way that Artemis had a smear of blood on her cheek. Tracey studied the smeared blood on Artemis's cheek for a moment before whining softly and then got up, carefully moving around her to nose her cheek with her wet one. Gently licking her skin free of the red substance, not that it was awkward in any way seeing as she was still in wolf form, Tracey surveyed her work and then sat back down beside the fire, looking into the flames of the campfire and watching them dance. Her large and bushy tail was curled around her paws and her ears twitched at the crackling flames as they moved.
'I wonder why Atalanta isn't back yet... I hope nothing went wrong.'
Artemis had wrinkled her nose at being licked but she seemed unconcerned as she started making a thick stew. A companionable silence fell around the campfire while she cooked and the sun dipped ever lower behind the horizon. It was nearly dark before Artemis tapped Tracey's haunch. "Legolas." She murmured softly.
For an instant Tracey's eyes changed back to their normal hazel color and she quickly snapped up her cloak, vanishing beneath it. The movement from under the fabric was unmistakeable at Tracey's normal human transformation occurred and her head popped up from the hood again. She sat in such a way that she could tie her bandages underneath her cloak without exposing any of her bare skin and then settled on her side, her head resting in her palm.
"That smells great Artemis, you could give your Grecian man a run for his money... and so could I for that matter." She said with a soft laugh and then laughed a little louder. "Sorry for licking you boss, I didn't think it would be that bad. It could have been worse if I licked you as I was now though."
Artemis laughed and doled out bowlfuls of the thick stew. "Yeah that would have been way more awkward."
"Hold on, what Grecian?" Iolaus asked.
Artemis started to answer but the Temple a handful of yards away vanished suddenly leaving Atalanta standing in its place looking a little the worse for wear. Hercules leaped up and trotted over to her followed by the others but Artemis stayed in her place by the fire. Tracey sat up and watched as their company returned with Atalanta before she popped the stopper from a waterskin bag and handed it to her, directing her to drink and rest now. She took her bowl of stew and handed it to Atalanta, wondering what ordeal she had just gone through. Somehow Tracey didn't think they'd be able to get anything from her because she wouldn't know anything about what happened to her like Iolaus had. Taking another bowl of stew for herself, Tracey sat back and ate quietly while the others looked her over and tended to her cuts and bruises.
"You should be okay with a hot meal and plenty of sleep tonight Atalanta." She said soothingly and with a gentle smile.
