Chase Keldheart
Chase was disappointed his great entrance was disrupted by a column of fire, but hey, you use what you get. Everyone else was too preoccupied fighting the titan Hyperion to notice the rest of the ten, plus Quinn, had joined them.
"Where have you guys been?" William asked him as he pulled out his sword.
"We were all at the garden right where the storm was," Chase replied, "how about you?"
William paused before he replied when relief flushed over his face seeing Cleo wasn't… well dead. "We were dropped off in Texas."
"Yeah, it was pure chance we met you guys here," Nata interjected.
"Well, when Cleo woke up she got a message from the scythe that we needed to go to the Parthenon, and as soon as we got here we got intercepted by Hyperion here," Chase explained.
"Wait, the Titan?" Jose asked, turning to see the enemy.
Chase nodded, "yep, the one and only. Well, we better start helping them," he said turning to see the others were just barely managing to fight him off.
"Jose, you are the only one here immune to fire, you're our best bet, and we need to get a message to Cleo to use her powers to weaken Hyperion by drenching him." Suddenly a chorus of howls interrupted William's plan and a dozen hellhounds ran at them. "Okay… well we will watch Cleo and Jose's back while they fight Hyperion," he concluded. "Get the message to everyone."
William and everyone but Jose ran to fight off the hellhounds, Jose ran up to Cleo, telling her what they were supposed to do. She nodded, and drew water from the fountain nearby, dousing the Titan, and dulling the flames to a spark, while Jose started to fight him.
Chase went up to the others who hadn't yet got the message, "we are gonna cover Cleo and Jose from the hellhounds," he said quickly as he turned to fight the hoard of monster dogs.
They were able to beat the first 6 ones almost instantly, the problem was though, that they were the smaller less powerful ones, leaving the last 6. Those ones were extremely tough and shadow traveling all over.
"Ace, is there any way you could prevent them from shadow traveling?" Alec asked.
"I'm not exactly sure, but I could always try," Ace replied. "Here, cover me," he told Tara, as a look of concentration overtook his face, and his eyes closed shut. Around him it started to get darker and darker, then slowly the amount of shadow traveling started to get smaller and smaller, until it just disappeared completely.
"Good job," William yelled to him. Ace opened his eyes and nodded tiredly, dropping to his knees. It must've taken a lot out of him to do that.
"What did you do?" Chase heard Tara ask him.
"I just focused on closing the shadows, sort of like blocking them," Ace replied, yawning.
"Chase, take Ace to the side, he doesn't have enough energy to fight," Will commanded. Chase nodded and ducked a swipe of a hellhound's paw and running over to Ace.
"Come on," he said helping Ace walk to the side, not too far, but far enough to not be in the battle. Ace seemed like he wanted to complain, but almost as soon as he sat back down he fell asleep.
Chase turned to see how everyone was doing. They were killing off the last two hellhounds, and Jose and Cleo were moving in a pattern, changing it up every once in a while to make it not too easy to read. It was something like Cleo would smash Hyperion in the face with water, blinding him quickly and giving Jose time to slash at him with his sword. They seemed to slowly be wearing the titan down, who didn't have enough time to recover after the water.
Chase ran up to them and stopped in his tracks when he saw everything go downhill. A new batch of dozen hellhounds ran over to the group, and Hyperion swung his sword at the water making it miss him. With this opportunity he was able to amp up the heat around him, forcing Cleo to move back. Jose was fine with that, but Hyperion has been able to sword-fight for millennia. He quickly disarmed Jose and smacked him back with the hilt of his sword.
"Did you think a splash of water and a little fireproof demigod could've beat me?! The Titans have gotten rid of six more minor gods, forcing the twelve Olympians to go into hiding in fear. Even if you manage to leave this park alive, you will never defeat us all without the help of your puny deities!" Hyperion said, his voice booming.
Jose jumped back up and tried to hit him with one Echidna's blades, but it was easily parried.
From the corner of his eye he saw Tara run of to Cleo and say something. He was shocked to see Cleo nod and hold out her hand with the ring on it. Tara took a deep breath and took the ring off, she looked as if she were trying her best to hold in a scream as it enlarged and turned into a glowing scythe, radiating power that Chase could even feel from fortyish feet.
Hyperion was about to gut Jose with his sword when he must've sensed the power. Turning Hyperion dimmed when he saw Tara holding the scythe. She seemed to be in pain, but hid it pretty well.
"Where did you get that?" Hyperion asked as he took a step back. Tara didn't answer, she probably couldn't and walked towards Hyperion. Hyperion's movement slowed dramatically, as if he were walking through jelly. In one swift movement Tara swung the scythe straight through the titan, and he disappeared in a light of gold.
As soon as Hyperion was gone Tara dropped the weapon and collapsed. Chase ran over to her, with Cleo making it just a little before him.
"Is she okay?" he asked her.
Feeling Tara's pulse Cleo nodded, "she's alive. If it's the same as what happened to me she should wake up in a little while." Cleo looked over at the scythe which shrunk back into a ring and reached over to pick it up.
"Wait," Will said as he ran over to them, with everyone else following behind. "We shouldn't risk touching that again," he said as he sat down next to Cleo.
"Well we can't just leave it there," Drey pointed out.
"I'll do it then," Will replied, reaching to grab the ring. He took a deep breath and picked it up, but nothing happened. He slipped the ring on, which magically adjusted itself to fit his finger perfectly. Will exhaled a sigh of relief and was a little shocked to see Cleo let go of Will's hand, Chase hadn't even them notice holding their hands in the first place.
"How'd you do that?" Charlotte asked peeping over Drey's shoulder.
Will looked really confused, "I uh, I'm not sure…"
"Guys, there's something wrong with Tara," Alec said leaning over.
"Well yeah, she's unconscious from touching a weapon that killed a titan in one strike," Chase said with a, 'well duh,' look.
Alec glared at him before shaking his head, "no, I mean, when the same thing happened to Cleo she wasn't as close as being as pale as Tara, and Tara has a darker complexion. Also, this," he said picking up Tara's hand to show a nasty burn on the palm, and going up the arm.
"Someone get Ace, he would know if anything happened to Tara," Will said. Quinn was in the furthest back and ran over to the sleeping son of Hades to bring him over.
"Oh yeah, why is Quinn here? We saw him last back at camp with two broken legs," Chase asked.
"Riley said the rest of the prophecy, so he came here to tell us the rest. Lucky for him your dad just zapped him to us. By parent's hand they shall be betrayed, splitting the two who can wield the Titan blade. The fate of one shall fall to fire, those thought to be loyal will be uncovered a liar. The clandestine gods must lastly be found, unless Olympus shall fall to the ground," Charlotte interjected.
"The parent's hand is Charlotte's. She told us after we got separated that her mom was in Canada with us," Nata added.
"Wait, so Will must be one of the two who can wield the titan blade, since he managed to pick it up with no effects, "Alec pointed out. "Also, Hyperion was talking about how the Olympians went into hiding, maybe they are clandestine gods that we have to find," he continued. The conversation was interrupted by Quinn walking over with a tied look Ace.
As soon as Ace saw Tara his half open eyes widened. "Oh no," he said shaking his head. Everyone else looked at him expectantly. "She isn't dead, but her soul isn't in her body, it's almost like it was burned away," he said solemnly.
"Wait, what?!" Cleo said covering her mouth. "I shouldn't have let her take the ring."
"We could still save her though, if we are able to find her soul and bring it back to her body," Ace added.
"The fate of one shall fall to fire, that must mean Hyperion," Alec mumbled. Chase realized there was one person who wasn't active at all in the conversation, and he hadn't actually seen him after the fight, Jose.
Jose Sanjas
It was all his fault. Jose brought death to another friend, well, it might as well be death. He had been listening from the side of their conversation and never could've imagined such a thing could happen to any of them. Echidna's words were echoing in his head, you will fail to save a friend once again. He dropped the two obsidian swords in disgust.
"You okay?" Chase asked as he walked up to him.
"If I had been able to hit Hyperion I could've prevented Tara from losing her soul," Jose said looking down.
"Psh, I'm surprised you and Cleo were even able to hold Hyperion off for that long. You tried your best," Chase comforted, well at least tried.
"Well that wasn't good enough," Jose mumbled. Standing up he put his hands in his pockets, "let's just go, I hear that you guys know what to do next," he said.
Chase looked worried for him, but nodded anyway, "yeah sure thing." Leaving his swords behind Jose walked with Chase to the rest of the group.
"So we are going to go to camp, but along the way find hiding gods?" Leonata asked, crossing her arms. The way she said it made the plan sound like a glorified game of hide n' seek.
"Pretty much," William replied. No one objected, because no one else had a better plan, and they all walked to the van, Drey and Quinn helped carry Tara. Seeing Tara made Jose cringe and look away, it was his fault she was like this. First the statue, and now this…
Jose didn't even pay attention when they were all driving. There seemed to be a lot more conversation than normal in the ride, and from the small snippets Jose caught it was about the quest. He slowly dozed off and fell asleep. He was expecting to have his normal nightmare of his first failed quest, but instead he found himself inside of a strange room. The walls were lined with tanks of water filled with seaweed and every single fish imaginable. In the room walked a regal looking woman. She had a familiar appearance, reminding him of someone in the group… it just barely escaped his mind who though. Behind her was a man with his most distinguishing feature was a helmet covering most of his face with ram horns on it.
"Orcus would be a great asset," he said nodding his head.
"Krios, we are pushing our own morals by allowing Khione to help us," the woman said sitting down in a chair.
"Yes, but Orcus would bring us hundreds more to our army. We just need the blood of a demigod and he will awaken," Krios pointed out, as he sat across from her. "What else could Khione do for us anyways? If we needed to we could just get rid of her."
"No, her daughter is on the quest, that makes three out of ten, that may still be a help."
"But Tethys, she hasn't made any headway at all with her daughter?!" Krios said raising his voice. Suddenly the door burst open and in walked an angry looking titaness. She had long flowing brown hair and swirling brown and blue eyes. As soon as she walked in Jose remembered who Tethys looked like, Cleo. But wait, she's a daughter of Poseidon, her and Tethys only share the same hair, and facial shape… and eyes.
"What is it Mnemosyne?" Tethys asked.
"It's Hyperion, he failed. One of the girls used Cronus's scythe and sent him to Tartarus," Mnemosyne said. "Wait, there's someone here," she said, looking around. "I can sense his memories. It's one of the ones from the quest, the Hephaestus one." Mnemosyne's eyes stared straight into Jose's, he felt his memories of this dream start to slip away.
Jose woke up in the nick of time. He couldn't remember exactly why his dream spooked him that much, but he did remember that they were planning to awaken Orcus.
"You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost," Charlotte said as she looked over at Jose.
"Uh, yeah I'm fine. I just saw something in my dream though," Jose said clearing his throat. "The titans are going to try and awake Orcus to help them."
"Well go ahead and tell everyone else," Charlotte said gesturing to the rest of the van.
9 out of 10 lines of the prophecy have come true! Anyone else willing to take a guess about the rest? Not that there is much left, sadly :(
If you have any ideas or questions feel free to PM or review!