"Phew!"
Thalia wiped the sweat off her forehead.
Thalia had finally killed that annoying hellhound.
It probably wouldn't have been so hard if it weren't a mutated one.
Honestly, Thalia still found it strange to look at a hellhound with horns but didn't pay too much mind to it.
It was a monster. All she had to do was to kill it.
Thalia believed that she did a pretty damn good job of it too.
Too bad, the hound turned to dust before she could take a trophy for herself.
It was really a bummer because no one was going to believe that she had hunted a horned hellhound.
At least, she knew that she had taken one down.
Thalia sighed as she leaned on a tree.
"Man, this sucks..."
Like a chain reaction, a lightning bolt struck the tree Thalia was leaning on, jolting the earth around her.
As a child of Zeus being struck by lightning wasn't too big of a deal, Thalia was practically immune to lightning.
However, Thalia was no immune to the effects of the lightning strike such as the ground breaking up at her feet.
Thalia tried to maintain her balance by supporting her body with the tree, but her arm went through thin air. The place, where the tree would've been to stop her fall, was still there except her arm casually passed through it without any resistance.
With nothing stopping her fall, the rest of her also fell into the tree.
It was so odd and so unexpected that she didn't have time to react, and instead Thalia let out a panicked scream. For the brief moment she was inside the tree, it felt like a slip-n-slide, but there were two of them. And you were sandwiched in between them while you were being pelted with bean bags.
Her vision distorted and suddenly Thalia was in a different place, not her mind had even processed that yet.
"HOLY HERA!?!?"
Thalia patted her self down in a frenzy, making sure that she was alive.
Her mind was still in a state of panic as she didn't quite process what had just happened to her yet. Her main priority was making sure that nothing happened to her body.
Once Thalia was sure of that, she let her body drop onto the grass in relief.
Electric blue eyes stared up blankly at the equally empty sky, her heart calming down to the sounds of ambient water rushing.
Thalia stayed like that for a solid minute or two before finally deciding to sit back up and figure out what happened.
Her eyes were met by a vast land of rivers and hills, which was completely different than the forest she was previously in. The area she was in seemed to be distinctly different and would've made for a good forest clearing if not for the landscape around.
In the middle of this clearing was big shrine.
Or was it a temple.
It was too big to be a shrine but too small to be a temple.
Thalia decided on shrine because who cares what the actual name was.
For a seemingly old shrine, Thalia found that there weren't any signs of mold or plant overgrowth, which was a little strange.
As for the detailing carvings.
Thalia didn't care about it. She had never been the architectural type.
That was an Annabeth-type thing.
Her eyes were drawn more towards the funny little moat around the shrine.
It wasn't really a moat, but more like a cool water ring.
The way it flowed around could make Thalia stare at it for hours.
It just went round and round like a merry-go-round.
From what Thalia could see, there wasn't anything that could've made the water go round, which made her a little disappointed.
Some things just don't have answers to Thalia guessed.
It didn't look like this place was anything dangerous, but Thalia didn't know how to get out of here.
Her phone had no signal, so Thalia could not call for help.
The water was inaccessible, so calling upon the goddess Iris wouldn't work.
Escaping towards the natural landscape proved futile as a faint water barrier appeared that got only clearer, the closer she moved towards it.
Admittedly, Thalia found the water barrier to be really cool.
The water was flowing upside down like an upside down waterfall but with just the water. The barrier seemed to go all the way up to the sky and maybe even further.
Her hand slowly moved to touch the wall, intrigued by it.
The tips of her fingers were stopped like any ordinary wall, but it felt like Thalia could feel the water moving under her hand as pressed her palm against it.
Thalia felt like it wouldn't be hard to push herself past the barrier, but no matter how much strength Thalia put in her hands they refused to move past it.
It seemed like the wall was the boundary of whatever place this was.
Her eyes scoured the area again, searching for something. Something out of place. Maybe even a door would pop out of somewhere. But alas, nothing else stood out besides the lone shrine.
Like a treasure hunter, Thalia "hesitantly" figured that she had no other choice but to investigate the shrine.
The shrine was just was asking to be opened.
She confidently strolled towards the shrine's entrance.