Iridescence

Chapter Thirty-Four (Artemis)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

ARTEMIS

After training ended, I stood with Faith. It was hard to convince Helios to leave her side, but he still feared me just enough to cooperate.

I watched her and noticed something in her eyes. "What saddens you, Faith?" I asked.

She offered me an unconvincing smile. "I'm fine, Gorgeous," she replied.

"Faith, talk to me," I insisted.

"It was great to meet Helios," she said, "but... Tana's mother is dead. I'm back, but she isn't, and that kind of sucks."

I hadn't thought about that. "I'm sorry," I said. "I was very fond of Ember. She was a good Queen."

"I kind of want to punch Chaos in the face right now," she admitted. "Why did he wipe out the Fire Nymphs specifically?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "They were powerful. I suppose he viewed them as a threat."

"I think it ran deeper than that... I feel like I'm missing something major."

"We'll look into it," I promised.

"There's something else... We should have been able to burn the venom out of ourselves, right? Why didn't it work?"

"That's an excellent question. If anyone could have survived his bite, it was the Fire Nymphs."

"Someone interfered... I feel like this wasn't just Chaos. He had followers... I destroyed most of the ones who attacked us, but there were others..."

"Faith, where are you going with this?" I asked in concern.

"Tana did something, Artemis... I think she hid a secret from everyone before she died... And I can't remember what it was, but it's important."

"You have all of Tana's memories, Faith," I pointed out.

"I think she deliberately had this secret erased from her own mind."

"Why would she do that?"

"To protect an innocent..." She shook her head. "Someone's in danger, Artemis. I can feel it. Follow me!"

Faith took off running. I followed behind her, confused but determined to help. Whatever was happening felt important. There was no time to ask questions.

What we found was a large number of people in long black cloaks. The had formed a circle around something.

"Get away from them!" Faith shouted as fire shot out of her hands. Several of the cloaks went up in flames. I spotted the problem as a few of the followers fled in fear.

Baby Doll and Genie stood beside each other in the circle. They appeared uninjured but were both in a trance. With so many followers still present, the threat to their safety was clear.

Faith and I began to battle against the followers. They reminded me of the fools who had followed Chaos, only they carried a different sort of darkness inside of them. Somehow, they felt much deadlier than the previous cult of imbeciles we'd had to face. They wore Greek comedy and tragedy masks, concealing their identities from us. Half of them wore the smiling mask of Thalia while the other half wore the frowning mask of Melpomene. Somehow, the comedy mask was more disturbing given the dark ritualistic setting.

I noticed as we battled that one of the followers seemed especially focused on Faith. At first, he kept his distance from her, focusing on the hostages instead. He didn't harm either girl, but it was clear he'd made it his mission to keep them away from the rest of us.