Son of a Hunter

22

-Leon-

I am being carried...

Wait a minute, if I realize that I am being carried, doesn't that mean that my mind is still with my body? Wouldn't I descend into...Hades was the name? Would I still feel some pain? If I am dead, how can I be feeling this?

Leon's eyes moved under the lids. He tried to move them, to open his eyes and see just what in the blazes was going on around him, but he could not muster the strength to do so. He felt himself being laid down and a cool, small hand placed against his forehead. He heard a man gently tracing fingers along his wounds, and he braced himself for pain. But none came.

He felt stronger with the strangers touch, almost as if he were being healed with only a mere stroke of someone's hand. He could feel a soothing sensation course through him, bringing calm bliss to his ravaged body. Then he felt the fingers move to his leg wound, and the pain gradually leave him. He managed a grunt with his new found strength, and tried to open his eyes. But a hand, smaller than the one healing him, was placed along his forehead, and stroking it several times.

"Don't try to get up Leon. Just rest and allow Apollo to do his work," The feminine voice said.

Mother?

He distinctly thought it was his mother, but could not open his eyes still. He took a deep breathe, which was now unhindered by blood clogging his chest, and felt completely at peace, resting his head more thoroughly on the pillow now being placed under his head. He breathed and allowed himself to slip away once again.

-Artemis-

Artemis signed with relief as she watched her brother do his "emergency healing". He had moved with careful precision, never missing one possible wound on her sons tender body. He finished and looked up at his sister from his crouched position next to the bed, grinning as if he had just won the Olympian lottery.

"Am I amazing, or what?"

"Apollo, I don't know how to thank you..."

"Don't worry little sis, it's what I do."

Artemis didn't bother to correct him, just allowed him to have his moment. She stared intently at her son's sleeping body, and allowed a smile to cross her face. He had passed. The Nemean Lion, the Hydra, and Echidna were dead, for now. Leon had slain the monsters he was sent to kill. He had proved himself worthy to the Olympian council and she could not have been more proud to say that he was indeed her son.

Son...I had not seen that coming...

Her thoughts traveled to the day of his birth, when she realized with agony that she had endured nine months of pregnancy to be cursed with a boy, something she was suppose to despise and hate. She remembered almost killing him, until he cooed at her and she lost all nerve. Her finding of the family in Alaska was a stroke of incredible fate, and they raised him as if he were their own.

She smiled at the memory of his earlier adventures. Her helping him find his way home when he was lost at age five. Hunting his first caribou when he was ten, and her secret visit to him when he was thirteen, his stuttering at her beauty. And his knowledge of the art of hunting. She had really been there with him when he killed the Nemean Lion and the Hydra, surprised at his tactics to kill both of them.

And she had watched his battle with Echidna, the "Mother of Monsters". She had watched with apprehension as they initially taunted each other, and then came together in the battle that followed. She had outright panicked when he was helpless, in a corner with her coming at him to deliver her claws of death. And the way he had rushed forward to save Thalia, despite his wounds, showed incredible strength of will...