artemis ; pjo

Gone

"Anyone there?" A voice called out. It was Madi. That means the others who were outside should have came.

"Y-yeah" MK yelled back.

This is The Test. Survive and find me at the center, and you are worthy. If not, oh well. A voice boomed through the tree tops.

I thought about my dream. Looking down, I saw the wedding dress.

Oh no oh no oh no oh no! I thought.

Start! the voice commanded.

   I heard a loud snarl from behind me. Thankfully I had my cuff on, and I turned it into a bow. The snarling became louder and I could pick out a choir of growls, meaning there was more of them. I broke out into a sprint.
The thorny twigs got caught in my dress and ripped it, but my only focus was to get to the center. My bow almost slipped out of my sweaty palms.

   I blindly shot and arrow and let it go into the the air where the noise was coming from. There was a wailing noise, so I'm guessing that I hit something. I returned my focus to running forward, and not fainting. My breath was already running short, and it didn't help that the dry, cool fall air was keeping me from taking deep breaths. I made a sharp turn to avoid colliding with a pine tree.

   There was an extra loud snarl from behind me. I did something stupid, and turned around. The smell of rotting meat hit my nostrils and all I thought was that my nose hairs were burning. It reeked. I was now face to face with a hellhound.

    I mean I've read about them a little bit, but you'd never think it'd happen to you. My whole body went cold and I was paralyzed with fear. It slowly prowled closer to me. A few long seconds pasted before it began to bend its legs to pounce. That finally snapped me out of my fear. I turned around and sprinted though the trees. Unfortunately, the extremely large hellhound pounced before I was out of range.

"Rahhhrgg" I screamed in agony when the hellhound's claws sank into my back and scratched downward. Sadly, my back was exposed in this dress so there wasn't any protection. My back felt really hot, yet cold at the same time. I could feel the blood dripping down my back. The searing feeling in my back made me want to curl into a ball and let the hellhound get me.

But I kept running.

Go! I screamed in my mind.

The twigs kept ripping my dress, but I could barely tell. I unsheathed my dagger, and turned around. Running backwards, I slashed once at the hellhound, then turned forward again. I picked up speed and leaped over a log. The hellhound tripped on the log, buying me time. The few seconds it took for it to get up made it angrier.

   I saw a blur of black, bronze, and blue swish through the trees next to me.

"Stay back!" A voice called out to the hellhound chasing him. My eyes focused and I saw that it was James fending off the beast with Riptide.

"James, over here!" I called.

He looked over at me and slashed at the hellhound again. James ran over towards me, and the hellhound on his trail tripped, buying James time as well. He picked up speed to catch up with me.

"How's life?" James joked.

"You think this is a good time to chit chat?" I asked, raising an eyebrow

His smile disappeared as James's eyes went to my back.

"Oh my gods, Amanda. What happened?" James asked. He sounded close to tears. My back shot a huge wave of pain through my body. Everything was going fuzzy from all the blood I'd lost.

"Oh, uh, hellhound. Let's go!" I said as we ran along side each other.

There was a snarl that sounded way too close.