The God's Reign: Book one, The Knowing

Chapter 20- Chiron vs. Flagpole round one, DING!

Hannah and Ethan leaped off of the bottom stair-rail and dog-piled the entranced demigod. They pinned him down, tearing the box from his hands causing it to fall to the floor. It crashed open. A heavy stream of smoke gracefully tumbled out of the box. At the base of the smoke, a glowing red light persisted to escape from its prison. Hillary skid across the pavement and struggled to close the box. But it seemed as if an invisible force kept it ajar.

As the wind blew the smoke up to the roof, where Caleb and I stood, the smoke swarmed around us. One wiff of the stuff made me gag. It smelled of sulfur and gasoline, making my nostril sensors go numb. We coughed as the smoke filled our lungs. I suddenly felt a change in the atmosphere; the air felt dense and toxic, and my mood began to turn sour. I noticed my hands starting to grow horrendous warts and rashes. My stomach churned from a queasy racking on the inside. 

I looked at Caleb- the smoke was affecting him too. He had tears running down his cheeks and liver spots were growing on his neck. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT, SHIT-HEAD!?" He screamed in my face.

I flinched. I better tell him to calm down. "WHO ARE YOU CALLING SHIT-HEAD, YOU RAT-NOSED SON-OF-A-BI-" I slapped a warty hand over my mouth to stop myself from completing the sentence. It was like my brain came up with one thing and my mouth said another thing- a completely horrible, nasty thing. "Hillary!?" I called to my friend down below.

"I know, I know, gimme a minute!" She snapped back through her gritted teeth. Hillary pushed against the lid of the box, but an equal maybe even stronger force push it back open. The smoke kept pouring out and the red light inside came closer the outside of the box. "Hannah! Your spear!" She screeched.

"On it!" Hannah left the demigod tackling to Ethan as she fished her hand inside her boot to pull out a three-foot spear. (What I've learned from this quest so far- never set limits on a child of Ares). Hannah threw the spear at the inside of the box. Hillary directed the box into the projectile's path. The spear sunk into the red- lighted mass inside.

A siren-like sound wailed as it pierced the light. The red mass diminshed, automatically sucking all of the smoke back into the box like a vacuum. Hillary, yanked out the spear, slammed the box and locked it. She collapsed to her knees and took short, hagard breaths.

I looked at my hands- the rashes and warts have shrunken down and were no more. Caleb wiped  the tears off his cheeks. "Sorry," he murmured. I assumed he was talking about the shit-head comment.

"It's better than what I hear when my step-dad is angry." I admitted, trying to laugh it off. We climbed down the ladder and joined the others. I came to Hillary and helped her to her feet. 

"What was that?" I asked. She opened her mouth to say something but our attention was taken by Ethan and Hannah who lifted up the demigld and slammed him against the wall.

"Which one are you- suicidal or just plain retarded?!" Hannah yelled in the demigod's face. "Wait, let me guess- you're both!"

The demigod, whose eyes were no longer pure gold- they were now normal and calf brown, quivered his lips as he spoke. "I-I-I uh, have no idea-, I don't-"

"Oh, are you so clumsy that you stumble over your own words?!" Ethan hollered. "Seriously, were you even in your right of mind when you decided to open Pandora's box?!"

Something in the corner of my brain clicked. Pandora... not the online radio, not the planet in Avatar... the box- the box that held spirits of plague, grief, rage, violence, jealousy... and so much more.

I looked at the wooden box on the ground. "So that's..." I started.

"Yeup," Hillary nodded. "And if we would have let him open it, the world would have ended in chaos before Nyx got her clutches around Olympus." And if I have any say about it, neither of those things will happen, I vowed.