Living a Lie

Chapter 2, Earth

~James POV~

      Wow, earth is such a boring place, it's so dull, it almost looks like all the color has been drained from it. It's just moral as bright and colorful down here as it is up in Mount Olympus. The ocean seems lifeless, hardly even moving, the trees aren't dancing, and the animals aren't talking. This place is so different from Mount Olympus, that I think I'm already getting home sick, and it looks like everyone else has about the same reaction, besides for Angel, well I guess the underworld probably has about the same amount of color, if not less.

  

    As we're walking around, we notice some movement in the weeds, we all get our weapons ready, me with my burning bow and arrows, Angel with her two swords of hell, Penelope with her trident of the sea, Nicholas with his battle axe of paralysis, Valkerie with her moon bow and arrows, and Rose and Jade end up just standing behind us. Valkerie slowly starts to move forward, being the hundreds that she is, and investigates what the movement was, when out of nowhere a majestic lion hops out of the weeds and snarled at Valkerie. Valkerie steps back and as she does the lion lunges. It sinks it's teeth into Valkerie's shoulder. Blood dripping from the lions mouth, it sinks its teeth in her neck. Valkerie struggles under it's grip prying it away. The lion released her but only to sail its claws across her stomach. As blood mixed with Valkerie's guts it backs away. Valkerie with her last breath goes to try and stab the lion with an arrow, but it doesn't even seem to pierce the skin. We all go after the lion at once, but no-one seems to be able to do any damage, and before long, Valkerie is nothing but a pile of blood, guts, and bones after the lion finished its meal. We all get ready to fight for our lives when the lion turns around and heads back into the weeds, a couple seconds later a woman with black hair, that seems to have a tint of red in it,  her eyes seem to be a cool shade of red, almost fiery, her skins looks to be perfectly tan, and, if my measurements, looks to be standing at about five foot three, walks out of the weeds.

    She opens up her mouth and says, "Sorry about your friend, there was just something about her that seriously drove me nuts, so I had to kill her. Was it a little too gruesome, I do apologize, my lion form can be slightly messy."

    All of our jaws just dropped,  I was the first one to recover from the shock, and when I finally could speak again, I said, "You, you just ate Valkerie, but that's not possible, we've been keeping track of population and species up on Mount Olympus, and we know for a fact that there isn't any shapeshifters down here, trust me, we'd know about that kind of mutation."

    "Oh, I'm no shapeshifter, my mother is Sehkmet, goddess of lions, fire, and vengeance, and my father Vali, God of revenge. So I pretty much always have the need to kill."

    "Sehkmet, Vali, those names don't sound familiar, they don't even sound Greek. I should know, I've been helping Hermes most of my life, and he's named every Greek name at least once, if not a hundred times." I say, confused.

    "Oh that's because they're not Greek gods and goddesses. Sehkmet is Egyptian, and Vali is Norse." She replies, and as soon as she says that we all drop our weapons and start using our powers, I start heating things up, but then remember that she's probably resistant to heat, having fire power and all, so then I start to blind her, Angel calls upon some of the souls that her dad has collected to hold her down while Penelope tries to drown her, Jade and Rose try and coax her to do whatever they say, Nicholas tries to use the shadows to trap her but nothing seems to work, my light just seems to make her stronger, she can fight off the souls that attack her, she evaporates any water that gets to close to drowning her, she's a girl so Jade and Rose's love persuasion doesn't work on her, and any shadow that tries to get near her just disappears because she's just too bright, my light doesn't help with that either, so I put it out. When we finally realize that we have no chance of beating her we all grab our weapons off the ground and retreat, running in any direction, as long as we got far away from her.