Olympus Fallen

~chapter 6~

Artemis' POV

I paced around my room, anxiously trying to figure out how to save Athena. I had tried countless times to establish a connection with Athena. It was something Athena taught Apollo and me. Her mother, Metis, taught her how to establish mind connections with people, no matter the distance. Yet, now it wasn't working. Was it that we were a millenia apart? Or she was in too much distress. The last thought worried me.

Stop it. You're scaring yourself. I chided myself. Apollo glanced up from polishing one of his gold tipped arrows. Forged by the Cyclops, our arrows were intricately engraved with swirling patterns. "Arty. Athene will be fine. Don't worry too much. You're scaring yourself silly." Apollo used our nicknames for each other. Despite his reassuring words, I could tell Apollo was worried as well. He had been cleaning the same arrow for the past hour, and that arrow was beyond shiny.

I only sighed in response but stopped pacing around the room, and sat down on the bed beside Apollo, leaning my head on his shoulder. He smiled softly and brushed a stray strand of hair out of my face.

"What are we going to do." I lament. "Father doesn't want to do anything. He thinks Athena will get herself here. Even if she makes it out of Olympus somehow, she can't time travel. Only Zeus has such a power."

Apollo nods. We'll find a way to convince him. In fact I may just have an-"

Apollo broke off his speech halfway. I turned to look at him, and his eyes are filled with as much worry as mine, unspoken words ringing in the air. I leap off the bed, and dash off to Father's room with Apollo right behind me, holding our bows and quivers.

I bang on the door impatiently.

Zeus opens the door in less than a minute, a look of annoyance and worry on his face.

"Athena is in trouble, I can feel it. She was trying to establish mind contact with us but than I felt a sudden jolt of pain. She has to be in trouble. You need to open a portal for us to save her or it'll be too late." I blurted.

Zeus' face turns pale. He grabs one of his lightning bolts leaning against the door frame, and rushes down to the front lawn with Apollo and me right behind him.

He steps on the soft grassy ground, near the front gate.

"There's no trees here. We'll use the main gate as the entrance to the portal. But you have to be quick. You have less than two minutes before the portal closes because two-way portals last shorter." Zeus looks at us with a serious expression

Apollo and I nod silently. I sling my quiver across my back, and hold my bow in my hand, an arrow shafted.

Zeus points his lightning bolt to the clear blue sky, and a streak of lightning meets his bolt, as he channels it to the gate. I see a small portal slowly open, and the familiar green landscape where we descended from Olympus comes into sight.

As soon as the portal is wide enough, I leap through the portal with Apollo, looking left and right for any Titans.

"There!" I point in the distance. A small crumpled figure lays in a heap in the distance. We sprint there as quickly as we can.

Apollo slings his bow across his back, stowing his arrow back in its quiver. Athena lies on the soft grassy floor, bound with Hephaestus' magic net, a dagger buried in her stomach up till the hilt and the shoulder of her chiton stained with a mix of gold and greenish ichor. She was thrown from Olympus, I realised with a start. Tears well in my eyes, but I blink them away. Now was not the time to cry. Apollo pulls the makeshift binds off, picks Athena up, carrying her bridal style, and starts running back to the portal, while I head up his rear, my arrow still shafted in case Titans showed up but we make it back to the portal without a mishap and cross over the portal just as it squeezes shut behind me. Apollo pushes past the crowd of wide-eyed Olympians and rushes up to Athena's bedroom, with Demeter and me in tow.