Liz's POV
I was awake before my eyes opened. I kept them closed so as to escape the nightmare for a little longer. This place we were in, I just couldn't believe it. It was too terrifying, I don't know how anyone could live here.
Reluctantly I opened my eyes. Early morning sunlight was streaming through the canopy of trees. I heard a quiet metallic noise to my right and turned to see Clarisse sharpening her knife.
"Sorry. Did I wake you?" She said without looking up.
"No, you didn't. It's fine. I think I'll go down to the stream to get us some more water." I said, getting up and brushing off my leggings.
"Make sure you take a weapon with you. I've been up for a while, and it's suspiciously quiet around here. Be alert." Clarisse said.
I nodded, picked up my bow, slung on my quiver and headed down to the stream with our water bottles in a bag in my other hand.
Sighing, I knelt down and dipped Annabeth's water bottle into the cool, gentle water. Once it was filled I screwed on the cap and moved on to Nico's. His bottle was still about half full and I wondered how he and Annabeth were doing. They had left last night to scope out the area, and said they probably wouldn't be back by morning. They weren't.
I heard a rustling in a tree of to my left. Slowly, I picked up my bow from where i had set it down. As quietly as I could, I notched an arrow and turned towards the sound. I saw a flash and quickly pulled back and released my arrow. It didn't hit the creature right where I was going for, but I was just surprised it hit it, with the suddenness of its movement. The creature fell to the ground with a soft thump and I cautiously walked over to it.
I gasped. I had just hit the back of a beautiful bird and it was slowly dying in pain. I hated that I was going to be responsible for its tortured death. I was a daughter of Apollo, the god of healing. Not death.
A single tear rolled down my cheek as I knelt with shaking hands and scooped of the bleeding bird. It didn't even struggle, it probably thought I was going to finish it off or something. At least I didn't have to pull the arrow out of it, as it didn't fully penetrate this poor bird.
"I'm sorry." I whispered, setting the bird gently in my lap. I let out a sob and brushed away the tears that began to flow more freely down my face. I sniffed, trying to think of what to do.
Wait. I thought. Liz, you're so stupid! You're a daughter of Apollo, the god of HEALING.
I took some water in my hand from my bottle and gently poured it on the bird's wound. It sobbed, exactly as I had just moments ago. How could it sound just like me?
I closed my eyes and thought of Apollo.
Please dad. Help me heal this bird. I didn't mean to hurt it and I don't want it to die.
You cannot heal everything, Elizabeth. My father spoke to me.
But dad, please, this bird did nothing wrong. It doesn't deserve to die.
Not many creatures do deserve to die. With this bird you must learn that death is merely a part of the circle of life.
But dad! No! I thought, fresh tears streaming from my eyes.
I apologize, Elizabeth. This is a tough lesson to learn, but it is vital to your quest.
Dad, what--why--? I began.
Goodbye, my Elizabeth. And remember this lesson. Remember what I have taught you.
My eyes shot open. In my hands lay the bird, except now it was motionless.
I let out a loud sob of pure sadness. When I finally calmed myself down a bit, I could hear the sound of my sob being echoed through the trees. So this bird was not the only one of its kind. I looked up to the trees and I could see a few of the beautiful creatures fluttering through branches.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" I said aloud to the birds as they flew overhead.
I found a hollowed out tree and placed the bird in it, along with a few nearby flowers. I covered it in leaves to keep it hidden, but I thought sadly of how it would probably be eaten by some other animal eventually.
I trudged back to our makeshift camp with the filled water bottles, wiping my face. Clarisse walked up to me and took her bottle.
"What took you so long? Did you run into any trouble?"
"No." I said in a dead voice.
"Annabeth Iris-messaged me. She and Nico had some...unexpected delays, but they'll be here in an hour or so.
"What kind of delays?" I asked.
Clarisse seemed to be hiding something. "She didn't say. I'm sure she'll tell us all about when she and Nico get here."
"Right." I said skeptically. Being the youngest in the group, I was used to not being told all the details so as to 'keep me safe'. Please, I thought. I'm a twenty-first century demigod, nobody can keep me safe. Not completely. That was one of the things they didn't teach you at Camp Half-Blood, but I figured, how could I always be protected? That was how I convinced my mother to let me come to Camp. I remember the memory as if it was yesterday...
My mother was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a salad when I confronted her with my friend Josh. Earlier that day Josh had spilled the beans on my situation as a demigod. Naturally, at first I didn't believe it. I had seen the news report myself of when my dad supposedly died. He was a doctor in a hospital that burned down. I hadn't seen the report when the accident happened, as I had just been born, but my mother had told me, and I later had looked it up on the Internet. Sure enough there were videos of news reports, newspapers, magazine articles, photos, etc. My father had been last seen desperately trying to help as many patients as he could as his hospital blazed and burned around him. Needless to say he hadn't made it out. Or so I thought.
Josh explained the truth patiently, as if he had done it a dozen times before. I asked him why he was so calm about the whole thing and he said it was because he had done it a dozen times before with other demigods.
At first, I was mad at him. "So, I'm just another one of your recruits, is that it? You're not even my friend!" I said running into the hallway from my room.
"Lizzy-" Josh began.
"If you're not really my friend I don't think it's appropriate for you to be so informal with me." I said, my face bright red.
"Lizzy, it's not like that." Josh said, ignoring what I had just said in his always-calm voice, "I'm trying to help you. Just hear me out."
I looked into my old friend's eyes and tried to see any hint that he might be joking. There was none.
I sighed. "Fine. You have ten minutes."
Josh grinned, "That's all I need."
So Josh told me all about the gods and my parents and how they couldn't be together, blah, blah, blah. I finally decided maybe he was really telling the truth. We went downstairs to tell my mother how I'd be better off at Camp Half-Blood.
She didn't seem surprised. "I knew this day would come eventually. Lizzy, I would say yes, but how could I watch over you if you weren't here with me?"
"No offense, Ms Keyes, but I don't think you would be much protection against anything that might come for Lizzy." Josh said.
"Come for me?!" I said.
"Well yeah, you know, monsters and stuff." Josh said helpfully.
"Oh thanks, Josh. Anyway, Mom, you can't protect me forever, so maybe I need to learn to protect myself."
My mom had that classic, concerned mother look in her eyes, but she finally agreed to let me go to Camp as long as I came home every once and a while. I promised.
Now that was all nice and sappy, but a day after I left with Josh for Camp Half-Blood, we heard a news report that 11 Rogers Street had been robbed and then set on fire by two unidentifiable figures. Police investigators found my living room splattered with blood, and my mother's body lying on the floor, gripping a broken picture frame with an image of my mother, my father, and me as a baby. The only picture of all three of us together.
"No!" I screamed at the radio in the taxi we were riding in.
"Terribly sorry, miss. Close friends of yours?" The driver asked.
"Much more than that." Was all I could manage. Josh had told me not to mention my family to anyone because then I could be targeted. Apparently that didn't matter anymore. I had no family left. Officially, I was a homeless orphan.
Oh yes it's quite sad, I couldn't even go to her funeral because Chiron said monsters would surely attack me in that state of weakness. But I don't need your sympathy. I've heard it all before.
Flash forward to the present, and I had just killed an innocent creature. And did I have a reason? Nope. It just startled me, and I took away it's life like that. I began to wonder who the real monsters in this world were. The ones who commit acts knowingly, or the ones who do them by accident when they could've been prevented.
I heard another rustling and purposely threw my bow into the leaves. I would not kill anything else. Ever. Unless I felt threatened by it.
Annabeth and Nico appeared. They were tattered, banged and bruised. Annabeth's lip was swolen and bleeding, she had a slash across her right bicep, and her left fist was completely black and blue. Nico was leaning on Annabeth, his eyes crossed and looking like he would collapse at any minute. Blood trickled down the side of his face, and his pants were torn at the top of his left leg, exposing his ghostly white skin and a deep red gash. He coughed and blood splattered the ground in front of him. As I feared, he crumpled and lay in a heap in his own blood at Annabeth's feet.
"Not quite Sherwood Forest..." Annabeth said, and she too dropped to the ground. At least she stayed conscious.