Alec walked away, still fuming. I didn't know where he went, but his shirt and the severed pieces of leather whip were left in the grass. Hannah knelt down to pick them up. I wanted to tell her not to, just because Alec should have known better than to leave them, but I couldn't seem to find the right words. I was speechless and ashamed, like every other Knowing member.
In some sort of slow motion, everyone started to help clean up the party before getting ready for bed. There wasn't much talking. By finally speaking his mind about Jason, Alec had miraculously scared everyone into silence. I hadn't thought that was possible for anyone but a god to do. But again I thought about what I had told Layna earlier and then about the way Alec almost never referred to the gods as "lords" or "ladies" like everyone else (people had stopped trying to correct him), and I figured Alec was a better friend to them than I thought. I honestly wasn't sure there was a big difference between gods and heroes, but I guessed that was why the hero Heracles eventually reached godhood. However, I knew the great Alec would never reach godhood, given the fact that we were in between generations of gods and that the Golden Age of the Greeks had been over for thousands of years.
Just before I was going to follow the twins back to our tent, Hannah approached me, asking if I would come with her to return Alec's shirt. I agreed, and so we quickly walked to the infirmary, hoping we would have time to race back to bed before curfew.
When we walked into the tent, Alec was just lying face down on a dark green cot near the front of the tent, and Jan was busying herself in the back. Alec only sighed and buried his head in the pillow when we walked into the room, while Jan turned around to watch us, drying her hands on her apron. Bravely, Hannah approached him and set the old, blue t-shirt by his head. "I thought you might want this back," she whispered to him in Greek, but at the sound of her voice, Alec tensed up and took a white-knuckled grip of the support bar at the front of the cot as if he was in pain. Hannah took a step back.
"You're doing it again, boy," Jan muttered hoarsely, clucking her tongue at him.
"Doing what?" the hero hissed back at her.
"Living in the past." The middle-aged nurse crossed her arms and frowned. But this time Alec actually lifted his head to listen, his icy blue eyes meeting her soft brown ones, and Jan ordered, "Come back over here. You can sleep on any other cot but that one. You've slept there too many times, and it's done nothing for you."
"I get my best sleep on this cot! And you know exactly why," Alec argued, his voice rising as he bolted upright. Meanwhile, I exchanged bewildered glances with Hannah, who also seemed to think that there was a large part of the story we didn't understand.
Jan sighed and rolled her eyes as she said, "Fine. But do yourself a favor and be social for a minute." Then she did a little bow, picked up her long skirts, and trotted out of the room, leaving Hannah and I alone with possibly the most dangerous teen on the planet: a mentally unstable monster-killer.
After a long, awkward pause, Hannah sat down beside the hero and asked nervously, "Did you really mean what you said about the Lady Athena killing Jason?"
"Yes," Alec said, looking at her with raised eyebrows and wide eyes as if his answer was obvious. "You must not have seen the look in her eyes when she first tackled him on the stage. But I don't expect you to understand. No one does."
Hannah carefully moved her hand over Alec, but he immediately slid his back into his lap and started scratching his head nervously. She sighed. "I do understand, Alec. I understand that the Knowing hasn't changed nearly as much as you or Lady Athena thought it would. It hasn't changed as much as I thought it would, either."
"You mean you still aren't allowed to train," the hero inferred bitterly.
"Well, the other archers are allowed to train at will now, but Jason still has that stupid age rule in place," Hannah explained. Before the War of the Woods, the Knowing followed the belief of Lord Ares that said archers were cowards because they didn't do hand-to-hand combat. The persecuted archers were once forced to train in secret at the dead of night. However, many finally realized the benefits of archery during the Battle of the Small Meadow, the biggest and bloodiest battle in the war, and so archers were no longer alienated. Unfortunately, that didn't matter much if you were under age sixteen, a problem Alec knew well. When he had his vision at the start of summer and asked to start training for his journey early, Jason gave him no exception. Alec ran away only one day after that.
Alec sighed. "I'm going to abolish that age rule tomorrow." He said this with certainty, as if he was promising he would succeed. I hoped he would carry it out.
With that, Hannah followed me out of the tent, leaving Alec to sleep in peace. If he could even fall asleep, that is. Anyway, I told Damien and Darius what Alec had said as soon as I returned to my tent, and they responded with enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that they had trouble lying still, and I only fell asleep after they finally did.
.
I was dreaming. That was the only explanation I could come up with. How else could I have fallen from the sky and landed on my feet without dying? Not to mention the fact that I appeared to be standing in the small meadow in the Forest Gods' realm. The long, lush grass brushed up against my legs as I spun around to get a better look at my surroundings, but the silver mist was too thick. I stumbled around aimlessly, not quite sure where I was going or what I was doing.
Things only got worse when I tripped over something and fell. When I turned my head to see what I had fallen over, expecting to see a log, I couldn't help but scream. Staring back at me with lifeless brown eyes was the twisted body of a fallen Warrior. I recognized him as one who had died in the war. But as if one dead man wasn't enough to scare the light out of someone, the mist suddenly rose up, like the sun was pulling away a blanket, revealing a battlefield littered with at least twenty more bodies of Warriors and countless piles of black dust, the remains of satyrs, nymphs and monsters. I screamed again and tried to stand up to run away, but I was pushed back down from behind.
"Beware," a raspy voice said to me in Greek, and I rolled over, finding myself looking up at the one and only Oracle of Delphi, who was clad in long, heavy, purple robes. Her eyes were open, though nothing but bright green light emanated from their sockets and her wide mouth. When she raised her arms, preparing to speak and asking the world for silence, her long black hair slipped smoothly over her shoulders, and hyperventilating, I waited for her to speak again.
Suddenly, a high-pitched scream sounded from the far edge of the meadow. Apparently shocked or frightened, the oracle abruptly disappeared in a puff of smoke. I stood up and ran as quickly as possible towards the origin of the sound, jumping over dead bodies on the way, but stopped in my tracks when Layna poked her head out of the trees, hair messy, eyes wide.
And then everything went black.
"Wake up, Jace!" Darius shouted in Greek, and I bolted upright, looking around the tent wildly. When I wiped my brow, I realized I had been sweating. A lot.
"What happened?" I whispered to the concerned twins staring back at me with their big blue eyes.
Damien shrugged in bewilderment. "I don't know. You started screaming and thrashing around in your sleep. You would have woken up everybody in the camp if it wasn't already breakfast time."
"Had a bad dream," I mumbled in explanation, scratching my head. That had been the second night in a row I dreamt of Layna, and I wished I could get her out of my head. Not to mention the other creepy parts of the scene.
"I'll say. Sure hope it wasn't the oracle trying to give you some crazy mission," Darius joked, nudging his brother in the side. "Just look at what happened to Alec."
Damien laughed. "Yeah, Jason was so pissed. He still thinks all of that vision stuff was total bullshit. A prophecy is the last thing anyone needs."
"Agreed," I lied half-heartedly, forcing a laugh. If my friends wouldn't even believe me, who else was I supposed to talk to? I would be lucky to befriend Alec within twenty years, let alone twenty minutes.
So, after the three of us had gotten dressed in our usual t-shirts and pairs of jeans, we rushed through the thick mist and fog over to the mess hall and took a seat at an empty table. We were joined by a few other boys around our age, and I watched with mixed emotions as Layna sat down at a different table with Brady and his crew. Brady saw me looking over, however, and he just grinned smugly, obviously trying to provoke me into doing something stupid out of jealousy. I wasn't planning on giving in.
Then, about halfway into our meal, Alec strode into the mess hall, hands in his pockets, and made his way directly to the food table. There was obviously no line and the nurses had already taken their seats, so Alec had to assemble the meal and pour some juice himself, though he didn't seem to mind one bit. Next, he quickly scanned the mess hall for an empty table. Seeing no seat that suited him, he turned around and started to walk away again, while everyone else just watched him in silence.
"Alec," Jason called to him, standing up from his seat and leaning out over the leaders' table, and the hero stopped in his tracks. "I would appreciate if you ate with us this morning. We all would."
"Well, I would appreciate if you abolished that stupid age rule for battle training," Alec hissed in English as he whirled around, and I smirked to myself.
Seeing the pleased expression on my face, Damien leaned over and whispered excitedly, "Did you put him up to this?"
I shook my head. "No, you can thank Hannah."
With that, Damien just smiled thoughtfully and turned his attention back to Alec, who continued speaking to Jason calmly, "I'll sit down and eat here after the first training day with everyone over the age of twelve. Do we have a deal?"
There was a long, tense pause. But with Alec, that was the only type of pause there would ever be. He put you in a position where you had to make a choice: make yourself or Alec happy. The smart choice was always the latter, which is why everyone, especially Jason, hated to be forced into this position. I could see this ready-made decision burning in Jason's green eyes, narrowed and flickering angrily, but also in Alec's blue ones, rolling impatiently.
Sure enough, stroking his chin, Jason mused unhappily, "Those are two very unrelated topics."
"Maybe so, but this rule needs to be addressed now," Alec argued. "Even the gods thought it should have been abolished long ago. Don't you want a bigger army? Most of these people fought in the war anyway."
"Fine," Jason finally grumbled, plopping back down in his seat. (Can't argue with the gods, after all. Jason had learned that lesson the hard way.) With that, Alec gave a nod of approval and walked back towards the infirmary to finish his breakfast, leaving almost everyone in the mess hall to chatter excitedly about the upcoming battle practice. The only way the day could have been better was if it weren't raining. Overnight, huge, dark clouds had moved over the camp and it didn't look like they were going to move for a while longer.
.
Our lecture on the English language seemed especially boring that morning. The teenagers grew so restless and talkative that eventually Jason just decided to call off the lesson for the day, and so I was beginning to wonder if we would have any lectures at all while Alec was visiting. With extra time to kill, the twins and I met up with Hannah to speculate about what exercises Alec was going to have the groups practice, and we continued to chat all through lunch, when Layna finally stopped by to say hello. Luckily, the rain had ceased just in time for battle practice.
When the five of us headed to the training area to pick up our armor and weapons, we tried to catch up with Alec, but he was being bombarded with gratitude from all the teens formerly prohibited from taking part in battle practice. The rambunctious group followed him all the way into the training shed and back out of it, until Alec, waving his sword at them, started shouting at them to leave him alone and go get to work. He was the only Knowing member who had gone into the armory but had come out without armor and without a shirt (not that any of the girls were complaining, of course). A little intimidated, we waited until we had put on our own armor and the Knowing had sorted themselves into groups based on experience level and types of weapons to approach the hero ourselves.
Hannah, being the most likable of us, was the first to speak. "Thanks for fixing this, Alec. It means a lot to the twins and me," she said in English, nervously tucking a stray piece of black hair behind her ear.
"Don't mention it. I should have fixed the damn rule months ago." Alec, who had been watching the older Warriors, turned around and studied Hannah very closely. I couldn't tell if he was just suspicious of her, or if there was something more in his unreadable gaze.
Beside me, Damien gulped. "So, which group should Darius and I be in?" he asked nervously, hoping to impress Hannah by being placed in the more experienced one.
Alec rolled his eyes. "One average fight against me doesn't mean anything. You're still out of practice. Maybe next week I'll move you up to the experienced group, but right now you'll just have to show the other young Warriors how it's done," he ordered, and the twins sighed. "Layna, you'll be in that group, too."
"You know, when Jason said you'd be my mentor, I thought I would be getting more one-on-one time. I just started training last week!" Layna argued, making her infamous puppy eyes at him, and I groaned, hoping he wouldn't fall for the act.
Luckily, Alec only seemed to become more annoyed with her. "If you stop complaining, I might stay out here late to work with you. But I wouldn't get your hopes up," he said bitterly. With that, he motioned to Hannah and continued, "Come on, let's go to the archery range. I haven't been there in forever."
Then Hannah grinned eagerly, and together they started walking up the hill toward the other archers and the five large, round targets. Layna, however, just shook her head in confusion. "What do you know about archery?" she shouted at Alec jealously, an edge to her voice. I squeezed my eyes shut, immediately expecting the worst. You would have thought that Layna had learned not to question Alec in this way, since he seemed to have a reason for everything he did, but apparently not.
Sure enough, Alec immediately stopped in his tracks and whirled around, clenching his fists by his side. "I'll have you know that the great Artemis taught her most helpful tricks to Athena and me before I returned to this stupid camp," he growled at her. "Now, if you question me even one more time, I swear I won't come back to train you at all, and I'll let Jason teach you himself."
"Okay," Layna whispered in a shaky voice, lowering her head. Then the twins, Layna and I just stood frozen in place and watched on with jealousy as Alec and Hannah joined the other archers in a line facing the colorful targets. We finally turned around and reluctantly joined the group of sword fighters in the arena when Alec broke our trance by suddenly shouting orders at the archers.
For the next two or three hours, I took turns sparring with the other Warriors in my group. Every once in a while, after a pause in the action, I allowed myself to peek over at what Alec was doing. As he finished up working with the archers, I saw Hannah hand her bow to him, and he practiced taking a couple shots himself. I'll admit he didn't hit the bulls-eye, but he came close on two of his three shots, so I was still pretty impressed. And apparently so was Layna, since I saw her stop on more than a few occasions to glance over at him and Hannah, probably making sure there was no romance developing between the two of them. Which there wasn't. I saw multiple times when Hannah was purposely setting up a bad stance in the hopes that Alec would gently put his arms around hers to guide her aim, but he never did.
Alec then made his way over to the group of less experienced swordsmen and those who preferred to use spears, where he stayed the rest of the afternoon, weaving his way through the pairs as they exchanged attacks and occasionally ducking to avoid a swing-and-miss. He didn't look very happy with what he saw, and apparently he had so much more work than he expected that he didn't even have time to give instructions to the more experienced group.
However, Alec stayed true to his word, and after the battle practice was finished, he walked straight over to Layna. He even beckoned for the twins, Hannah and me to join him. Brady and his posse saw us with the hero and glared at us, but Alec quickly chased them off. "What's going on?" Darius piped up cheerfully.
"I don't want to be alone with Layna," Alec answered bluntly but honestly, and all of our jaws dropped. Damien and Darius had to cover their mouths to keep themselves from snickering.
"Excuse me?" Layna exclaimed. "I'm standing right here!"
"I realize that," Alec said with a shrug, frowning at her. This time the twins actually laughed out loud, and Hannah smirked. The hero only raised his eyebrows at the three of them in confusion; he wasn't trying to be funny.
"So, should we get started?" Hannah asked nervously, gesturing to the empty sword fighting arena. Alec nodded, and the six of us hopped the little stone wall and made our way to the center of the ring.
First, Alec had Layna fight Damien, while the rest of us sat on the sand in the corner of the arena to watch and take note of their mistakes. Hannah, being an archer and a female, found it more interesting to watch the shirtless Alec pace back and forth instead of the actual fight. I couldn't blame her, however, because the fight definitely wasn't pretty. More often than not, Layna ducked or shied away from Damien's sword instead of trying to block the swing or hit back. She did swing at him a couple of times, even hit his shield once, but her attacks were weak and not well-aimed.
"Stop, stop, stop," Alec yelled, waving his arms in the air at the two of them, and they lowered their swords. "Layna, what the hell are you doing? Be aggressive! You can't just stand there and expect to win! You're not even using your shield. I could've killed you six different times by now, probably more. And Damien, you're going too easy on her. She's not going to learn anything this way. Let's just take a break."
"But I don't want to hurt him! And I don't think he wants to hurt me either," Layna replied, defending herself. "If we could only practice with wooden swords or something-"
"Wooden swords? You've got to be kidding me," Alec scoffed as he laid back down on the sand next to Hannah, looking at the stormy sky above us. "We don't even have wooden swords. Practicing with real weapons prepares you for real fights. If you're concentrating enough and worried about your safety enough, you won't make a mistake here, and you're much less likely to make a mistake fighting against a monster. That was true for me, at least."
Layna and Damien knelt down on the other side of Alec. "Have you ever been badly hurt in practice?" Layna asked curiously, and we all glanced over at Alec expectantly.
"Only once," the hero whispered, and for the first time in my life, I saw him smile without a god at his side. Then, closing his eyes, he slowly ran one hand along the big, long, nasty scar I had seen countless times before, the one that curved upward from his midsection all the way around to his back, and explained with a slight chuckle, "Athena gave this one to me on the Fourth of July. It hurt like hell, but it was shallow. Now that I'm thinking about it, she probably planned it so I could learn that way, because I was never seriously injured in battle after that. She was a great mentor."
It was quiet. None of us were sure what to say next. Besides the slash marks on his from the whip, the one that Lady Athena had given him was easily the worst. He had plenty of minor cuts and scrapes all over his tanned skin, but compared to some of his others, those weren't even worth mentioning, though they probably had good stories behind them too.
"What about those ones? Where did they come from?" Layna added, pointing to three parallel scars, each about three or four inches long, on his left forearm. They were definitely the most noticeable besides the ones on his back and his side, and they looked as if they could have been made from claws or talons of some sort.
But Alec had suddenly lost his desire to talk. He tensed up at Layna's question and started rubbing the scars self-consciously with his right hand, his ice cold gaze fixed on the lightning flashing in the distance, a sign that the storm was moving back towards the camp.
"A monster," he muttered vaguely. "Probably not the kind you're thinking of now, though."
"What do you mean?" Hannah asked cautiously, sensing Alec's discomfort. I couldn't say I was surprised when Alec only shook his head silently, stood up, and walked away towards the other tents without any other explanation. Meanwhile, the rest of us just exchanged glances of confusion, but realizing how close it was to dinnertime, we dropped off our weapons at the armory and followed his path back into the center of camp. We rushed, since the dark sky was threatening to rain again.
A few minutes later, Damien, Darius, Layna, Hannah, and I joined the rest of the Knowing in the long line outside of the mess hall. Apparently the food wasn't quite ready, so everyone was forced to stand patiently next to the large white canopy as the strong scents of meat drifted their way to our noses. Across the way, I noticed Jan and Alec, who had since retrieved his shirt, step out of the purple infirmary tent, their eyes widening at the sight of the seemingly endless line. Probably going to investigate what was taking so long, Alec quickly rushed by the line of people, his blue eyes narrowed and looking straight ahead to avoid all eye contact.
However, Layna stepped out of line for a second to try looking for an answer herself and thus accidentally bumped into Alec. "Sorry," she mumbled, shrinking under Alec's steely glare. Just as Alec rolled his eyes and continued to walk around her, I caught sight of a little white piece of paper fall out of his jeans pocket down to the grass. Layna obviously noticed it too, because she shouted, "Wait! You dropped something!"
She then bent down to grab the paper and started to unfold it curiously, but Alec hissed at her, "Don't touch that!" With that, all of the Knowing in the vicinity whirled around to face us.
"Why not? What is it?" Layna asked him, continuing to unfold the paper, and I caught sight of the corner of what looked like a printed photograph.
"I SAID DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Alec screamed at her as he sprinted toward us even faster than before, and if any Knowing members were still talking before, they were all silenced instantly. Finally coming to her senses, Layna dropped the paper to the ground, but it opened as it fell, revealing a small class photo.
However, no one had time to take in the details of the picture because just then, a lightning bolt so bright and so hot that it blinded us struck the grass in front of us, sending every single Knowing member stumbling backwards. I thought I accidentally fell on top of Damien or Darius, but there was no way I could be sure. All I could see was bright white and more bright white - no shapes or colors - and all I could hear was the deafening crackling of electricity, followed by loud screams of fright and confusion. My head pounded with the sudden sensory overload, and I struggled to stand up again, grabbing onto random people for support. In all the chaos, I could barely distinguish who was who.
But, when the panicked screams finally began to die down and the whiteness began to fade out, the very first thing I heard was the unmistakable voice of Alec shout one word in a mixture of confusion and excitement: "Apollo?"
Needless to say, things were about to get crazy.
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Dun dun dun... I kind of rushed this chapter, but thoughts anyone? Did you like all the allusions to the first book? This one was a cliffhanger, but the next chapter is an important one!