Biohazard

Chapter 5 - Artemis

(hey everyone, it feels like a couple fucking years since I posted one of these lmao, but the long chapters are here to stay w weekly uploads. Short chapters were fine but def not the quality I wanted which u could prob tell by me running out of ideas. Everything there's canon, it wasn't written well but it also wasn't supposed to drive the plot forward too much, j give some more exposition which is gonna end up making sense later. Pls vote, I hv no clue how many ppl j dropped the story after me taking so long to upload quality again so if ur still here it helps for me to know if you vote. That's p much it so enjoy)

Artemis finally closed her eyes. It had been hours since she had suddenly woken up from her sleep, screaming as she did. Her eyes refused to close again even though her mind felt as if it was wading through a misty bog. Her muscles could barely move after Knowledgeseeker's experiments earlier in the day, so she just lay there, on the barren and cold stone floor of the cavern. It felt empty. She felt empty.

Artemis clutched an old orange scale closely to her chest, thinking of her brother. She could remember when she had gotten it too.

Apollo was usually the clean and orderly one. He always said that if they were disciplined than Knowledgeseeker would be nicer. It was always a statement that would make her snort. As if. That dragon was rotten to his core, and there was nothing that they could do to change him. Artemis was sound asleep, probably dreaming of the vast plains and forests outside of their dreary cave for the millionth time, it was basically the only thing that she could think of when she didn't have to look at the constant reminders of Knowledgeseeker and the experiments.

Her body laid there peacefully limp and curled up on the bed of gravel that the siblings had gathered. That was until Apollo had jolted awake. Even though the other dragon was sleeping a couple scavengers away from her, the clacking and screeching of his talons on the stone floor as he quickly rose to his feet sent shockwaves through her ears. The spines on her back stood up due to all the noise. For a dragon that was always so concerned with appeasing a dragon that hated him, he certainly wasn't worried about his sister's sleep.

"Would you at least try to keep it down?" Artemis mumbled, shuffling her body back into a sleeping position, facing Apollo.

"Oh! So you are awake!" Apollo called cheerfully. Artemis quickly turned away from him, seeing Apollo bounding to her, probably coming to force her to wake up. Not now, she thought, just let me sleep! "Come on get up, you're not even sleeping right now".

"Yeah because you woke me up! Now let me go back to sleep!"

Apollo sighed. "Usually I would'', he started while approaching Artemis. "But you shed a ton of scales and we have to collect them to give to Knowledgeseeker, like he told us to do. You know he doesn't do the eels if you give him the scales".

It was Artemis' turn to sigh. For once Apollo was actually right. Knowledgeseeker had said something about residual electricity and gauges or gators or something like that. None of that sense really ever made sense to either of them, but less electric eels was always a plus. Hesitantly, Artemis slowly stood up, making sure to shake herself and thus all of the shedded scales off, before walking off the gravel and turning around to face the pile.

In the dragon shaped outline that was made by the sediment were several black and purple scales scattered around the ground. They varied in sizes, coming from different parts of her body.

Apollo started towards the pile, carefully scanning the ground for any scales, and picking up any that he saw. Artemis joined him, scanning and picking, and scanning and picking, until the siblings had made one large mound of purple and black scales next to the sediment on the ground. At that point Artemis' eyes were no longer fluttering to stay awake, it probably would have been impossible for her to go to sleep again for a while.