Started With A Dare - A POTHENA STORY ✔

Now He's An Unexpected Villain

ATHENA POV

"So?" I demanded, crossing my arms. "What exactly do you have to tell me?"

Ares walked over and sat beside me, leaving Sinis himself pulling down the pines for dear life. "Sit," he said in quite a bossy tone, plopping down beside me.

The rebellious and angry side of me shook its head no. I shook my head no, too, flashing the most dangerous look I could at him. He seemed to get the gist and sighed.

"Poseidon was the worst quest buddy, wasn't he?" He started, looking into the distance. "A useless extra burden at your side. At least you had a brain to use...all he did was be reckless and pull both of you into all sorts of trouble."

I felt a strong urge to defend Poseidon, but I pushed it down. I had a feeling it wouldn't help my goal of getting all the information I needed. "You still haven't answered my question. You said you'd tell me everything, not bad-mouth Poseidon. He isn't relevant right now."

"Oh, but he is." Ares turned to me and gave me a strange look I couldn't decipher. The last time I saw this look was when Hades looked at Persephone when he was stalking her. "He's been the greatest obstacle to what I wanted to achieve."

I tried to think of any sort of possible conflict between him and Poseidon. I couldn't think of anything, though - they were the two gods who argued the less on Mount Olympus. I couldn't recall any serious conflict between the two...though I did have a limited source of memory. I decided to dig in from a different perspective.

"How about Wilbur? What'd he want? Why'd he leave CHB and pull all those tricks on us?" I questioned. The demigod might give me more sources.

"Well, Poseidon was being a jerk and not noticing him. All he wanted was some attention fro, and he couldn't even get that. I decided to help the poor kid out. His friends wanted attention from their dads, too, so it was only natural that they tagged along." Ares gave a casual shrug, the strange expression still not leaving his face.

I looked away - I couldn't bear seeing his admittedly good-looking but annoying face. I wish Poseidon was here to clear up the weirdness - at least his presence would somehow cheer me up. "So Poseidon is Wilbur's dad. Tristan got claimed on the spot as he asked his godly parent for help and Hermes immediately arrived. Elijah..."

"My son," Ares interjected. I gave him a short glance. Big mistake - his face displayed an ugly sneer that I couldn't forget. "Anything for my end goal. The more working on the deal, the better. They just wanted some attention so I just wanted to help some poor kids out."

I arranged the thoughts in my mind and tried to remember our adventure. We'd gotten interrupted by Aurae and went on Circe's island. We'd almost killed ourselves thanks to the sirens. Then it was Sinis the Pine-bender I decided to start with the Aurae. "What's with the Aurae? Why'd they attack us? They were quite friendly in the Roman camp, as I'd seen-"

"Someone from Camp Jupiter went missing. Originally the Romans themselves would have to set out on quests to look for her. She was with the Aurae and the Romans had no lead at all. Wilbur didn't have a solid plan to interfere you guys yet so I gave him more time by asking the Aurae to help me out. I offered to tell them her location in return."

My brain wandered towards the missing girl - who could she be? Who's her godly parent? Why was she so close to the Aurae that they'd be willing to interfere a Greek quest to find her? Did the Romans find her yet?

Ares answered my last question. "She got taken somewhere else. I only agreed to tell them her location as of the moment they'd done the deal. She is still missing."

I decided not to dwell on the girl and moved forward. Circe's island - what a heap of confusion that was...though I sort of knew what had happened. They'd predicted we'd come to Circe's island as our sailing direction was known to Ares. He'd gotten Wilbur to intercept us with an unknown motive. Didn't they already have everything they needed - the Fleece and the prophecy? Whatever Ares had wanted to do when we were at Circe's island had failed when Hermes was called to help.

"Why did you send them to Circe's island?" I asked.

"I didn't. They wanted to take your weapons and pretend to have saved you two from Circe. Since they were helping me so much, I just pretended not to see anything and casually told them the location of a warship I had..."

Then the sirens. There wasn't much to do with Ares or his cunning plans there - the sirens were being themselves, I suppose. Then the Pine-bender. I was finally able to piece everything together with the new information. Ares revived him with the Fleece and ordered him to do something to us in return. He gave him both the Fleece and the prophecy to blackmail us. Then Sinis tried to kill Poseidon because of a personal grudge. The one thing I didn't understand was Ares' motive.

"Why...why would you do all this?"

Ares grabbed my face and turned it towards him. There was a moment of complete silence - even my heartbeat felt silenced. I didn't like what he was doing at all - he was way too close for comfort. I attempted to back away but his grip was too strong, and I was still a weak and stressed out mortal.

I reminded myself not to back down as I was promised answers. "TELL ME! Why did you make us go through all this? Did you want more power?" I gritted my teeth. No, that can't be right. Whatever trouble he'd gone through didn't give him power at all. What more could he want, anyway? Power wasn't much of a desire to the Olympians - we already had all that.

"That's one question I won't answer."

"You promised to tell EVERYTHING! ANSWER!" I growled, struggling to escape his grip. Whatever he was attempting to do, it had gone way too far. "LET ME GO!"

Ares moved backwards but didn't let go of my face. His other hand was held up high...and the subject trapped in his hand was enough to suffocate me.

(A/N: Well, look who's a couple hours late again! Nonetheless, I got the chapter out. I'm thinking a couple more chapters before ending this, so get yourselves ready! Thanks for reading and have a nice day.)