The Fates' Trusted

Initiate

It was after I had switched places with Annabeth, lying on my back under the blue moonlight that the night was interrupted by a furious roar. It echoed through the mountains and bounced off the trees.

Grover sat up with a start. His eyes were wide and the giddiness from before was gone.

Another roar trembled through the forest. The atmosphere was tense around us. The forest had gone quiet. Even the wind had stopped blowing.

"It's mad," Grover whispered, leaning up against the bark, "like really mad. It's a monster. The trees, they speak of a hunter ravaged by an evil spirit."

"A hunter?" I asked with the same whisper he was using.

"A predator," Annabeth said. Chirps and crickets started up again. A breeze passed through. "It's far away," she said, "You should get some more sleep."

Yeah, right. Easy for her to say. But I did end up falling asleep. In my dream, I was in cold seawater. It was so dark I couldn't see anything past a few feet. I knew that I was still in the world we had accidentally stepped into as the water around me surged with that strange essence. Somewhere in the vast darkness, a monotone voice spoke, raspy and with an echo.

Evil midst the auroch eye.
Rising in the moonlit sky.
For many have died and more will die,
Under its bloody glow.
Ursine form defines its cage.
Forgotten spirit steeped in rage.
A fusing from a wicked mage.
A fierce and forceful foe.
Talks with silence, fights with air,
The slayer of the demon bear.

It began to continue on, but with a choke, it cut off. A shadow whisked by behind me. I whirled around, it had disappeared in the darkness.

I closed my eyes, preparing to reach out with my senses, but was interrupted by something swimming straight through me. I opened my eyes to see a winged, three-eyed creature continue to dash away.

The waters churned violently around me. It bubbled and surged. Again, the creature made its way to me, but instead of phasing through me it grabbed me and suddenly, I plunged into cold river water. I tried to command the waters, but nothing happened. Dream water didn't respond to me. The silt blocked my vision, but my gaze was drawn downwards. Through the floating mud, a lumpy shape glowed white. Swimming towards it, I discovered the body of a wolf. Its unseeing eyes glowed an eerie white.

My hands, through no power of my own, went to grab them and suddenly, a foreign desire went through me. I saw my hand like it wasn't my own. I needed to have the eyes! The water's temperature dropped, and tendrils of ice crawled out of the eyes. The wolf bared its teeth. The mud swirled and the wolf wrapped its maw on my outstretched hand.

I woke up with the image of the wolf's bright teeth burned into my mind. I clenched my hand just to make sure it was still there. The sun was already out, high in the sky. Grover was next to me picking at the dirt. Annabeth was gone. I pushed myself up.

"Oh, thank the gods!" Grover exclaimed, "You're awake!"

I looked him over, curiously. "Yeah, I am," I said. "Hey, where's Annabeth?"

"Oh, she went out for a walk."

"Alone!" What was she thinking?

"She insisted. But how about you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just had a weird dream..." I trailed off. The way Grover was looking at me with concern made me suspicious. "What happened?"

He hesitated. "Nothing bad."

I didn't believe him, and he clearly felt it.

"Okay, not bad," he said, "but you were thrashing around as you slept, and I couldn't wake you. And the trees..." He hesitated before continuing, "They started to whisper. Something about the World Spirit touching your mind."

"Oh, great. I love it when spirits start touching my mind without permission. Honestly, if the gods had learned about bad touching, half of our troubles would have been avoided." I groaned "Anyway, we need to find Annabeth. I have to tell you guys what happened."

キミキ

"The World Spirit? So, it definitely wasn't the spirit of Delphi," Annabeth said, "Meaning it either came from something else in our world or, the most plausible, it came from this world." She looked at me as I popped another blueberry in my mouth. "This is the longest prophecy I've ever heard, and you said that there was more."

"That's what it sounded like, but I guess she ran out of time."

"Or," Annabeth said, "maybe it was interrupted. It could be that someone or something doesn't want it to be revealed. What did you say that creature was again."

"Some big bat thing. Kind of looked like it was related to Miss Dodds, maybe her three-eyed cousin or something."

"I don't think this has anything to do with the myths at all." Annabeth continued, "We need to figure out how this world works."

"Are you saying that there are different gods here?" I asked. "Like this World Spirit?"

"I mean, it's possible," Annabeth huffed, "but we can't be sure."

"What about this prophecy, though?" Grover asked. "'Evil midst the auroch eye'? Aurochs are extinct."

"Maybe not, since we are in a different world," Annabeth said.

"Um, what's an auroch?" I asked.

"It's a type of cow," Annabeth answered, "Besides, it specifies an auroch eye. For all we know it could be a place. Pair it with the next line, and it makes more sense for it to be a place. Evil in the auroch eye will rise in a moonlit sky."

"So, at night," I suggested.

Annabeth frowned. "Most likely, and it will be a red moon. 'For many have died and more will die, under its bloody glow'."

"And people will die," I said.

"I think everything will be affected," Grover said. "And I think it's already started. The horse herd was probably killed by the demon bear."

"Which answers the next few lines. Ursine means bear." She said the last part to me.

"And the rest is also obvious," I said, trying to not feel too insulted. "We find something that talks with silence and fights with air."

"And I'm sure we'll know it when we find it," Grover stuttered. "I mean, how many things do you know that fit this description?"

Grover and I stared at Annabeth.

"I'm not sure. Clouds? Wind? A mountain? Hmm, maybe shadows." Annabeth shook herself out of it. "In any case, we know that we can't really figure out a prophecy before it happens. We should just get a move on and get—a wolf!"

I frowned, "We should get a wolf? How would that help us?"

"No, Seaweed Brain. There is a wolf." She pointed behind me, and following alongside the river was a gray wolf cub. It had its eyes trained on us and was trotting happily over to us, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of its mouth. It yipped playfully at us.

Grover responded to the wolf the same way. Turning to us, he translated. "He just greeted us."

The cub had gotten to where we were and was sniffing around Grover's goat legs. It wagged its tail some more and yipped a couple times. Grover looked at the cub, affronted, and curtly replied.

"Uh, maybe we should stay away from wolves," I said, backing away. "If anything was clear from my dream, it was that wolves mean the loss of limbs."

"Undead ones that live at the bottom of rivers, perhaps," Annabeth said, "I doubt this cutie is tearing any arms off any time soon. This one seems used to humans. Ask him if there are people nearby."

We waited as Grover communicated with the wolf.

"He said that he knows another tall tailless."

"Will he lead us?" Annabeth said, keeping her eyes trained on the cub as it walked away.

"That's what he is doing," Grover responded. "I think."

"How reassuring," I mumbled and followed the rest of my friends as the cub guided us further into the woods.