Broken And Betrayed

TWELVE

Artemis sighed, admitting defeat. She made her knives disappear, still trying to figure out how she'd been beaten. She wasn't given much time, however.

"Well, sis? You promised, you know," Apollo said excitedly. He knew that under the protection of Percy and Alex, she'd definitely be safe.

"I know, I know," Artemis said irritatedly. "I am not happy about it, though. But fine. I and the rest of the hunters are camped twenty miles south west of here. Since Apollo is the one that wanted this, he'll specify what you need to do." Annoyed, she flashed out without warning, the boys only being saved by Apollo standing in front of the light.

"Well then, thanks for this guys. As a sign of my gratitude, I pulled in a couple of favours from Hephaestus and got these made. He didn't know they were for you guys, though." Apollo said as he pulled out two golden shoulder armour pauldrons.

The boys put these on, and Apollo showed them how they worked. "Just slap the pauldron with the opposing hand."

Percy did so, and a full set of armour of the same style as the pauldron appeared on him. The armour was all black and gold, with silver highlights. Most of it was black, with only bits like the pauldrons, shin greaves and helmet being gold. There were symbols stylised in silver representing all the gods that had voted for the boys. Alex's armour was identical when he tried it, and Apollo gave the boys capes with Assassin's Creed style hoods to complete the attire. The boys grinned.

"So what will we be doing, bro?" Percy asked Apollo. "Just fighting alongside them?"

Apollo looked thoughtful. "Yeah. And do like guard duty and stuff. They'll likely try make you do chores and stuff for them, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to."

"Alright!" Alex said happily, still on a high after defeating Artemis. "Let's go, Perce!"

The boys said goodbyes to the grateful god of the sun and started running south west.

"I'm gonna vapour travel the rest of the way there. You should see if you can do a similar thing with ice." Percy said after they'd ran for a good half hour. Alex nodded, and Percy vapour travelled to just outside the hunters' camp. Immediately after he got there, the spot beside him froze and solidified into his younger half brother. They nodded at each other and turned to listen to what was going on.

Artemis had just finished gathering all of her huntresses from whatever they were doing. "So," she said, "we are going to be getting two guardians to come help us fight and guard camp." The hunters all brightened up.

"Really?" A hunter, Phoebe Percy thought her name was, said. "Cool! I love meeting new strong women. When will they be here?" It was then that Artemis looked down irritatedly.

"They aren't women."

Uproar was the best word to describe the rest of that conversation. When that happened, Percy and Alex had a quick discussion of their own.

"Real names?"
"Nah, fake names. We don't know what they've been told by camp."
"What names, though?"
"I'll be Spathi."
"Sword, huh? I'll be Dóry then."
"Spear? Fair enough. So, let's make a cool entrance then."

The next thing the hunters felt was a rapid cooling of all the air around them. They looked at the centre of this effect, where the ground was now covered in ice. A figure in full battle armour and a hooded cape solidified slowly from the feet up, holding a trident in his hand. All they could see of his face that wasn't in shadow was his mouth, which was curled up in a crooked smirk.

Then a pillar of jagged ice appeared, and shattered, leaving an identical, but smaller figure in it's place. The only difference with this one was that, instead of a black cape inlaid with gold and silver details, this one had a gold cape with black and silver details.

The huntresses went for their weapons, but then their mistress bitterly said the words.

"No girls, those are our guardians."

"Well I refuse to stay in a camp with some males!"
"Like hell I'm fighting alongside them!"
"Who even assigned them to us anyway?"
"Damn it's cold!"

Alex smirked and removed his influence from the air, returning the temperature to normal. Percy stepped forward.

"My name is Spathi, and this is my brother, Dóry. We will be your guardians for the foreseeable future. We will stay out of your way and business for as much as possible as long as that does not interfere with our duties. Thank you." He said, bowing with a flourish and turning back to go to Alex.

"Wait!" Artemis called. "Will you not need a tent?" Percy smirked. "No, I think we'll be just fine, thank you," he called back respectfully.

Alex and Percy walked to the very outskirts of the camp, and Alex erected a massive three storey house out of ice in seconds. Percy then warmed the inside of it, and with Percy's powers regulating the temperature and Alex's keeping the house frozen, they had a perfectly acceptable living arrangement.

Alex had even made furniture and things out of different density ice, giving it the appearance of different colours. The boys went in and admired their handiwork, while the huntresses just stood with their mistress, looking angry and a little jealous.

A couple of hours later, it was time to turn in and the hunters' usual time to put the night watch out. Artemis got angry.

"What are they going to do, skive all day? Thalia, go get those lazy males and tell them to get on guard duty," she yelled angrily.

Thalia marched over just as angrily and started banging on the ice door. Percy and Alex, who had set up their guard posts about an hour before this, sat on their respective branches as she hammered on the door until her hands ached and yelled until her voice was almost gone.

This continued until they laughed so hard they almost fell out of their trees, and the hunters noticed them. The hunters, extremely angry, went to bed. It was normal for the night watch to wake them all up to deal with a couple monster attacks a night, but the boys didn't know that, so they could make it seem like the boys were bad guards, was every girl's last thought before sleeping that night.

Only to wake up with a good night's sleep tucked under their belts in the morning. Percy and Alex had gone out of their way to kill every monster in a 5 mile radius, even making a competition out of it.

But the girls didn't know that, and came out of their tents to see the boys strolling back to their ice house to get ready for the new day. Each and every hunter, seeing this, had only one thought on their mind.

They'd make those boys leave even if it was the last thing they did.