Broken And Betrayed

FOURTEEN

Thalia couldn't believe what she was seeing. At an ice table that could easily seat about eight people, there was an absolute feast laid out. Dóry was seated at one end of the table, obviously having just put on his hood to conceal his identity from her eyes. The other seat would be Spathi's, then.

Her eyes roamed over the table, taking it all in. Who had cooked all this? And where did they get the ingredients? She began to get angry. If only these boys weren't so stubborn, the whole hunt could be eating like this and not having to cook!

She huffed and turned around swiftly. "Fine, if that's how you want it to be. Goodnight." She said, before walking back to the hunters' camp.

She informed the rest of the hunt about what she'd seen, and the rest of them got angry as well. Just like boys to be selfish like that. Fine.

They'd get their revenge.

The girls started laying out traps and pranks everywhere for the boys. They couldn't do it too close to the house, or the traps would be spotted, but they also couldn't do it in plain sight either, because there was always one of the boys out patrolling somewhere. That was one thing the girls had to admit. The boys were quite good at what they had been taken on to do.

Since 'Spathi' was on guard duty, Artemis went to go and distract him so he wouldn't notice the traps. Well, that was the reason she gave her hunters. She wanted to talk to him anyway. For reasons she couldn't fathom, she felt inexplicably drawn to the demigod. Also, she wanted to know why he and his brother had chosen to keep their identities hidden.

She walked towards where he had last been seen by a hunter, and looked at the ground to track where he'd gone. She smiled. It would be easy to track him, seeing as there were clues, well, just about everywhere.

He hadn't bothered to tread lightly to conceal his footsteps, or cover his tracks after he'd gone. Maybe he didn't bother because he knew it would lead more of the monsters to him. Also, there were broken plants and golden dust everywhere, signaling to her experienced hunting eyes where he'd had fights and roughly how each encounter had gone down. The goddess started to jog, looking at Percy's handiwork as she went.

Soon, she came across the demigod in a small clearing. She saw him engage five monsters at once, and decided to hang back and watch. She gasped at his skill as he twirled his trident around, disemboweling and impaling his foes.

Soon, only a single dracaena was left. She threw her spear at the boy in a last ditch attempt to defeat him, but he simply stopped it in midair with his powers and returned it to her, point first. She tried avoiding it but it impaled her in the thigh, leaving her to screech in pain.

And then something seemed to come over Percy. A dark look settled on his face, and using his vapour powers again, he raised the monster into the air and started choking her, Darth Vader style. Artemis' eyes widened in shock. The Percy she knew and respected would never do something like this.

Maybe that incident with the camp all that time ago had had bigger effects on him than the boy seemed to show.

Meanwhile, as the goddess had been thinking this, Percy had begun questioning the monster. She quickly focused on the scene before her eyes again.

"-gathering before attacking, aren't you? That's not normal. Why don't you tell me who's coordinating you imbeciles? Or where you gather?"

The dracaena was about to answer when she stopped and seemed to reconsider in her head. She was about to give a defiant answer in reply, when Percy did something that shocked Artemis even more.

He performed one Hades of a brutal finisher.

"I don't have time for this. You are worthless, useless." He said maliciously. He then tightened the invisible choke hold on the dracaena's neck, and when her hands went up to claw at her throat, he threw his trident butt first. The spear point penetrated, through both arms and then the neck as well.

As she breathed her last, he then made the trident spin, beheading her and ripping her arms off before it all exploded into golden dust.

As the demigod glared at the shiny particles falling around him, Artemis considered what to do. She was going to leave to go and ponder what she had just seen, but Percy's voice rang out.

"You'd better come out, and slowly. We wouldn't want to get hurt now, would we?" His voice had an angry, hostile ring to it. But as if that wasn't enough, the bit that made Artemis' skin crawl the most was that he hadn't even turned round. What, could he sense her or something?

She ran up to him. "Perseus, it is me," she said, a worried tone in her voice. Why on earth was she worried? He's just a boy, after all. But still, Artemis couldn't shake the inexplicable force drawing her to him. Wait, was this...

No. It couldn't be. And if it was, she'd go and kill Aphrodite herself.

With her bare hands.

As she finished that dangerous thought, Percy looked at her, the hard look in his eyes starting to melt. "Lady Artemis..."

"Perseus, what's wrong?" The goddess of the moon asked. "Why were you acting in such a way? And what were you asking that dracaena about?"

Percy turned away stubbornly, a now unreadable look on his face. "Nothing. It's nothing. Why are you out here, milady?" He said, reverting to his usual respectful state.

"None of that," Artemis said just as stubbornly. "You are going to tell me everything, and you are going to do it right now, Perseus Jackson." She finished, looking up at him. For some reason, she had subconsciously started using her seventeen year old form more and more instead of her twelve year old one. Even with that, though, Percy still stood a good 5 or 6 inches taller than her. He looked down at her making eye contact, with a little confused look on his face, making Artemis' heart beat a little faster. Wait, what?

Oh, Aphrodite was so absolutely dead it wasn't even funny.

Artemis looked away for a second, banishing the hostile and unwelcome thoughts from her head, but only for the present. Oh, they'd be back. She looked back at Percy. "You're going to answer my questions, right now." She said, stepping up a bit closer to him.

Completely the opposite of intimidated, Percy turned away to continue his patrol. "Nah, I'm fine."

"I didn't ask if you were fine. I told you to answer my questions." Artemis said, making eye contact with the demigod and maintaining it this time. Damn it all, this is how she had been starting to feel with Orion before all of that went down. What was it with her and sons of Poseidon?

Percy looked back at her, and sighed quietly. "Fine. What do you want to know?" He said, turning to formally stand in front of her.

Artemis sat on the ground with her back against one of the tree trunks encircling the clearing, and motioned for Percy to join her. He did so, and sat beside her, albeit reluctantly. She didn't repeat her questions, but just sat there in silence, waiting for him to talk.

And sure enough, he began to speak.

"Well, I guess I'll have to tell you what really happened a little over a year ago, and what's happened since then." He said, resignedly.

Artemis just scooted a little closer to him so their shoulders were touching, and waited.

"Let's see..."