PART X

The next morning, the eight girls decided to start moving again. The hike was tiring, especially with all the luggage they were carrying, and they found themselves taking more and more rest breaks along the way. Night eventually came along, and St.Owl offered to tell them a story.

She pulled out a tall hardcover book. It wasn't very many pages long. The title read The Lady and the Lion: A Brothers Grimm Tale.

She flipped it open, and paused for a minute to smell it. "When I was a bit younger, this was one of my favorite books. I loved how it smelled."

She started reading. 

"Once upon a time, a merchant asked his three daughters what he should bring them from the city. The first asked for pearls, the second for gold, but the youngest longed for a singing lark. The merchant found a pearl necklace and a bracelet of gold, but there were no songbirds to be had for love or money that winter."

The tale told of how the merchant finally discovered a lark, but it belonged to a lion. In order to keep the lark, the merchant promised the lion the first thing to greet him when he returned home. This was his youngest daughter.

The merchant was distraught, but was a man of his word and sent his daughter to the lion. He thought she would be dead by nightfall, but instead she discovered the lion was actually a man, cursed by a witch to be a lion by day.

They fell in love.

One day, the lady found that her sisters were to be married, and begged her lion to let her go, and escort her. He agreed.

The curse that was placed upon him had another part-- no ray of candlelight could touch him, lest he must turn into a dove and fly the world for seven years. During the wedding, although he was hidden in a chamber, a sliver of candlelight reached him through a crack in the door. He transformed.

When the lady found him, he began to fly, dropping a white feather every seventh step that the lady took. Needless to say, she followed him, and the seven years were almost up before the dove suddenly dissappeared.

She asked the sun for help, and the sun gave her a golden chest to open in dire need. She asked the moon for help, and it gave her a silver egg to open in dire need. Then she asked the North Wind if he had seen her white dove. It said it had; her lion was fighting a dragon who was also the witch who had enchanted him. He gave her his griffin to distract the dragon and carry her lion away. 

The North Wind had told the lady to hasten, but in her joy she forgot this and, after rescuing her lion, the lady jumped down from the griffin to embrace her husband. In this moment, the witch lept on the griffin, tore the lion away, and flew over the sea.

The lady searched for a long time, until she found the witch's castle. An informer told her the witch was to be married the next day. After much thought, the lady opened the chest the sun had given her and found a dress spun from sunlight. She put it on and entered the castle.

The witch wanted the dress to wear at her wedding the next day. She asked for it, and the lady consented, asking only for a chance to meet the witch's fianceè. The witch agreed, but snuck a sleeping potion into the lion's drink. 

When the lady found her prince asleep, she cracked open the moon's egg. Inside was a cup with liquid in it, which she poured into the lion's mouth. 

He woke, and they embraced. As soon as they were together, the dress fell apart in the witch's hands and she ran to find what had happened. Cornered, the lady called for the North Wind to unleash its griffin and it obeyed. They lept onto the griffin, and the witch fell out of the window and onto the rocks, dead. 

The lady and the lion flew home on the griffin.

"I thought you might want to know the story," St.Owl said, "because in another version of it that I've read, it was called 'The Singing, Springing Lark.'"

It was not hard to connect.

"'And the ninth changes the tale of the singing, springing lark,'" quoted Ashlee, who had the prophecy in her bag. "How?"
"Maybe the father never finds the lark?" suggested Joan.

"Maybe the lion is a real lion, and kills the lady," said Young Writer.

"Maybe the lady doesn't get the gifts, and the lion is forced to marry the witch," suggested Mei-xue. "Although they could probably find a way out of that."
They ran out of suggestions after a while, and eventually decided it was time to go to sleep.

I return at last. So now... Let's see how I should put this.

The. Story. Is. Awesome. Really, but sad for the deaths. I am trying to figure out who is going to die next, who the remaining 4 will be. Interesting story though, I love it! You are doing an amazing job potraying my character. 

TOP please!

Why are AEs so under appreciated? 

We should be included!

Oh, who cares? It's too late anyways.

Yes. That is true. 

PART XI

I could say there was more trekking and more hiking, and a lot of dry stuff and a lot of rest breaks, but you know that already, so let's skip the boring filler and move on.

Specifically, to Texas.

There was no big border, just a sign by the side of the highway welcoming you to the state. Once the eight questers passed the sign, a sense of unease began to build.

"Should we really be here yet?" said St.Owl worriedly. "We haven't thought of anything as to how to defeat a chimaera."

"We have to keep moving," said Mei. "We can think about it later."

There was more trekking. The landscape of Texas did not vary too widely with the landscape of New Mexico.

Once they were safely in the tent, St.Owl brought her concerns up again. "How are we going to kill a chimaera? Bellerwhatsie barely killed it, and that was with the help of Pegasus."

"Bellerophon," corrected Young Writer.

"Maybe we could melt metal and put it down the chimaera's throat?" suggested Indigo.

"How in the world are we going to find a big enough piece of metal, let alone melt it?" scoffed TARDISrider.

"Maybe we could find a winged horse?" said Ashlee. "But none of us can communicate with them . . ."
St.Owl thought for a moment of Cockleburr, who spent so much time in the stables and often told the pegasi off for language. Her eyes started to itch and she pushed the memory away.

"We're pretty far away from the center of Texas," said September optimistically. "Maybe we won't run into a chimaera right away!"

Although it was probably delusioning themselves, the others agreed, although they still talked late into the night.

____

With morning came the discovery of a city! It was called El Paso, a city sitting almost right on the border of Texas and New Mexico. This was as good a place to stay as any, so they found a hotel and settled down for the night.

Morning called for food, so they ate out at a diner. After being fed and watered, the time called for chimaera hunting. (I feel like this should end in an exclimation point)!

It was very easy to pretend the eight were tourists, because they technically were. They wandered around town, looking in alleyways and searching for any sign of a goat, lion, dragon, or snake face. They found none, and by lunch were feeling pretty discouraged. Was El Paso as chimaera-free as Albuquerque?

After lunch, the eight set off again, combing another part of the huge city. They looked in back alleys and bustling city blocks alike, hoping against hope for one of the most dangerous monsters ever pressed on humankind.

A scream rent the air.

The questers perked up like a dog following a scent--  they were off! Wasn't this their job, after all? Rescue people and destroy the bad guys?

When they found the source of the noise, Indigo swore. It wasn't hard to tell why.

There was no chimaera. There was, however, a girl of about eight years old. She had olive skin and hazel eyes, with short dark hair. Behind her, with one arm around her neck, was a gigantic hairy man with bull's horns-- well, actually, the head of a bull. He would have to be at least seven feet but definitely more.

We will pause for a minute here, dear reader. You may be scoffing. "A Minotaur?" you're probably saying. "Dear narrator, Percy defeated this when he was twelve!" Well, reader, I will say that this was in itself highly unrealistic. At that time, Percy had had no weaponry training whatsoever, simply a clumsy duel with a Fury. The fact that he was able to defeat the Minotaur was something highly doubtful. I think you will find, looking back at the original tale, that the Minotaur is a perfectly able opponent. Additionally, I will remind you that most of these characters are twelve themselves.

"Violet!" cried Indigo. 

Violet cried back, "Indigo!"
Indigo's little sister was not a demigod. Indigo's father was single when he first met Bellona, and married another woman after Indigo was born. They had Violet Keli, who was four years younger than her big sister, rather fiesty, and small for her age. How she turned up in El Paso was a mystery.

The Minotaur, apparently, could not talk, but it made a few grunts that said clearly, "I can break this girl's neck like a bunch of brittle twigs."

Then again, monsters aren't very intelligent, so he may as well have been saying "Keel yooo!"

Whatever the reason, he charged, flinging Violet behind him as he went. She fell against the wall and lay against it, limp, in a terrifiyingly familiar pose.

Everyone dodged except one, horror-struck. Indigo got a horn in the thigh, and cried out in pain-- she had moved too late. Drawing her sword, she began hacking at the horn, trying to get it loose.

How had Theseus killed the Minotaur? Strangely, no one could remember in this terrifying moment. Apparently only slightly irked by the girl hanging on one of its horns, the Minotaur turned again, charging at the clustered seven. 

Three lucky things happened at the same time.

One was that either the Minotaur's horn was soft or Indigo's sword was very strong, as the horn broke off and she fell just a little short of where he was running. The second was that the seven other demigods were clustered by a brick wall, and scattered when the Minotaur charged towards them. Not very good at steering himself, the Minotaur crashed into the wall and was stuck there by one horn.

A Minotaur's skin is tough, but its neck isn't. Ashlee, who happened to be closest, did him a favor and cut him loose from the wall. She must have made a mistake, however, because the head remained firmly stuck as the body buckled over.

The Minotaur disintegrated until all that was left was the horn still stuck in Indigo's leg. She was trying valiantly to get it out, but it was painful and the horn was curved, making it slow work.

"Is anyone here good at medical stuff?" asked St.Owl. "'Cause as soon as she gets that horn out, the blood's going to start flowing real fast."

She was proud of her knowledge in injury. Watching Sherlock did help in real life, apparently.

They glanced at each other. Everyone was a daughter of Athena (or Bellona) now, plus a daughter of Ares, of course. If somebody got a serious injury like this back at camp, they would go to the Apollo kids, pronto, but there were no Apollo kids around.

"I'll do it," said Ashlee.

She knew how to wrap a bandage, of course. It had to be tight and wound around the injury. She did it quickly and not too neatly, but it was better than nothing.

They found a long stick and Indigo was able to stand up, leaning heavily on it. 

That night, in the same alleyway, they burned Violet Keli's body. Indigo sent an Iris-message (with help from her Greek friends) to her parents, telling them what had happened.

Then she went to sleep, where she woke in the middle of the night, visions of everyone who had died and the monsters who killed them still dancing across her eyes.

___

By the way, if anyone here is medical: do you know if Indigo's wound would need stitches? I'm not medical at all, and am not sure. The horn went through her leg but didn't make contact with bone.

Don't die on me!!!!!!!