Foreboding in the Forest

A breeze swam through the forest, kicking up leaves and rustling the branches over head. Beyond the reaching branches and canopy overhead, the sun shone brilliantly down, dappling the forest in patches of light. Despite the pleasant weather, Lola shivered as the wind swept her hair across her face. She was ankle deep in a small stream, mid-tai chi session, but something was making the hair on her arms stand on end.

She peered all around her, her anxiety flaring beyond her control. She took a calming breath and stepped out of the small stream. "It's only your imagination, nothing is there." She told herself over and over again, in a low voice. She sat down to put her shoes on, a pair of colorful boots, slipping them on to her feet hastily. The feeling wasn't going away, but increasing. She hoped it was just another resident of Camp Half-blood, but something about it felt more ominous to her. "Come on Lola, you overreact all the time..." She mumbled to herself.

It was then that she noticed a pair of glowing eyes, leering at her intently from the depths of a copse of bushes. Unable to restrain herself, Lola let out a strangled scream and vaulted up to her feet, nearly slipping in the muddy ground beside the stream, and bolted in the opposite direction, towards Camp Half-Blood. She knew she was at least twenty minutes from the safety of the Camp, and that she was horrible at running. She was feeling a cramp budding in her side.

Astrid and Alfred had been walking in the forest all day that day. It was the one place at camp where they truly felt as if they were at home. Nothing compared to the forests and the nature of Norway though and nothing could compare to that little quaint home nestled in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes Astrid had a bit of regret leaving the place and she always pondered whether or not her father would randomly show up one day out of the blue. Was he actually dead? she had no idea.

It had been quite the day and Alfie had decided he wanted to go back home to work on the various projects he had been tinkering with, Asti on the other hand wanted to stay in the shade of the trees and feel the partial sun ray shines on her skin. The warmth was different than home, but it brought back nostalgic feels. In a way the forests at camp had become a second home to her, it was the closest she was going to get because they never left the place to go back home to Norway, it just wasn't good for them, not with the possibilities of monsters that would chase them all over the country.

The blonde's hands had began to grip the tree bark in front of her as she kept trying to get a good footing for climbing. The grooves in the tree were beautiful and everything about trees were magnificent to her as she climbed farther and up to find a sturdy enough branch to sit on and lean her back against the tree trunk. It was her favourite spot in the whole place, you would think with a large forest filled with whatever you could imagine, she would never be able to find the same tree twice, but she could find it with ease every single time.

Astrid resumed her usual spot there in the tree and pulled out her sketch book to continue working on one of her sketches, it wasn't long into it that she heard quickened footsteps and then she looked below to see a girl running in the distance, probably something following after her? Astrid pulled her bow and an arrow out of her quiver setting her sketch book back in the safety spot she always had it and began to notch her arrow.

Lola's panicked breaths came quicker as she felt herself losing strength. She wished she hadn't used all of her Shadow Waltz powers so stupidly earlier in the day to escape class, and thinking back on it now made her want to slap herself silly. She spared a glance behind her, and the sight of something that resembled a two headed dog the size of a grizzly bear, frothing at the mouth and gaining on her made her want to throw up. "Mordy, if I get eaten you need to escape." She said between huffs, glancing briefly at the small black rat poking it's nose out from her veil of hair to see what was up. It chittered at her and bundled itself back into her hair, as if understanding her.

She looked ahead of her and noticed figures, other Camp-goers, in the near-distance, perhaps a hundred feet away. They all seemed far more capable than she, athletic the way a demigod should be by general standards.   "Help!" Lola called, her voice hoarse. When she got closer, Lola turned on her heel and activated her Fraudulent Poison, throwing the power against the two-headed monstrosity. It reared back in pain, hallucinations causing it to be momentarily incapable of chasing her. She was close enough to it to smell it's rotten, fetid breath, which warmed the air around her. Unable to run any further, Lola fell to the ground on her backside and prayed for the rightful heroes to save her.

As soon as Astrid could gain better sight of the smaller figure and the larger figure she began to aim her bow, but not ready to pull back yet until she was ready to shoot the monster. This is how hunting normally went back home, they either stalked for tracks of animals they could hunt, or they would simply sit in a tree and wait for something to come by, but it wasn't exactly the tactic you wanted to do when you were starving and had no food in the house. It'd would for now, to sit up here and shoot arrows to help slow down the monster to give the small girl a chance to breathe.

When the daughter of Athena had perfect sight she got a good aim and instantly pulled back the arrow on the bow and released, watching the arrow whiz through the air before it'd embed itself into the beast before them.It sure was a sight to be seen, unfortunately if you had sore eyes, they'd get sorer with this thing. Instantly she grabbed another arrow, this one was an explosive arrow that Alfie had been working on, they were merely just prototypes for now, but regardless she notched the arrow, aimed and shot it, this time when it embedded there was a loud explosion and a screech. By this point the monster was getting too close so she had to scale down the tree to try and make up ground to get some distance.

"Just keep running for camp!" Astrid called to the girl asking for help.

Lola watched in a daze as an arrow embedded itself deeply into the monster's side, then as another came whizzing past it exploded on impact. She shielded her eyes with a yelp of surprise, temporarily blinded from the explosive arrow the blond girl had expertly fired. "Ohmigodohmigodohmigod, we're all going to die!" She said frantically, blindly reaching around her as she sought to get away from the situation.

Lola got ten feet away before bumping solidly into the trunk of a tree, and she rubbed her head to ease the pain. She used the trunk of the tree to help stand up and she squinted, some of her eyesight regained, and watched as another girl, this time one wielding a sword, charged valiantly into battle with the monstrosity. She was always in awe of the other demigods.

In response to Astrid, the bow-wielding girl, Lola cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, her voice still hoarse from screaming. "I can't just leave you guys alone to deal with this! It's not even supposed to be in the Forest, is it!? How did it get here!?

The beast growled ferociously as Haley, the sword-wielding girl, cut deeply into it's leg. Both of it's mouths roared, and Lola found herself momentarily delirious from the noise. Her vision spun and she shook her head, shrugging off the effect. "Be careful, something about this monster is weird!" Lola shouted over to Haley, as the sword-wielding demigod was closest to danger.

Lola retrieved a small dagger, the only weapon she had, and palmed it nervously. She fought with herself, unsure as to how much good her weak combat ability could even begin to help out in this situation. While she debated, the beast leaped back fifteen feet, leaving melee range with Haley, and a dark energy began to whirlpool at it's feet.

"What in the name of Gods." Astrid muttered mildly perturbed at the fact this wasn't like anything else they had seen before and perhaps she was in a little over her head with this thing, but there was no time for doubt and only time for battle and battle strategies, "Stay on the defense!" The daughter of Athena yelled out to both of the girls within the vicinity as the dark matter seemed to appear. It was always best to remain on defense until you better knew your opponent er thing.

Close range combat was in no way Astrid's specialty and she was doubtful that one should be so close to it, but out came different spawns of things. Little monsters things that seemed to be easily taken care of in one hit kind of deal. It was a distraction and ploy to make them get tired and weaker just like the large behemoth in front of them had been, but what choice did they really have? At least the blonde could continue to shoot arrows at the monster at hand while the other two worked on the little minions or even attempted to hit the thing whenever an opening occurred.

Grabbing another arrow, this one was yet another prototype that needed to be tested, so what was better than now? Each different type of arrow had different coloured feathers so you could tell them apart, the explosive ones had grey feathers, celestial bronze tipped ones had orange feathers, imperial gold tipped ones had purple feathers, and this one she had right now had black feathers. She notched the arrow and set up again and in a way she was almost muttering the instructions to herself on how to use her bow as she was using it. Pulling back on the string she released the arrow as it pierced through the sky, upon embedding into the monster celestial bronze chains coiled out and wrapped around it.

The blonde held a string in her hand and she tugged on it which would only pull the chains tighter around the monster as it shrieked, it hated being in contact with the metal and where the metal would lay it singed the skin.

Shock and terror seized her throat as she watched countless, disgusting monsters spawn from the large two-headed monstrosity. She didn't know what good she was, and her doubts began to crush her under their weight. Her knees shock underneath her, nearly audible in their clattering against one another. "What good am I here? I should run for help... anyone would be better than me...." She grabbed at her hair, her eyes wide and darting around looking for something, anything, to help them escape this horrible situation. Instead, all she saw were butterflies floating lazily around patches of flowers, and all she heard was the melodic chirp of birds overhead.

It was then that she met Haley's eyes, and she saw something in them that she had never experienced before: encouragement. Hope. Belief.

Her knuckles were white from their death-drip on her dagger. and she gave Haley a shaky nod, as if to say I'll do what I can. She pushed herself from the tree, dagger in hand, and looked for a place where she could put as many of the beetle-like monsters out of commission. To give Haley and Astrid their best shot.

She spotted it, and began to wade through the beetle-minions, their pincers tearing at her flesh, leaving bloody gashes through her dark-washed jeans. When she finally got to it, a place where her powers could put enough of them out of commission so that Haley and her summoned warrior could kill the beast. She screamed as she pushed out Misery's Fervor, and nearly all of the minions let out a scream of their own as they rolled on to their backs and began to twitch - unable to see reality for a brief moment.  

"Kill it while you can!" Lola screamed towards Haley. "It looks like it could break out of those chains at any time, and my power doesn't last forever either!"

As she said this, one of the beetle-minions she hadn't been able to subdue threw itself bodily at her, knocking her over. She tried to fight it off with her dagger, but it merely bounced off of the creature's hard, protective carapace.