Son of Kaos (PJO Chaos Gacha)

[BlueCladOne]

I decided against Watcher's Curse being able to leapfrog off itself, precisely because that's utterly broken. I'll rewrite the chapter to make it a bit more explicit, have Ethan try it and get an error message, forcing him into trying to anticipate the Hound's movements instead.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, instantly thought of it, then decided shortly after that you probably did too, but nixed it for balance reasons. While by the letter of the text it works, it goes against the spirit of the ability's natural limitations. It's meant to be a spying ability that lets magic through the connection, not a body-hopping ability.

Not that it wouldn't be fun in other stories or contexts.

 

[Despacitoleo]

Amazing story

 

[Bakkughan]

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CHAPTER 15​

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---

Once we'd established the next leg of our journey, it didn't take long before we made our way back to where I had parked Arion, as [Nature's Embrace] continued to make my route easier (especially now that I could actually open my own eyes), although carrying an unconscious eleven-year-old through miles of uneven forest was still far from pleasant.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Kaos had decided comfortable travelling conditions were something I had to earn one supernatural blessing at a time.

Daniel of course slept through nearly all of it. The kid managed to wake twice on the way back, although neither attempt lasted long. The first time he surfaced long enough to ask whether the giant dog was really dead, accepted my answer with a weak nod and promptly passed out again against the back of my shoulder. The second time he sleepily muttered something about his satyr before Zoë assured him that we would continue looking, at which point whatever reserves he'd scraped together abandoned him entirely. His grip loosened around my shoulders a few seconds later and I had to hitch him higher before he slid halfway down my back.

By the time the trees finally thinned and Arion appeared between them, I was seriously reconsidering my decision not to make Zoë take a turn carrying Daniel. Thankfully the truck was exactly where we'd left it, still looking almost unnaturally pristine after its recent stay with Cabin Nine, aside from a thick coating of mud around the tyres from where I'd pushed it as far into the forest as the increasingly narrow tracks had allowed.

I lowered Daniel carefully into the back seat before shrugging off my trench coat and laying it over him. The [Cleaning Stone] in my pocket had already removed the blood that had soaked into it during the fight, and even some of the tears in the fabric had begun to slowly mend themselves. Daniel barely stirred as I tucked the coat around him, and a minute later we were back on the muddy track and heading towards civilisation.

The farther we travelled from the lake, the more ordinary the world became. Gas stations and convenience stores returned while houses gathered into settlements rather than appearing once every several miles. Before long, road signs began pointing us towards the larger towns. Eventually we reached US 2 and turned west, joining a steady trickle of traffic moving across the northern part of the state. With evening beginning to settle over the road, the sight of eighteen-wheelers rumbling past in the opposite lane felt strangely mundane after everything the quest had thrown at us so far. Exhausted as I was, with the wounds from my fight with Sirius and his pack settling into a deep, pulsing pain, I felt an odd sort of kinship with the truckers. Who knew how many more miles any of us poor bastards still had to go through the increasing gloom, guided by little more than our headlights, before we found a hot shower and a warm bed?

Thankfully, in my case Bemidji appeared only a few hours later.

I knew almost nothing about the place, although it was larger than I'd expected for a place with a population of around fifteen thousand (as an oncoming road sign helpfully provided) and according to Zoë, it was large enough to have its own satyr waystation, although finding them turned out to be less straightforward than pulling up a listing on Google Maps.

Thankfully, Zoë had her own ways of contacting them. Apparently Hunters and satyrs had methods for finding one another that relied less on telephone numbers and more on asking the right trees.

She directed me off the highway, then through several quieter residential streets before eventually having me pull into the car park behind a narrow building wedged between a laundrette and a shop advertising fishing equipment. Nothing about the place looked remotely supernatural. A faded sign above the rear entrance read NORTH WOODS OUTDOOR SERVICES, while several stacked bags of mulch and a rack of empty plastic plant pots occupied one side of the loading area.

The man who opened the rear door after Zoë knocked looked equally mundane until I noticed that the jeans beneath his oversized green jacket didn't fall quite right around his legs. His eyes moved from Zoë to me, then immediately to Daniel lying in the back.

"Well, shit."

---

Ten minutes later Daniel was inside, stretched across a narrow bed in what looked like a combination storage room and infirmary while an older satyr with greying curls checked his injuries. The waystation itself extended much farther into the building than its exterior suggested, although most of it consisted of cramped offices, storage rooms and a kitchen that smelled strongly of coffee and damp wool.

The older satyr finally straightened and wiped his hands on his trousers.

"He'll be fine." He glanced down at Daniel, who'd woken long enough to drink half a glass of water before falling asleep again. "Exhausted, dehydrated, few cuts that look worse than they are. Give him food, sleep and a day or two without anything trying to kill him and he'll be back on his feet again. Tough little fella."

"His satyr's missing. We don't know whether he's still alive." I leaned against the wall beside the bed, keeping my voice low, fresh bandages around my chest and a heaping dose of ambrosia currently soaring through my veins, dulling my discomfort to a distant hot glow.

During our retreat from the forest, [Nature's Embrace] had allowed me to power through the painful gashes Sirius had left across my body, but the Trait could only do so muchIt wasn't exactly a regeneration power, after all, and as the pain in my chest finally lessened from burning to merely itching, I found my mind wandering.

Perhaps I could find a way to game the system and force the Gacha to give me a Trait that actually let me recover from a fight, instead of finding new ways of jumping headfirst into one.

"We'll keep looking." The satyr's expression tightened slightly as he nodded, drawing me from my scheming. "Word's already going out. Every satyr, dryad and nymph we've got between here and the Great Lakes will know what to watch for by tonight. Animals too, where we can manage it. If Felix is still out there, we'll find something."

"And Daniel?"

"As soon as he's fit to move, he moves." The satyr gestured east. "We've got people heading towards Duluth tomorrow. From there we can pass him down towards Chicago. Plenty of contacts once he reaches the city, then east to New York. Someone from camp can meet him before the last leg."

I glanced towards the sleeping boy.

"He might be scared to travel so far, so soon." I said with a frown and the old satyr nodded his head thoughtfully.

"I get it. Usually I'd be more worried." The satyr scratched at the short beard covering his chin, then gave a humourless little shrug. "Right now northern Minnesota's probably safer than it's been in decades though. Whatever you've been chasing scared nearly everything else with claws and teeth out of the region. Satyrs have been hearing the same thing for days. Nymphs go quiet, monsters disappear, animals scatter. It's basically an abandoned stretch from here all the way to Chicago."

"So getting him there should be easy?" I asked.

"Easy's pushing it. Easier." The satyr looked back at Daniel. "We'll keep his scent covered and move him with people who know what they're doing. Once he's in Chicago, he'll be fine."

That was as much as we could realistically do. I didn't particularly like leaving him, although I knew keeping him with us would be far worse. Orion had already nearly killed the kid once without particularly trying (and that was before he literally threw him to the dogs), and whatever waited farther west wasn't likely to become any safer the more we closed in on the giant and his prey. At least here the kid had satyrs around him, food and a warm bed and a route towards the one place in the country specifically built to keep children like him alive.

Since it was no use driving through the dead of night though, as Zoë wouldn't be able to track either the bull-snake or the giant archer, we decided to restock our supplies and spend the night at the waystation (in separate rooms this time, thankfully).

Laying in a bed that was both too scratchy and creaky to be truly comfortable, I found myself staring at the bright night sky through the bedroom window. The irony of it wasn't lost on me as my eyes kept drifting back to the three bright points arranged in an almost perfect line overhead, tracing the rough shape of an archer around them before inevitably wandering towards the brilliant blue-white light below. Every time my eyes landed on that pale pinprick of light, the thrumming warmth in my claw wounds flared up.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night.

As luck would have it Daniel woke properly before we left the following morning, allowing us to say goodbye at least. He looked painfully small, sitting upright beneath a thick woolly blanket. Someone had cleaned most of the blood and dirt from his face, revealing bruising along one temple and a line of freckles across his nose that I'd somehow failed to notice underneath all the grime that had covered him back at the cabin.

"You're leaving?" he asked in a small voice.

"We have to." I crouched slightly so I wasn't towering over the bed, barely even wincing at the movement anymore as the ambrosia had been working its magic throughout the night. "They're going to get you back to camp."

"What about Mr. Felix?" the kid asked in a small voice, hands gripping the woolly blanket in tiny fists.

"The search keeps going." I glanced towards the satyr standing by the door, who gave the kid an encouraging nod. "They're spreading the word through every nature spirit they can reach. If your satyr's alive, somebody will find him. If they do, they'll send word straight to Camp Half-Blood."

Daniel's jaw worked for a moment before he nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but whatever it was never made it past his throat.

"You're going after the cow?" he asked instead.

"That's the plan. Gotta finish what you started, make sure it's safe and Orion doesn't get to it first."

Daniel considered that with all the grave seriousness an eleven-year-old could manage (so it made him look rather constipated instead), then held out his hand. I looked at it for a second before taking it, only for him to change his mind almost immediately.

He grabbed my sleeve instead, pulled himself forward and wrapped both arms around me with enough sudden force that I nearly lost my balance. I froze for perhaps half a second before putting one arm carefully around his back. He held on longer than I'd expected, then seemed to realise exactly what he'd done and released me just as quickly.

"Don't die," he muttered, staring firmly at the blanket.

"I'll put it on the list." I said, trying to inject some humour, though the kid just sniffled at that.

"Promise?"

"... I promise kiddo." I replied, my voice as warm as I could make it, pouring every ounce of assurance [Counselling Mastery] could fit into the words.

Daniel was still watching from the window when Zoë and I climbed back into Arion, and within minutes we were back on the road heading west.

---

The forests gradually opened as US 2 carried us further and further, thick woodland giving way to flatter country broken by fields, wetlands and long stretches of road. By the time Minnesota began giving way to North Dakota, the trees had become scattered enough that [Nature's Embrace] was little more than a distant pressure at the edge of my awareness. I could still feel life around me, because even the plains weren't empty, but the constant reservoir I'd grown accustomed to beneath the forest canopy had thinned considerably.

I discovered how much of a difference that made when I pulled over to try my eye-in-the-sky trick again.

Finding a bird to curse was easy enough. I caught sight of a hawk perched on a utility pole ahead of us, pulled Arion onto the side of the road and placed [Watcher's Curse] on it. The familiar enormous green eye unfolded above the bird as it launched itself from the pole, and once it had climbed high enough I closed my own eyes and allowed the Watcher's Eye to take over.

The nausea arrived almost immediately when I layered [Hawk Eyes] through it, accompanied by a sudden drain that made it obvious just how much [Nature's Embrace] had been compensating for the combination back in the forest. I ignored the first warning throb behind my temples and searched west, eventually catching movement near a narrow belt of trees following a creek several miles south-west of us.

I focused only long enough to confirm it was really the fleeing survivors of Sirius' pack before dropping [Hawk Eyes], blinking several times as my own vision returned with a sudden snap. When I opened my eyes the horizon promptly tilted sideways and Zoë caught my shoulder before I could fall against the door.

"Ethan? Are you alright?"

"Y-yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, just... woozy. That took more out of me than I thought it would." I admitted as I slowly straightened in my seat.

I could feel the Huntress' eyes bore into the side of my head, but she decided not to press the issue.

"The hounds?" she asked instead, her hand still gripping my shoulder as if she was afraid I'd slide right off my seat as if I were a particularly top-heavy toddler if she let go of me.

"Still west. Slightly south." I breathed as I slowly gathered my strength.

"And thy strength?" she asked more pointedly this time.

I waited for the road to stop moving beneath us. "That's going to be a problem."

Zoë watched me for a moment before releasing my shoulder. "Then use it sparingly."

We settled into a rhythm after that. She directed us off the main highways whenever the hounds' path crossed somewhere accessible, leaving Arion on county roads, gravel tracks and occasionally little more than compacted dirt while she examined ground that looked completely meaningless to me. The Ophiotaurus had become easier for her to follow now that we understood what it was doing. Its path repeatedly drifted towards reservation land, sometimes running parallel to invisible boundaries for miles before turning away again, as though the creature were using the territories as a wall it could keep between itself and Orion without quite daring to cross.

Every few hours, whenever we had to check our bearings or keep sight of the fleeing hunting dogs, I'd find another bird. I never kept the combined abilities active for more than a minute at a time, and even using them that sparingly was starting to wear me down. [Nature's Embrace] still helped whenever we passed through strands of trees or followed river valleys thick with vegetation, but out on the plains its assistance came in brief stretches rather than the constant flood I'd taken for granted near Lake Superior.

If I kept it up for much longer, I'd be too tired to drive and that would mean facing an even greater danger: letting Zoë take the wheel.

'Not a chance. Knowing her, we'll suddenly stumble across the Ophiotaurus and instead of saving it, she'll accidentally turn my brother into roadkill or something.' I thought as I gritted my teeth, slapping myself awake behind the wheel.

Zoë sent me a very strange look at that which I, of course, bravely decided to ignore as we continued our hunt for Orion. Unfortunately, he was much harder to track than my bovine brother. Orion's trail remained almost non-existent, but Zoë had spent enough time following it by then to recognise the few signs he did leave behind. A disturbed patch of grass here, the occasional mark on stone or exposed earth there; things I would have walked straight past without noticing.

By late afternoon the sky had opened into a vast pale blue above us while empty roads stretched ahead for miles. Arion ate the distance without complaint, although we were also stopping for petrol more often than I would've liked.

Lugging all that extra Celestial Bronze around under the hood made Arion a very thirsty boy indeed.

It was during one of Zoë's checks near a reservation boundary that the pattern changed.

She'd been gone perhaps fifteen minutes when she returned from a shallow gully beside the road, moving more quickly than usual. I was standing beside Arion eating something that claimed to be a protein bar when I saw her expression.

"Don't tell me. You've got bad news, don't you?"

"Orion's trail turns away." The Huntress stalked past me to the bonnet and unfolded the road map the satyrs had given us.

I lowered the bar. "Away from the Ophiotaurus?"

"Entirely." She placed one finger on our approximate location, then traced the Ophiotaurus' direction with another. "He pursued it here. The hounds continued on, likely to keep the Ophiotaurus from resting or finding a hiding place. Orion's path instead bends away."

"And he couldn't just... have lost the trail?"

"If I haven't, he wouldn't have." Zoë said firmly, leaving no room for doubt and I glanced back at the map with a raised eyebrow.

"... so, is that bad news or not?" I asked as I glanced at the frustrated looking Huntress, who placed her hands on her hips with a huff.

She remained silent for a long moment as she glanced out over the open horizon.

"I don't know." She eventually admitted with a deep frown.

It stumped the both of us, even with our combined millennia worth of experience hunting the giant (even if I only contributed all of two days to said millennia). Orion had pursued the Ophiotaurus across several states without letting up, yet somewhere in the middle of the northern plains, he'd simply turned away.

With not much else we could do, we decided to just keep following the Ophiotaurus' tracks instead. The hounds remained on its trail, which meant Orion hadn't called off the hunt entirely. Whatever had drawn him elsewhere hadn't changed his larger objective.

By evening we'd made it a little over three hundred miles west of Bemidji, the land steadily opening up around us as fields stretched farther between towns, with more grassland appearing between them while the wind pushed constantly against Arion's side. We stopped for the night at a roadside motel near Devils Lake whose greatest virtue was not having an oddly pushy chain-smoking granny behind the reception counter.

We took a cheap room with two beds for the night. Zoë dropped her pack beside one and I took the other, most of the silent, terse awkwardness from our first night together having disappeared after the long day's travel.

Whether that was due to [Counselling Mastery] kicking in or just the fact we hadn't had to deal with an overly insinuating receptionist this time, I chose not to examine too closely.

We left before sunrise, all too aware of the head start Orion had on us. Thankfully (or worryingly, depending on how you looked at it), by noon Zoë managed to pick up his faint trail again. We were well on our way towards the border with South Dakota by then when the Ophiotaurus' tracks led her along a dry riverbed several miles from the nearest paved road, leaving me to wait with Arion until a sharp motion of her hand called me over.

I joined her beside the riverbed, crouching for a closer look at what she'd found. The ground around her looked churned in places, nothing like the barest traces of footprints I'd expected.

"Well these don't look like the ones my brother's been leaving until now, and I doubt Orion has suddenly switched to stilts." I said dryly as I watched Zoë move carefully amongst the muddy tracks.

Her eyes remained fixed on the dirt for a long moment before she gave a considering answer.

"It is Orion. He did not return alone."

My eyes widened at that as I crouched beside her, following Zoë's slender fingers while she pointed out the barely noticeable marks between the larger swathes of upturned earth.

Several impressions marked the soil around Orion's almost non-existent trail. They were narrow, deep and arranged in patterns I couldn't immediately make sense of. Some appeared in pairs, others as individual punctures, while a faint scrape crossed a patch of stone where something hard had dragged briefly across the surface.

"Some sort of animal?"

"It seems likely, yes. Though it only raises further questions." The Huntress muttered distractedly as she moved several metres farther along the riverbed and crouched again.

"There are many points of contact with the ground. More than four. Perhaps more than six." She touched one impression without disturbing it. "The weight is considerable, but distributed strangely. Something hard covers at least part of its body."

"So, bunch of legs, hard exterior. A giant insect?"

"Perhaps."

"I'm guessing this isn't the right time to mention my arachnophobia, is it?" I said as I glanced at the surrounding dirt with a grimace.

"You don't have it, at least not debilitatingly so. You're not a child of Athena." Zoë called back almost on auto-pilot, all of her focus on the ground around her.

"... I mean, good to know I guess, but that really doesn't make them any less creepy." I blinked, but the Huntress ignored me as she followed the marks for another twenty yards, pausing occasionally to examine disturbed gravel or a shallow gouge in the hard earth.

"It travels beside him," she said eventually.

"That's... bad?" I hazarded a guess as I joined the frowning Huntress as she kneeled next to a particularly deep furrow.

"I think so, yes. It is not driven out before him, so it is not his prey. It does not follow in his footsteps, so its no mere hunting tool as Sirius and his pack were. It stands beside him. As an equal would." Zoë said as she worried her lip and it wasn't hard to see why the immortal archer was getting worried.

Orion didn't exactly strike me as the sort who tolerated equals of any kind, much less armoured insectoids that looked to be about as large as one-and-a-half Arions if the spacing of the tracks was anything to go off. The idea of facing the giant archer had been daunting enough even after taking care of his infamous hunting dog and most of Sirius' pack, to say nothing of facing said giant archer... with back-up.

"So Orion veered off somewhere for some reason, found this little giant monstrosity and liked it so much he brought it back." I concluded despondently and Zoë nodded grimly.

"As much as I wish thou art wrong, thy conclusion appears likely."

"Any idea what kind of beastie our jolly giant brought back?" I asked as I crossed my arms.

My crash course in mythology from the Athena cabin had been thorough, but also a bit of a rush job and nothing matching the monster's description immediately jumped out to me.

Zoë straightened slowly.

"There are several insectoids and arachnids from myth and legend that stalk the wilds of our world... yet the most likely candidate for these tracks is at the same time the one being that would be impossible." She thought aloud, but I scoffed at that.

"You're travelling alongside the demigod child of primordial Chaos itself to save his sort-of brother, a half-snake, half-bull no less, from a ten feet tall archer with mechanical eyeballs after I tore his hunting dog, an actual constellation by the way, clean in half. You really wanna talk about 'impossible' here?" I raised a challenging eyebrow at her.

Zoë opened and closed her mouth a few times before she gave up with a sigh and a shake of her head though there was a small, barely perceptible smile playing around her lips before she focused on me with a deadly serious look.

"Tell me, how much dost thou know about the death and ascension of Orion?"

I blinked at the sudden change of subject.

"More than I did two weeks ago, considerably less than I probably should at this point." I admitted as I rose from my crouch, brushing dirt from my knees. "He died, got turned into a constellation and apparently, that somehow hasn't stopped him from wandering around Minnesota trying to murder my brother. Beyond that, my crash course in our people's history was a little light on the details."

Zoë glanced back down at the strange impressions surrounding Orion's trail.

"Orion was killed by a scorpion."

My eyes immediately returned to the tracks.

"Ah. That certainly narrows things down."

Zoë rose and walked several paces along the riverbed, studying the pattern again before looking back the way Orion had come.

"Near the end of his mortal life, Orion's pride consumed him. He sought to prove himself the greatest hunter beneath the heavens, yet in doing so forgot what it means to truly be one. He slaughtered without need or restraint, until his hunt threatened the beasts of the Earth themselves."

There was something distinctly personal in the disgust that entered her voice at that, though given who I was talking to, I supposed that wasn't particularly surprising. Zoë had spent several thousand years serving a goddess whose entire existence revolved around the hunt. If anyone was going to take offence at someone (a man no less) turning it into wholesale extermination, it was probably her.

"Gaia would not tolerate it." Zoë continued. "She raised a great scorpion against him, and it was that creature which finally brought Orion low. Afterwards, both hunter and beast were placed among the stars."

"So you're telling me the giant armoured thing with too many legs that Orion disappeared to collect might be the very same giant scorpion famous for killing Orion?"

"That is what the evidence suggests."

I stared at her for a few seconds before looking back towards the trail, suddenly understanding why she'd been so reluctant to name the obvious candidate.

"Right. That does make the whole travelling-companions thing slightly weird."

"More than slightly." Zoë corrected grimly. "Gaia herself set Scorpio against Orion. Whatever bond may have existed between them was one of bloodshed."

I frowned.

"Wait, Orion's a Giant. So that would mean Gaia is his mother as well."

"Indeed."

"So she raised one of her own children specifically to kill another?"

Zoë nodded once.

I looked back down at the tracks as I let that sink in.

Somewhere along the line, Gaia had looked at one of her sons massacring his way through the natural world and apparently decided that the appropriate solution was to manufacture or summon another son specifically to murder him. Meanwhile I was driving halfway across America trying to stop that first son from killing another ancient creature who had turned out to be my own sort-of brother.

"You know what? Somehow I'm not thrilled about this turning into a brothers vs brothers match-up." I eventually sighed.

"I cannot speak to the Earth Mother's thoughts on the matter. I cannot even say if a being like her can feel remorse as we would understand it. For all thy close kinship with them, the Protogenoi are... as vast as they are different. But what I will say is that Gaia did what was necessary." Zoë said firmly, her voice carrying a slight heat.

I glanced towards her, but the Huntress was already studying the tracks again, expression set.

"The Orion I knew was proud," she said after a moment as she felt my stare on her back. "Even before his madness, he possessed no shortage of confidence in his own skill. His desire for Lady Artemis only worsened it. I believe he sought to prove himself worthy of her by becoming a hunter without equal."

"And instead nearly wiped out everything worth hunting." I concluded and Zoë's expression hardened.

"A hunter exists as part of the natural world, Ethan. We take from it, and in turn respect the life that sustains the hunt. To slaughter simply because one possesses the strength to do so is no hunt at all." Her eyes followed Orion's almost invisible trail through the dirt. "Whatever he wished to prove to Lady Artemis, he proved only that he had ceased to understand her."

I nodded slowly as Zoë calmed down, a sense of melancholy setting over her as she mentioned her Lady, though one rather obvious problem remained.

"If this really is Scorpio, why would it help him?"

"I do not know."

"And you're sure there's no myth where they kissed and made up afterwards?"

Zoë gave me a flat look.

"I'm going to take that as a no." I said hurriedly as I backpedalled.

"There are accounts which differ in the manner of Orion's death, as there always are." She gestured towards the strange tracks. "Yet none I know would explain this. Even if Scorpio somehow walks the Earth once more, I cannot tell thee why it would willingly hunt beside him." The Huntress said with some frustration leaking into her voice.

I couldn't exactly blame her.

We spent another few minutes examining the riverbed, although there wasn't much more either of us could learn from it. Whatever Orion had brought back was large, armoured and possessed far too many legs for my comfort. Whether that made it Scorpio or merely some other giant nightmare with an unfortunate creepy body plan remained impossible to say.

For now, knowing Orion had backup was enough.

We returned to Arion and continued south-west.

---

The trail carried us steadily towards South Dakota over the next several hours, alternating between long stretches of driving and shorter diversions whenever Zoë needed to leave the road. Fortunately, we didn't find any more surprises waiting in the dirt. Orion's new companion remained beside him, the hounds remained ahead, and the Ophiotaurus' trail gradually turned south as we drew closer to the South Dakota border.

By mid-afternoon we crossed the state line.

I barely noticed at first. One stretch of open grassland became another, the road continuing beneath an enormous blue sky. The welcome sign came and went, and for a while the only meaningful difference between North and South Dakota seemed to be that someone had changed the name on the map.

The Ophiotaurus was changing course though, that I did notice.

For most of the last two days its route had repeatedly bent towards reservation land without actually entering it, hugging invisible boundaries for miles before eventually peeling away again. It had happened often enough that even I had started recognising the pattern whenever Zoë unfolded the map.

This time the trail wasn't peeling away.

I slowed Arion as Zoë studied the map spread across her knees, one finger tracing the route we'd been following while another rested against the boundary marked farther ahead.

"It is continuing south."

"Yeah, I gathered that much."

"No, dead south." Zoë corrected, tapping a point on the map. "Towards the Cheyenne River Reservation."

That made me glance across at her.

"The Ophiotaurus has spent the last two days avoiding reservation land. Kept treating their borders like electrified fences." I pointed out.

"Indeed." Her finger traced the trail towards the boundary. "It seems to have changed its mind."

I looked back through the windscreen.

Nothing about the road ahead marked the approaching boundary. A battered pickup passed us going the other way, its driver raising two fingers from the wheel in greeting as we continued south, until the invisible line we'd been approaching ceased to be something on Zoë's map and became something we were about to cross ourselves.

I wouldn't have noticed the exact moment if she hadn't suddenly gone rigid beside me. Her hand snapped to the dashboard.

"Stop."

I hit the brakes hard enough that Arion lurched beneath us, tyres crunching onto the gravel shoulder as I pulled over.

"What? What is it?" I asked hurriedly as I glanced around, as if I could spot Orion coming straight for us all of a sudden.

Zoë didn't answer immediately.

She stared ahead through the windscreen, then slowly turned to look back along the road we'd just travelled. Nothing had followed us. Nothing waited behind us except empty asphalt and a distant plume of dust where another vehicle had turned onto some side road.

"Zoë?"

"My lady's blessing..."

That got me to straighten.

"What about it?"

Her brow furrowed as she flexed one hand, then reached for the silver circlet around her head. For several seconds she simply sat there, concentrating.

"It has weakened."

I glanced around again, this time with considerably more interest.

"Someone's suppressing you?"

"No." Zoë shook her head slowly. "I feel no spell."

"Then what?"

She looked out across the plains.

"We have crossed beyond the lands where Olympos holds dominion."

I slowly blinked at that, before glancing around as I gestured vaguely at everything outside.

"We're still in South Dakota though?"

Zoë ignored that. "The gods of Olympos followed the heart of Western civilisation as it moved across the world. Their power is great, yet it is not without boundary. There are places where older powers remain, lands which never truly became theirs."

I looked through the windscreen again.

The scenery hadn't changed. There wasn't some glowing barrier hanging over the road or enormous sign declaring OLYMPUS ENDS HERE. Just open country stretching away beneath the afternoon sun.

Yet Zoë was still staring across it with a troubled expression.

"Alright, so I'm guessing whoever's been here since before the coming of the first settlers doesn't like the Greeks?" I said, hands tightening on Arion's steering wheel.

"I did not say that." Zoë corrected carefully, looking around as if to check if someone was listening.

"You didn't exactly make it sound like we're expected for dinner either."

"We are strangers entering another people's lands Ethan." Zoë replied. "Whether the powers dwelling here care about our presence remains to be seen."

That wasn't tremendously comforting.

'Wait, if it comes to a confrontation... what about my blessings?' I wondered and turned my attention inward.

Nothing.

[Nature's Embrace] remained there, faint beneath all that open grassland but unmistakable. [Hawk Eyes] answered the instant I focused on a distant fencepost, scratches in the wood suddenly becoming visible from hundreds of metres away before I released the Skill. The strange connection left by [Watcher's Curse] remained as well, still pointing me towards the bird I'd marked earlier that day.

Everything felt exactly the same.

"Huh."

Zoë looked at me.

"What?"

"I don't think it affects me."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Thy blessings remain?"

"All of 'em as far as I can tell. Say, what do I smell like to you?"

That earned me a far longer stare.

"C'mon, one of my blessings is [Perfumer]. It makes me smell like whatever scent you like best."

Zoë shot me a dubious look at that before with some reluctance she leaned in closer to me, giving a delicate sniff before her eyes suddenly widened. I had expected some surprise, but I was taken aback when the immortal Huntress looked almost... melancholic.

"... A-apples. You smell... you smell like an apple orchard." She said wistfully, her eyes suddenly moist and I quickly turned away with an awkward cough.

I quickly went through the rest of the list to give Zoë a little privacy as she composed herself, trying not to activate anything liable to punch a hole through Arion. My Traits were there. My Skills were there. The scroll remained a familiar presence lurking somewhere beyond my ability to properly perceive it until it chose to present itself.

No resistance. No weakening. Nothing.

Zoë's expression grew increasingly thoughtful when I said as much to her.

"Curious." She muttered as she leaned over to study me up close, bridging the space between us and making me suddenly very aware that she smelled bafflingly nice too for someone who had spent the last two days on the road.

"That's usually what people say immediately before something horrible happens to me." I quickly said instead, mentally taking that thought, rolling it up into a ball and throwing it out the window.

I looked her over as well, studying her in turn just as she studied me. I expected to see some difference now that I knew part of what made her supernatural had apparently been dialled down. To my surprise, there wasn't one.

Zoë's movements remained as quick and precise as ever as she folded the map and returned it to the glovebox, and when something stirred in the grass beyond my window, her head turned towards it before I'd even registered the sound.

Whatever Artemis's blessings did for her, losing part of them apparently wasn't enough to put much of a dent in several thousand years of experience.

"So what now?"

Zoë glanced south along the road.

"We continue." She said simply.

I pulled Arion back onto the asphalt and we continued deeper into the reservation.

At first, tracking remained straightforward by Zoë's standards. The Ophiotaurus wasn't exactly a small animal, and after days of relentless pursuit it had apparently stopped wasting as much effort hiding every trace of its passage. Flattened grass, disturbed soil and the occasional mark beside streams kept us moving south-west even when the nearest road forced Arion onto long detours.

The trail vanished less than an hour after we crossed into the reservation.

One moment Zoë was directing me along another narrow road, periodically checking our position against the map spread across her knees. The next she abruptly told me to stop.

I pulled Arion onto the shoulder, watching as her attention shifted from the roadside to the open grassland beyond it.

"What is it?"

For several seconds she said nothing, her eyes moving slowly across the ground ahead.

"I can no longer see its trail."

I frowned. "You lost it?"

"No." Zoë's answer came immediately. "The disappearance of the trail is too sudden for that, too different. Someone else has concealed it. Someone powerful."

"So we're fucked."

"For the moment, yes."

I tried finding Orion's hounds next. Unfortunately my last useful bird had continued north-east after we'd crossed into South Dakota, and finding another high enough to give me the view I needed proved considerably harder than it had earlier. By the time I managed it, the combined drain from [Watcher's Curse] and [Hawk Eyes] hit hard enough that I abandoned the search after less than a minute, having found nothing of use.

Just mile after mile of plains, roads, scattered buildings and enough cattle to make searching for one particular bull-shaped creature feel like the universe was taking the piss.

When I returned to my own vision, Zoë was waiting beside the driver's door with her arms crossed.

"Nothing." I said with a shake of my head as I let my head flop forwards until it hit the upper rim of Arion's steering wheel with an exhausted sigh.

"I suspected as much." Zoë gave the surrounding countryside another long look before pushing off from the truck. "We should stop." She eventually said, apparently having come to a decision.

That was about the last thing I expected to come out of Zoë Nightshade's mouth short of an impassioned, anguished declaration of love that wouldn't be out of place in a college re-enactment of Romeo and Juliet.

"You want to stop?" I asked in surprise.

"Just for an hour or so. We aren't giving up." Zoë clarified. "That said, we have been travelling since before sunrise, thou art exhausted, and searching blindly will accomplish little. There is a town nearby."

I checked the time and reluctantly admitted she had a point. My head still hurt from the last attempt with [Hawk Eyes], my stomach had begun reminding me that protein bars weren't actually meals, and we'd spent most of the day bouncing between highways, gravel roads and rough trails as we followed the Ophiotaurus south.

"Fine." I conceded as I turned the ignition. "There's got to be somewhere nearby that serves coffee."

"We need proper supplies Ethan, food as well." Zoë pointed out.

"Sure, sure. After we get some coffee." I groused and the Huntress couldn't help but smile a little at that as she nodded and climbed back into Arion.

The diner we found twenty minutes later wasn't much to look at, occupying one end of a low building beside the main road with a handful of pickups scattered across the gravel outside. A sun-faded sign promised coffee, breakfast and burgers, which covered enough of my immediate priorities that I gleefully pulled into the car park.

Inside was warmer than I'd expected. Ceiling fans turned lazily above rows of tables and vinyl booths, while the smell of frying onions competed with fresh coffee and whatever had been put on the grill behind the counter. A few locals occupied the tables nearest the windows, talking amongst themselves or quietly working their way through late lunches.

Zoë drew a few looks as we entered, though to be fair, between the silver circlet, silver parka and general air of someone prepared to hunt a mammoth through the car park, she didn't exactly blend in.

The Mist only goes so far after all.

We took a booth near the back and I sank into the seat, stretching my legs beneath the table with a contented sigh as Zoë took the seat across from me. While I picked up one of the laminated menus wedged behind the napkin dispenser, she had the map spread across the table before I'd made it past the breakfast section, trying to make sense of the Ophiotaurus's vanished trail. Our waitress appeared a minute later, took one look at my face and returned with coffee before I'd even asked for it.

I could've kissed her for that, though something told me doing so with Zoë sitting three feet away would be an excellent way to discover exactly how quickly she could draw a bow while seated indoors.

We ordered something hot and substantial, then returned to the problem of the vanished trail.

"So, someone found it." I said, looking down at the map between us. "Or at least noticed it moving through their territory."

"And concealed its passage." Zoë agreed.

"Which could actually be great if they're trying to keep Orion from finding it." I said hopefully.

Her expression remained grim.

"Yet we have no reason to assume that."

'No, we really don't. That would be too easy for a Quest like this...' I thought morosely.

I took another drink of coffee, studying the reservation boundary marked across the map. "You said the powers that be here aren't exactly friends of Olympus."

"I said these lands are not ours." Zoë corrected. "I know little of the beings who dwell here, and less of whatever quarrels they may hold with Olympos."

"But they know we're here."

"Almost certainly."

"And there's a good chance they know what wandered in ahead of us."

Zoë's fingers tightened slightly against the edge of the map.

The obvious possibility was that someone had seen a terrified creature fleeing Orion and decided to hide it. I sincerely hoped that was all we'd stumbled into. Unfortunately, the Ophiotaurus wasn't merely some supernatural cow in need of sanctuary. Anyone who knew what it was also knew what could be done with it.

"If whoever hid it knows about the entrails..." I began.

"Then Orion may no longer be our greatest concern." Zoë finished quietly.

That was a cheerful thought to accompany lunch.

Protecting the Ophiotaurus and taking possession of it would look exactly the same from where we were sitting. Either way, its trail disappeared and Orion lost his quarry. Until we found whoever was responsible, we had no way of knowing whether my brother had finally found somewhere safe to hide or had simply traded one hunter for another.

Halfway through my second cup, the bell above the diner's entrance jingled.

Zoë briefly glanced towards the door before returning to the map, while I took another drink and stared down at the maze of roads we'd spent the last several days crawling across.

"If it keeps moving south-west, we can probably—"

A coffee cup clicked softly against the table beside me.

I stopped.

There hadn't been anyone sitting there a second ago.

The man now occupying the remainder of the booth was tall enough that even sitting down he seemed to take up an unreasonable amount of vertical space, all narrow shoulders and long limbs arranged loosely against the vinyl. One arm rested across the back of the booth behind me, his fingers hanging almost to my shoulder, while the other curled around a coffee mug that had appeared as suddenly as the man himself.

He was Lakota, or at least I assumed so, somewhere between late thirties and fifty. A battered black cowboy hat sat low over his face, its brim tilted down far enough that I couldn't see his eyes. Beneath it he wore a dark red Western shirt with pale yellow detailing, the fine black stitching branching into an oddly intricate pattern around the cuffs and shoulders, along with black jeans and worn cowboy boots. A simple silver bolo tie hung from his collar, its clasp marked by eight narrow spokes radiating from the centre, while enough old silver rings decorated his long fingers to make me wonder whether he'd bought them individually or simply mugged a jewellery counter.

The overall effect was something vaguely resembling a goth-adjacent cowboy, which wasn't a combination I'd known existed until about five seconds ago. For some reason I couldn't explain, the whole ensemble struck me as oddly... ironic somehow.

Zoë had gone completely still across from me.

The stranger seemed either not to notice or not to care. He leaned back comfortably in the booth as though he'd been sitting with us the entire time, one thumb idly tracing the rim of his mug.

"Well then..." he drawled.

His voice was pleasant enough, carrying an easy familiarity that was at odds with his sudden appearance as he slightly lifted his head.

The shadow of the cowboy hat slipped back from his face, revealing a pair of dark, amused eyes surrounded by black pigment. Red and yellow markings stretched out from them across his cheekbones and temples, broken by smaller touches of white in patterns deliberate enough that my first thought was that the man was rocking some extremely committed form of eye-shadow.

Zoë's hand slowly creeped towards the dagger I knew she kept strapped to her thigh as the stranger smiled a languid smirk that only served to make me considerably less comfortable.

"...what brings two weary travellers to this Native soil?"

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon

 

[Bigreader]

So what exactly does Artemis's blessing do for Zoe? I mean, zoe's not a normal mortal, since she's like the daughter of a titan or something, I think so, it's not immortality.

I wonder which version of Orion we're getting in this story. The giant, who Artemis seems to have cared about, who is driven mad by Apollo, curse. Because he was afraid she'd actually break her vows to be with him or something else?

I realizing that the with 2 camps roman and greek are on the opposite coasts of America makes me think like this chapter is implying there's a metaphor where the Olympians think the heart of the west is only in the West and the East Coast, and the Midwest is just the native Americans and the christians territory. What people call the flyover states.

 

[Bakkughan]

So what exactly does Artemis's blessing do for Zoe?

Click to shrink...

Well, make her a stuck up bitch for one according to most readers.

Mostly it's attuning her to aspects of the hunt, in this case tracking as shown in the chapter

implying there's a metaphor where the Olympians think the heart of the west is only in the West and the East Coast, and the Midwest is just the native Americans and the christians territory. What people call the flyover states.

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Basically yeah, they came with the settlers (which I honestly think is a little dumb, this americentral idea of having the Flame of The West but its established canon so whatevs) and are strongest where they culture is the most established. The wild parts of the continent is still untamed

 

[Bigreader]

Which I still can find very funny since a lot of that Culture actually comes from the Judea Christian traditions. While I'll admit Greek, and Rome had a definite influence, a large part of it came from Christian tradition and Israel when they were designing the government of this country, so it just seems a little weird. Though I guess you could say the pagan influences are stronger in the east and west coast

 

[bazerkerking]

I dont know near enough about Native Mythos, but what little i do know is screaming that this might be Coyote, or some other trickster spirit

 

[Bakkughan]

I dont know near enough about Native Mythos, but what little i do know is screaming that this might be Coyote, or some other trickster spirit

Click to shrink...

Wrong animal but definitely a trickster!

 

[bazerkerking]

Wrong animal but definitely a trickster!

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Then im guessing either Crown or Raven, thats the limit of my small amount of knowledge

 

[Bakkughan]

Then im guessing either Crown or Raven, thats the limit of my small amount of knowledge

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Good guesses but no

 

[ENDDRAGON]

Near the end of his mortal life, Orion's pride consumed him.

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I believe he sought to prove himself worthy of her by becoming a hunter without equal.

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I guess Zoe doesn't know that Apollo cursed Orion? And if Zoe doesn't know then Artemis doesn't know.

 

[Bakkughan]

I guess Zoe doesn't know that Apollo cursed Orion? And if Zoe doesn't know then Artemis doesn't know.

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Big twist is gonna be twisty though it's a bit away yet. Even Patreon's latest chapter just dropped this as a bomb shell and only next week will Orion's full backstory be revealed

 

[ENDDRAGON]

Big twist is gonna be twisty though it's a bit away yet. Even Patreon's latest chapter just dropped this as a bomb shell and only next week will Orion's full backstory be revealed

Click to shrink...

I just love spoilers! Can you PM me please.

 

[Finnish_man]

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my

Click to shrink...

Man this is so good i would read ahead if i wasent a broke bum any way than you for this peak story