Asfi absentmindedly turned the book over in her hands. Tracing the title with her fingers, Asfi wanted to curse her God.
Why, cause he, in his all infinite wisdom, decided that it was their Familia's turn to read. And seeing as how he already had a turn, that meant she, the only other member of their Familia here, was going to have to read.
Not because she wanted to, but because she was volunteered.
When they get back to Orario, she swears, the first thing she's gonna do is buy the largest mace Hephaestus-sama will sell her and ram it straight up her God's ass.
She didn't want to read this goddam book. She did not want to even be in the same room as it. She hated this book to its very fibers. She just wanted to take this book by its backing, rip every godforsaken page out of its binding, and set fire to the scraps.
And that was before it started messing with their minds.
Asfi closed her eyes. Holding the book in her hands, she let it rest against her forehead.
All she wants to do is go back to her home, to her Familia. Back to her nice desk and the normal paperwork piled on top. Back to just having to worry about Orario and Evilus. Not this 'fate of the world' crap. Something that she still isn't one hundred percent on board with.
I mean, please, she's just supposed to believe some floating ball of hot gas just because it says so. For all they know, the Ouranos could be an illusion or a traitor, and they, the strongest Familias in Orario, have been transported to a prison far away from Orario.
Dristraced by pretty lies and a made-up story about other worlds, all to distract them from the fact that their home could be being attacked at this very moment, only to be released at just the right moment to see all their friends and family dead as the victors mock them from atop their corpses.
Asfi sighed. But no matter how much she just wants to take this blasted book and throw it into the fire, she couldn't do that.
One, because there just might be that slim chance that all this is real and the fate of the world really is at stake, and two, cause she already tried that.
Last night when everyone was asleep, Asfi had stuck back into the theatre and took the book. She thought if she could destroy the book, then maybe The Watcher would be forced to release them back home. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, what's the worst that could happen?
Worst comes to worst, it just makes a new book for them, and they get back to reading. So after sneaking the book into the kitchens, she set about destroying it.
But obviously, she failed.
She tried everything. Fire, knives, mallets- she even tried dog-earring the corners as she does with her own books, just to see if she could. Nothing, after two hours of trying, the book was just as intact as when she started.
Her last resort was just throwing the damn thing out into the starry void that surrounded the entire complex. She might not be one of the most physically adept Adventurers, but she was still Level 4. If she really tried, she could throw that book pretty far. Far enough to make her feel better at least.
That worked for about five seconds, up until it came flying back with the same force that she threw it. Hit her right in the gut. Asfi forced her face to keep still as she moved. Left a nasty bruise. It's still there, thankfully, her shirt covered it up.
After that, she realized that there was nothing that she could do to get them out of there. Nothing but wait until they finished this book and learned whatever lesson The Watcher was trying to teach them.
So she put the book back, went back to bed, and vowed never to touch the God-forsaken thing again.
Until her God up and decided that it was her turn to read.
Asfi gripped the edges of the book hard, barely noting her fingers not even leaving a dent on the leather.
Leveling a glare at the back of Hermes' head, Asfi could put up with a lot of things. Him skipping work, perving on everything with breasts and two legs. Even how he loudly slurped soup.
But this. This was a betrayal that she would never let go.
Asfi sighed. Whatever, let's just get this over with.
"Chapter 12, We get advice from a poodle"
"The hells a poodle?" Welf raised his eyebrow.
"Hell if I know," Tiona shrugged. Stopping, she looked up as she tapped her chin. Poodle, sounds tasty; she wondered what it would taste like.
"Maybe some kind of Demihuman like Grover?" Lefiya suggested.
"Gods I hope not. One weakling is enough." Bete scoffed.
We were pretty miserable that night. We camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. Trash littered the ground, but they made do with the scraps of food and blankets that they scavaged from Medusa's hovel.
"Not a smart move. Choosing a place like that for camp." Finn shook his head. This was a mistake that many newbie Adventures made when going into the Dungeon. How he wished that he could just teach them all. At the very least, so that he didn't have to come across any more corpses camping in the middle of the Dungeon..
Unfortunately, Familia politics prevented any kind of Adventure school from ever being built. Too many worries over potential bias as well as future questions on which Familia these future trained Adventures will go to.
It's the same problem with cross-Familia marriage.
Easier just to let each Familia handle their own training.
"What's wrong with the clearing? Besides it being a little filthy." Haruhime asked, generally curious. This sort of thing was never brought up in the Ishtar Familia. And while she herself was Level 2, she was never really an Adventurer.
More of a prop that Ishtar could use and throw away when needed.
"It's too noticeable, and not protected," Gareth answered. "Out in the open, no tents or structures to put their backs to. Not only that, it's got no natural defenses. They'll have to be watching out for attacks coming from every direction."
"Honestly, I'd say Medusa's Emporium would have been a better place to make camp," Ryuu said.
"Huh, the only smart thing they did was not lighting a fire. In dark settings like that or the Dungeon, a fire would be like you're screaming your position to anyone in earshot." Mama Mia frowned as she crossed her arms.
Too many times some smart ass thought they'd rather be warm than be safe. They weren't willing to go a night without some warm food in their belly, so they lit those damn fires.
In the end, those fires only did one thing. Let them see the face of their killers before they died.
Everyone was exhausted. Percy said that he would take first watch. Annabeth didn't even try to argue, she just nodded her head. Falling asleep as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover floated up to a branch nearby, wistfully watching the stars above. "Go ahead and sleep," I told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble." He nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad, Percy." "What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?" "No. This makes me sad." He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. "And the sky. You can't even see the stars. They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr." "Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist."
"Artemis would love Grover. He seems to love nature very much." Hestia smiled, trying to take her mind off of just how sad she felt.
This was the part of Adventuring that she never saw. The parts that she feels like her kids kept from her. The hard parts, when they're tired and cold and frightened. And she can't be there to help them.
She's always tried not to think about what they might be going through down there. Always tried to keep a positive mind about it.
She believed in her kids. She hoped and prayed that they'd make it back home to her, and every time they have.
But seeing these children, these distant children of her friends, go through something like this. It just made everything that her own children have gone through all that much more real.
Noticing her friend's inner turmoil, Hephaestus decided to help her out.
"Yes, though I don't get what he meant by humans not understanding."
"Yeah, we love nature," Syr said.
"All the ponds and streams that you can go fishing in." Welf mimed throwing a fishing rod with his hands.
"The forests where I used to play hide and seek with my grandpa." Bell chuckled as he scratched the back of his head. Weirdly, he was never able to win those games with his Grandpa, but they were still some of his fondest memories.
"It must be different in this world. From what we've seen of their cities and their science, humans there seemed to have taken a step away from nature to pursue other things."Finn thought back to the brief showings of New York that they've seen.
From what he remembers, wildlife was all but erased from the city. Humans there seemed to have moved from stone and wood and embraced glass and steel. A stark contrast to the cities that they know of in their world, but not one that he had paid attention to.
Though, from Gover's words, it seems that this was another point that he should keep his eye on. The Watcher did say that there was more than one lesson for them to learn.
"If every city is as big as their New York, it's no wonder there's any Nature at all." May snorted. How could anyone live in such a bleak and dreary place was a mystery to her. Give her the colorful vibrancy of nature any day.
"They've probably pushed nature to its very brink. You can tell just by the mess they leave behind." Riviera's nose curled at the wrappers and drink bottle lying around the clearing.
If they were back home, she'd have whoever did that thrown into the dungeon if they desecrated her forest like that.
"I wonder if that's one of the things that The Watcher is trying to teach us about our own world." Tiona wondered.
"What, to watch how far we develop lest we consume our own world." Her sister raised an eyebrow at her. That didn't seem very likely to her. Just monsters alone made that kind of advancement nearly impossible.
I mean, sure, most monsters were held tightly in the Dungeon, but few still roam around on Genkai. Plus the one-eyed Dragon that was still stomping around.
"I don't know." Tiona shrugged.
He glared at me. "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast ... ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan." "Pam? Like the cooking spray?" "Pan!" he cried indignantly. "P-A-N.
"Pan…Pan, Pan P-a-n. That name sounds familiar." Hermes scratched his chin. He knew that he had heard that name before, but he just couldn't place it.
"Yeah, you're right," Hephaestus said.
The Gods all tried to remember, but with so many Gods on Tenkia it was hard to put a face to the name. Finally, though, Hestia seemed to have an epiphany,
"Oh wait. Isn't Pan the little Nature God that used to hang around Apollo all the time?" She snapped her fingers.
"You're right!" Loki explained. Never thought she'd be saying that to shorty but hey, a broken clock was right sometimes, right? " Man, I haven't thought about that kid in years."
"I just remember him as the little tyke that was the only one to get Apollo to actually act decent for a change." Freya giggled. That little God was so cute. Running behind Apollo everywhere he went like some kind of puppy.
"Yeah. He'd hang off of every word from that arrogant ass like it was Gospel and then try and convince everyone that Apollo was actually a good guy." Loki snorted.
"What ever happened to him?" Hestia asked. As one of the newest Gods to descend, she was kind of out of the gossip grapevine. At the very least, she knew that he wasn't back on Tenkia.
Freya waved her hand dismissively.
"Oh, I think he tried to follow Apollo down to Genkai, but then they had some kind of falling out."
Hermes nodded. Taking out one of his many notebooks, he read over what happened.
"From what I hear, once Apollo set foot on Genkai, he started letting out all of his worst vices. Drinking, drugs, sex. After Apollo started turning his Familia into his personal doll house, Pan said he had enough. Said the cities had changed Apollo and then he left, heading into the deepest parts of Nature."
Grover explained the story of Pan, the God of the Wild. How a voice told a sailor that he had died but that the Satyrs believed differently, so they made the Searchers license to find him. "Every Satyr looks for Pan so that one day he might come back and save the Wilds"
"Hmph, obviously it was a lie. Gods can't die." Loki huffed, crossing her arms.
"Someone probably misheard it, or they misunderstood," Finn tried to calm her down.
" Uh, I guess saying that a God went back to Tenkai does sound like they died." Garteh realized. It was close enough from a certain point of view.
"But they-we can't." Loki waved her arm at the screen. "Pan isn't dead."
"It is interesting though, that only the Satyrs are interested in looking." Ouranos pulled on his beard. Even if no God believed him to be dead, to know that no one has seen of Pan or been told any news of him was strange.
"The other Olympians probably know what's going on already, or Pan told them to keep quiet for whatever reason." Loki rolled her eyes.
"Maybe he's the same as ours is now. And he just wants to be left alone." Hermes suggested.
"Well, I kind of get that, but can't he tell the other Satyrs that? Or leave some kind of message for them? They've been searching for him for so long." Hestia asked.
"If those goats can't figure out when to leave things alone by now, nothing anyone says is going to convince them," Loki said.
"Despite Loki's brass words, I do believe he is right. The Satyrs have been looking for Pan for hundreds of years. That kind of devotion- nothing anyone will change that." Hephaestus said.
"And you want to be a searcher." "It's my life's dream," he said. "My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand ... the statue you saw back there—" "Oh, right, sorry." Grover shook his head. "Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive." "Hang on— the first?" Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. "No searcher has ever come back. Once they set out, they disappear. They're never seen alive again."
"What!?" Haruhime cried. No one. Not a word back or even some kind of warning? They're all just gone.
"Damn." Welf sighed. This made him think about those fanatics in Ares' army in a way. Sure, the Satyrs weren't as gun-ho as they were, but still.
Ottar grunted. "There's being devoted, and then they're just being foolhardy. In a thousand years you'd think they would have come up with some kind of different strategy, found some way to send messages to each other with warnings of danger. But instead all they've done is thrown themselves into the meat grinder."
Bell looked down sadly. He wanted to defend the Satyrs, but even he thought that there must be some other way. Not to accept the danger but to find some way to overcome it.
"But you still want to go," I said, amazed. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?" "I have to believe that, Percy. Every searcher does. It's the only thing that keeps us from despair when we look at what humans have done to the world. I have to believe Pan can still be awakened."
"They think all of their problems will be solved by one God. And yet if they put in the same work that they put in finding the guy towards actually doing something, maybe they would be in this problem." Bete said.
"It's mortal folly to believe that Gods can do everything," Ouranos said.
Percy tried to talk to Grover about something else. He asked him how he thought they were going to get to the Underworld. With no transportation, no supplies, and no idea where the entrance was, it seemed like an impossible task. Grover shrugged; he tried to bring up what Annabeth told him earlier, but Percy didn't want to hear anything about her right now. Grover tried to get Percy to go easy on her. That's when Percy realized that the first mission Grover messed up- it was with Annabeth.
"What, and she still trusts this weakling?" Bete looked incredulously at the book. If it had been him, and Goat boy had messed up something that important, he never would have wanted to talk to him again.
"It must not have been his fault." Lefiya tried to defend Grover. "I'm sure there's more to the story than what we are hearing."
Grover changed the subject. He told Percy that the quest was weird. How the Furies were not being as vicious as they could, they hadn't fought as hard as they should have. Annabeth thought something was wrong; something didn't add up.
"Wait, they could have been more aggressive," Lili asked.
"I thought it was because of the poor environment. Tight quarters like the bus is a bad place for whip users to fight." Welf said. To him, that was the only reason why the Furies hadn't been attacking them when they could have. But what if they didn't attack them, casue they didn't want to.
Grover said that the Furies had been looking for something. Asking where it is and not where he is.
Finn bit his thumb. He had thought the same thing. But what were they looking for? If it was for the Master Bolt, then that meant Hades didn't have it. Which was bad.
On the other hand, if they were looking for something else, then what else could they want that was more important than the Master Bolt? And why were they searching for it?
All the questions, though, rode on the back of three teens, well, two teens and one Satyr. But if they couldn't answer these questions in nine days, then that would mean war.
After sitting in silence, Percy felt like he had to confess something to Grover."I haven't been straight with you," 1 told Grover. "I don't care about the master bolt. I agreed to go to the Underworld so I could bring back my mother." Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. "I know that, Percy. But are you sure that's the only reason?" "I'm not doing it to help my father. He doesn't care about me. I don't care about him."
"Oh, Percy." Hestia sighed. Hearing him say that he didn't care about his father, even if she didn't really believe that, made her sad.
She was the Goddess of the Hearth. She wished that all beings could be allowed to bask in its warmth, them and their family. She just hoped that he and Poseidon could make up by the time this story ended.
"Grover being unusually succinct now," Luniore noted. It was odd seeing him like this. Usually he was a bundle of nerves that could barely keep his head on straight.
But now, here he was giving life advice like a senior with years behind him.
"All his fears and anxieties really mess him up if this is what he's really like," May noted
"That, or more than likely the adrenaline is causing him to push past all that negative stuff and just move into tired acceptance."
"Either way, I think Grover here is making a point."
Grover looked at the night sky, like he was thinking about that problem. "How about I take first watch, huh? You get some sleep." I wanted to protest, but he started to play Mozart, soft and sweet, and I turned away, my eyes stinging. After a few bars of Piano Concerto no. 12,
"Hmm, I wonder if all Satyrs have this insight into emotions." Ouranos wondered.
"If they are, it would make them innumerably valuable to any Familia. Especially those with years of Dungeon experience." Fels noted.
"Their ability to sense emotions would also be a great use when trying to find spies or even when knowing when someone is about to collapse." Hermes agreed.
Then, as Asfi read, music from Grover's reed pipes started playing around the room.
"This is a nice song." Harhumie closed her eyes as she listened.
Everyone stopped to hear it. It was soothing in a way. Like all their problems were just washing off of them. A few of them almost fell asleep themselves, but thankfully Percy closed his eyes first. Letting the music putter out as darkness overtook the screen.
Then Percy was dreaming. In front of him was a dark pit surrounded by darkness. He couldn't see anything else save for his mover. Frozen in position when she was taken over, looking at the pit below. A voice echoing from the pit laughed at him
Like a record scratch, the good feeling of the music went away as an inky black feeling crept along their spines as they watched Percy start to have another vision.
"Goddammit. It's another one of those visions." Finn cursed. Bad enough that he could barely piece together what was happening when Percy was awake. Now he had to try and understand the jumbled mess that was his dreams as well.
"This time- it sounds like someone is speaking back to him." Riveria sat up. This wasn't like the other times when it was like Peryc was a spectator. Now, it was like he was being watched.
Over on the Hestia side, Bell instantly turned to his Goddess. Already knowing that something was wrong, he saw as the color drained from her face even as her arms began to shake from the voice.
"Hestia-sama.."
He tried to grab her, but Hestia's hand shot out and held on to his arm. She gave Bell a weak smile even as tears gathered in her eyes.
"I-I'm fine. I'm okay." She really wasn't.
Whatever was affecting her, it was worse this time. The pit, that voice, it took hold of her very essence. As if to be holding it over a lake of ice, she couldn't stop shivering. Thankfully she had gotten used to those other times; otherwise she feared that she'd be catatonic right about now.
The only solace that she took, though, was that it wasn't just her. The other Gods experienced something as well. And though none of them showed signs as bad as hers or Ouranos, it still made her feel better about her situation.
Her eyes looked directly at me, pleading: Go! I tried to cry out, but my voice wouldn't work. Cold laughter echoed from the chasm. An invisible force pulled me forward. It would drag me into the pit unless I stood firm. Help me rise, boy. The voice became hungrier. Bring me the bolt. Strike a blow against the treacherous gods! The spirits of the dead whispered around me, No! Wake! The image of my mother began to fade. The thing in the pit tightened its unseen grip around me. I realized it wasn't interested in pulling me in. It was using me to pull itself out. Good, it murmured. Good.
"What?!"
"Is that Hades' plan? Using the boy to escape the Underworld." Mama Mia asked, shocked.
"Escape? Why would he need to escape? And for that matter, why is their Underworld a big hole in the ground? You'd think with a world that has its own afterlife that they'd at least make it look nicer." Hermes tried to joke, but Loki shook her head at him.
"- That's not funny. Not right now."
Wake! the dead whispered. Wake! Someone was shaking me. My eyes opened, and it was daylight. "
Everyone breathed in relief, seeing the vision over. Like a weight resting on all of their shoulders evaporating like mist.
The dead are helping him?" Finn whispered.
Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives." I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm monster around my chest. "How long was I asleep?" "Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Annabeth tossed me a bag of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "
"Nya, the hell are those?" Chloe asked.
"Some kind of snack, I guess Nya," Anya said.
"But those bags. They're like metal paper?" Syr noted.
Hephaestus looked closer
"Intrigging. Obviously, such metal would be useless for high-level equipment. But having such thin and flexible metal would do wonders for my other areas of crafting."
"I wonder what other kinds of metals this world has?" Welf asked.
And Grover went exploring. Look, he found a friend." My eyes had trouble focusing. Grover was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in his lap, a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal. No. It wasn't a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle. The poodle yapped at me suspiciously.
"What the hell is that?" Bete moved back as if he was struck. It looked like a dog, but it couldn't be. He wouldn't believe it.
"Must be a type of dog native to this world," Finn said.
"Ok, but why is it pink?" Riviera raised an eyebrow.
"I think the better question is why not?" Loki laughed.
Grover told him that he could speak to animals, and the Poodle told him that his owner put out a reward for his return. Enough for them to get a train ticket out of there. But they'd have to hurry if they wanted to make the next one.
Asfi sighed, closing the book. "That's it for this chapter." Thank heavens this one was short.
"That's nice of the dog to sacrifice himself to help Grover," Lefiya said.
"Yeah, and now they have a way to this Los Angeles." Tsubaki said.
Finn sighed. "Let's just hope that their good luck continues going forward."
Gareth snorted. "Please, Finn, you know it's not."
"I know, but people can dream, right?"