The Clues of the Moon: Chapter 2

Characters
Steven Scale-Son of Nemesis.

Chapter 2: Keeping the Balance
(This chapter is from Steven's POV)

 It was dinner time at Camp Half-Blood and I grabbed my food and headed for the Nemesis table. I was about to sit down, but then took a quick look around my table and noticed that there were more people on the left then the right, so I moved to the right side to even them out. It wasn’t something I enjoyed, but being a child of Nemesis I couldn’t help by try to balance everything. It normally didn’t affect my normal life, but I did get into trouble a few times for allowing certain cabins to win capture the flag if they didn’t have as many wins as the others. I have also never lost a single sparring match, but at the same time I have never won as I have always been able to force the match to end in a draw, that way I never have more wins than losses. My life was completely balanced and that is how I liked it.

 After dinner, I gave my offering to my mother and walked outside toward my cabin. I looked up at the moon which seemed brighter for some reason. All of a sudden I was hit with a bright flash of silver light and I wasn’t sure where I was. However, in front of me was a small girl in a silver dress and hair that changed from orange to silver.

 “Hello Steven Scale, I am Selene. I am in need of your help, the remaining Titans wish to take my power and use the moon to control the world. My powers are slowly returning, but I am not yet as strong as I use to be, or up to the same level as Hecate and Artemis,” the woman said and my impulse shot up again.

 “So the powers of the moon are unbalanced?” I asked. The girl simply nodded at me. “Alright, what can I do?”

 “There is a ring you must retrieve, I will point you in the right direction but you will have to find it. Only you have the abilities to retrieve it,” she said. Then, in another flash of light I found myself in the middle of the woods. They were the woods of Camp Half-Blood as the temperature was much colder. On the ground was a path made from moon light. I followed it through the woods to a large rock formation that looked like a crescent moon. It was a large formation, but at the base where the trail ended was a small crack seemed to go on for an unknown distance as it was completely black. I followed the path anyway for what felt like an eternity until the cave opened up into a large cavern. It seemed almost bottomless, but I picked up a rock and tossed it down waiting for a sound to echo back, but it never did. As I looked across the pit, there was a small hole in the roof that allowed moon light to shine through. The moon must have just reached its peak as the light went straight down on a ring that illuminated the entire cavern. It was then that I understood what Selene had told me about me being the only one with the ability to retrieve her ring. The pit had several platforms, each about the size of a large serving dish. They all seemed to be perfectly balanced leading to the ring, and they were all the color of silver, like the moon. I wondered why someone had never tried to simply fly across the room, but a bat flew in from the hole in the roof and was instantly blown out again, as if the wind gods watched this place for cheaters. If someone was too high, they were blown away, but too lay and you’d fall forever.

I looked around the room to see what I had to work with, but there didn’t seem to be anything that could help. I’d simply have to rely on my own sense of balance. I jumped onto the first disk without much trouble, but I had to position myself to keep the platform from moving. I found the perfect balance and leaned down a little bit before jumping to the next one. This one was a bit harder because I wasn’t jumping from a flat surface like the first one. Before long I jumped to the third platform and then the fourth. However, when I jumped to the fifth platform, I had slipped on the jump and ended up landing flat on my stomach with my arms and legs spread out at odd angles to keep the platform balanced. I moved my arm very slowly and pulled my sword from off my waist, and then placed it in front of me straight ahead. The platform began to shift forward and I used the moment to move my legs under me and managed to get back on my feet before moving my sword back to my waist. I took in a deep breath and a few beads of sweat fell from my forehead. They fell onto the platform causing the added weight to unbalance the disk and I jumped across the final two so fast that I wondered if I had somehow managed to balance myself perfectly or if I simply moved so fast that the last two didn’t even have time to react to my weight.

I turned around and saw the ring floating slightly in midair and I reached for it, but it reacted to my touch and slipped onto my finger before I could react. I tried to pull it off but the moonlight intensified and I was teleported once again to an unknown location. I wasn’t alone however as a few seconds later there was another bright light and two people, a boy and a girl, came falling from the sky and landed hard on the ground.

“Allen,” the girl said in what could only be described as a quite yell. “What have you gotten me into and what is with this necklace?!”

“Look Mikaela,” said the boy, who I assumed was Allen as that was what she had called him. “A moon goddess needs our help. That necklace is a clue, but I don’t know why it brought us here.”

“Is this about Selene?,” I interrupted. It was then that I noticed the chain binding the two together and I wondered if that had anything to do with the quest I had been sent on. I didn’t want to be chained to anyone after all.

“How do you know about that?” Allen asked, so I simply raised my hand showing them the ring. They raised the necklace to show me and when the two got closer, they radiated a kind of silver light.

“So, what do we do now,” I asked, but they looked almost as lost as I was.

Trivia

 * This chapter was written by Darkcloud1111  ~Fastest Hero Alive  02:10, October 18, 2011 (UTC)