The Flames of Hope Ch 19

Chapter 19~Monster Mountain
When I woke up, I was told that I had been asleep for almost two hours and we were approaching a place called Battle Mountain. I had also been told there was trouble and when I looked out the window I saw what the trouble was. It was about seven in the evening and the sun was going down. We were pulled off to the side of the road and had our chameleon armor activated to stay hidden from view. The thing, or should I say things we were hiding from was a large group of monsters.

“Look at them all,” Megan said as she looked out the front window. A hydra walked past our car as its many heads swayed from side to side as Megan brushed her scar that was left by a hydra bite. Alongside the hydra was the dog Cerberus and the two briefly bumped into each other, causing one of the dog’s heads to growl while two of the hydra heads made snapping sounds. A group of centaurs could also be seen carrying torches and wearing colorful Party Pony T-shirts. Other monsters could be seen walking past us, the Minotaur, some Empousi, a manticore, even a few giants came walking down the road as we felt their footsteps shake the car.

“Guys, look at the sky,” Sammy said. I didn’t understand what he meant as we had all been looking ahead of us at the number of monsters. However, we looked up and were amazed by what we saw. Dragons and Drakons, along with hundreds of Stymphalian birds and a few harpies.

“What could have made them all come to this spot?” Megan asked, still looking up at the sky.

“Maybe they did,” Will said as he pointed to three robed figures that seemed to be hovering off the ground on a chariot made of smoke.

“Are those the Grey Sisters?” I asked to the rest of them.

“It sure looks like them, and look, they’re even passing around their eye,” Gear answered and sure enough, he was right. The sister in front took out the eye and passed it to the one behind her. The tooth they shared also seemed to change hands and I wondered if they had ever thought about going to a dentist to buy some fake teeth. One of the last monsters to walk past us was the Chimera. As it walked past, I saw the snake head at the end of its tail hiss its tongue. It then turned to look straight at us, but was pulled along with the rest of its body.

“We need to get out of here,” Gear said and he put the van into gear.

“No, I need to know what is going on,” I said and before anyone could stop me I had opened the side door and jumped out.

“Swift, get back here!” I heard gear say, but I ignored him and kept walking through the woods toward the top of the small mountain. As I reached the top, I found a small patch of trees and I hid inside. I wondered if any of the monsters could smell my sent because the wind was blowing away from them, but I heard a branch break behind me and I put my hand on my hammer pendant and looked behind me.

“Stay down Slowpoke,” I heard someone whisper, and I knew in an instant it was Megan. I didn’t even see her until she took off her chameleon armor helmet and then passed over a blanket that had the same effect, allowing me to blend into the grass and trees. As I watched the cloud of smoke carry the Grey Sisters to the center of the monsters, there were sounds of barking, hissing, growing, cheering from the Party Ponies, and some huffs from a few monsters.

They raised their hands to try and quiet the crowd of monsters, but it didn’t seem to help until the Minotaur let out a loud sound and pounded his Omega shaped ax into the ground causing an echo that sounded like thunder. After that, everyone was pretty much silent except for a few hoof beats by the centaurs.

“Thank you, now we can speak,” one of the Grey Sisters said. However, another sister grabbed the tooth from the first’s mouth and placed it in hers.

“I’ll start. We are the last monsters left,” she began and the words surprised me. Even though there were at least a hundred monsters here, there were still too few to be all of them. I also felt a little sad because as I looked around, I failed to see the Nemean Lion among them, a monster I had befriended. Then, the third sister grabbed the tooth before continuing.

“As some of you may have noticed, there have been less and less demigods. They have been captured except for a small group trying to free them,” she said and for a second it looked like her eye was looking at me as it changed hands again along with the tooth.

“Why do we care about a bunch of week demigods?” came the voice of an empousi from the front row.

“Because they aren’t just on a mission to save their fellow demigods, but the gods themselves,” the sister said.

“So what if the gods are gone, what have they ever done for us?” a telekhine asked as a few monsters made sounds that supported the small monsters argument.

“The gods have done nothing for us, but a being has captured them one by one and once they are all captured, this creature will wipe out everything and there will be no reforming for us,” she said as her sister took the tooth again while the eye went to the other.

“This being is a creature of belief. He will suck the belief of the mortals and direct it all to him. The result as you can guess is the eventual fading of us,” she said. The monsters began to see the severity of what was going on. The meeting of all these monsters in one place was to figure out a way to save their own skin.

“So what do you expect us to do about it?” the manticore said in a thick French accent. “If this being you speak of can capture the gods, what can we do? I may have been killed by a god, but I’ll take that over not existing.”

I had never seen things from a monsters point of view before and it explained why we had only been attacked by gods and spirits, not by monsters unless you count the Earthborn working for Leiomenos. It was because they were all going here.

“An answer will reveal itself soon,” one of the sisters said before passing the tooth. At that moment, the wind changed and blew at our backs. The Minotaur sniffed the air and before we could react, the mad bull swung his ax in our direction and the tops of the small trees we were under went falling around us. The monsters began to roar and yell around us and they went into hysterics.

“Demigods!” one of them yelled while the Hydra began to move in and snapped it’s many heads at us as we backed up. Before long however we were surrounded on all sides and the manticore grabbed us with his strong pinchers.

“Look everyone, demigods,” he said. “Just so we’re clear, I get to eat the heart.”

Darkcloud1111 ~Fastest Hero Alive