Fire and Metal: Chapter 9

Fire and Metal: Chapter List

Rise of the Emporers: Felicia's POV
In an hour or so, we had reached the state capitol building. We paid fifteen bucks each for entrance, and stepped into the building. I have no idea why I suddenly had this hunch, but I am sure it is correct. "This way," I said, not completely knowing why. We turned down a hall and reached a door that said "Employees Only." I pushed it open. No alarms. I gazed down the passage, noticing its apparent lack of use.

"Something about this place makes me feel uncomfortable." Lance said.

"Yeah man, it sucks we don't have a satyr handy to do some monster smelling for us." Neil complained. I glared at them and told them to be quiet.

Suddenly, we heard a roar. Everyone flinched. In front of us was a lion. No... not quite a lion. It had a woman's head. A sphinx.

"Hello, I am a sphinx."

"Yeah, we get that part." I said impatiently.

"I was tipped off by Hephaestus that he would send you here." She said.

Why would Hephaestus do this to us?

"He asked me to deviate from my usual process of asking you twenty questions," She said with obvious distaste. "He told me a question which you must answer to have the will to continue the quest."

"Why are you on this quest? What are your goals?"

I have to admit. I was stumped. Lance wasn't, though.

"To save our mother, and to discover a new foe. And hopefully defeat them."

"Yes, but who is this 'new foe?'" The sphinx asked.

"Those two children of Nyx?" I guessed.

"No, they are merely part of it. You will find out soon.  Remeber your goals, your motives, and take care they do not become evil."

With that, she left, but I thought I heard her mutter, "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"That's was... wierd. Well, at least we know why you wanted to come here now." Neil put in.

"Yeah, we ought to leave now." Lance suggested. "Let's go figure out our new enemies. As if we don't have enough already." He said under his breath.

We left the building and took another bus out of the city. We stopped at the edge of another forest. "Let's move on, has anyone noticed we tend to get attacked next to forests?" I joked. Although it was partly because I felt like someone or something was following us. We moved on to another town. There we stopped at a cheap restraunt to replenish our stomachs and order some food to-go for later use. Without warning, three of the waiters pulled out weapons and snapped their fingers. The rest of the employees at the restraunt dashed out of the building all screaming about an urgent meeting. I immediately pulled out my spear, and saw that Lance and Neil had done the same.

"What do you want?" I said shakily. This was the second set of evil demigods we'd met.

"To stop your pathetic little quest," said the tallest one.

"Who do you serve?" Neil yelled.

"Rulers you wouldn't be fit to clean the boots of." Replied the same person. "I am the son of Thanatos, god of death. Someone's gotta have some authority in the Underworld, right?"

I was confused by this statement, but let it go. I charged forward into the Thanotos kid, and saw my two comanions do the same to the other two, and engaged in a horrific battle. I was at a severe disadvantage, since this guy was expertly trained. Probably with dead spirits themselves. I looked around desperately for something to use to my advantage. Then I saw it: cooking oil. I jump away, and lept onto the counter. I poked a hole into the bottle, and sprayed it all over the son of Thanatos. Then I lit him on fire.

I enjoyed his screams a little too much. His comrads paused in their battle and rushed to the aid of their leader.

Crap. I thought. One of them must of been a son of Poseidon, since he summoned water from the kitchen sinks and put the fire out. "Stupid son of Poseidon," I muttered, as I jabbed my spear at him.

He parried, "I'm not a son of Poseidon. I hate how everyone just assumes that.  Have they no respect for his son Triton?"

But with their leader down, and since Lance and Neil had knocked out their other friend, the Triton kid couldn't do much. Lance knelt down, and pressed his falchion to the guy's throat: "Who's your leader? Tell us and we might let you go."

"Not leader, leaders. Three of them.  They are the emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty!" He laughed. "You have no chance against us."

Lance stood us and began moving his flachion toward the guy's throat. Instead, he thought better of it and knocked him out with the hilt of his sword. "Let's leave this place."

We ran a good one or two miles before we stopped to catch our breath. "Why would these Julia something people want to attack us?"

"Julio-Claudian. They were the first emperors of Rome.  They had always blamed us Greek demigods for allowing the Flavian dynasty to take over.  I'll bet that the Thanatos kid was involved in bringing them back to life."

I remembered them now! We had studied the in Ancient and Medieval History Class. "But... Weren't there five of them?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm guessing only Caligula, Claudius, and Nero came back. They were some of the worst Emperors of Rome.  Nero actually caused the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D."

"Just our luck." Lance said.

"We know our enemies now, we just gotta find out where this 'fort of snow' is." I said."

First, we rest," Neil insisted.  "Then we need to send an Iris message back to camp."

After a nice, refreshing npa, Neil told us to find the nearest water fountain. One we did, he put a fingure over the faucet and made a rainbow. "Throw in a drachma from our bags." I obliged, and he said, "O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me Chiron at the Big House, Camp Half-Blood."

A flickery image of the centaur appeared. "Is there something wrong?"

"Yes, we discovered the leaders of this group of enemies: three of the worst Emperors of Rome." Neil said gravely.

"How could they have come back to life?" He asked, obviously worried.

"We think a son of Thanatos is involved, and possibly Hades as well. He has always been unhappy with his lot."

"Well, be careful. I take it you will be returning now?" He asked.

"No, we learned of this after we defeated a group of enemy demigods." Lance said.

"Ah. No wonder recruitment is down.  We must not let them get to new demigods before we do." Chiron said sadly.

"Bye, Chiron." And Neil cut off the connection.