Kapitel 4: Chapter 4 – The Problem With Bows...
So, just to be totally clear about what just happened?" Artemis asked with wider eyes. She let the question hang in the air for a moment while Percy looked around, admiring his own armour, feeling the external surfaces of the chain links that folded around his body. He was clearly just as impressed with it as everyone else was.
The thought of it being just as much of a surprise to him seemed slightly strange to Artemis at first but as she thought about it she realized that it was the same as what most of the other Gods did for their children. Perhaps she was assuming their differences lied in everything?
The immediate thought going through a lot of their minds was how much damage that armour could take. Did it mean that with a new suit of armour he was able to be dealt far superior levels of harm than they would previously have been able to administer? Sadistic thoughts ran through a few of their heads as to how they could find new ways to overcome this latest obstacle and deliver fresh pain to their latest punching bag. Of course Percy was totally oblivious to all of that as he was far too enamoured with checking himself out.
"I just got a few gifts from my father, that's all. The hide of Leviathan, slain by Odin and fashioned into this beautiful armour Wayland, the God of the forge, and this," He held up the pole of smooth dark grey metal that almost looked like it was liquid metal in his hands, "Is a gift from the world tree itself. It's melded with the ancient soul of Yggdrasil, which I have a faint inkling of whom it once belonged to. The weapon is forged from the heart of a dying star, only a few more weapons like it in existence. This is possibly the only one that has the ability to change form." Percy told them all before the weapon in his hand glimmered into a sword that curved outwards halfway through the blade before he slammed it into the ground.
Another lightning bolt came down and struck him but it seemed that it had no effect on the Asgardian. He stood once again, the sword morphed back into what seemed like a spear. It was a glimmering metal that Artemis didn't recognize as being Olympian in origin. When he said that it was forged with the heart of a dying star, did he mean that it was just super dense carbon atoms all bonded together or that it had literally been forged by the heat of that star? It seemed fairly far fetched even to her, but here it was, something that she simply couldn't identify so there had to be some truth to it.
"Well that's really something. So what does that make you, the prince of the universe?" Thalia asked once again, this time she showed absolutely no resentment towards Percy but excitement for him to be with the Hunt. Artemis couldn't believe it, already her lieutenant was showing acceptance of him and it had been less than two hours. It was remarkable, granted Thalia was probably the one most likely to turn around and accept him anyway as her entrance to the Hunt had been under rather extenuating circumstances in the first place, but still, that kind of time frame was definitely impressive.
"No, like I said, if we were in Asgard then I would of course be a Prince, but otherwise just Percy or Perseus will be fine. Either way I've taken enough of your time. Lady Artemis?" Percy told them before standing slightly away from the fire. Artemis couldn't believe how casual and calm Percy was taking the entire situation. He likely didn't realize the amount of physical abuse that was heading his way, whether backed by ill intention or not. The looks on many of their faces seemed to only back up Artemis' suspitions. They were seeing him as a new, very dangerous type of prey. One that Artemis wasn't entirely convinced that they would be able to take on.
"That about wraps things up here. Like I said, Perseus is an exception to our rules about males, no purposely attacking him, I'm not entirely sure how well the outcome from a rash decision would be, but he is a very level headed individual who has already gone out of his way to show me a respect that I have not come to expect from some of my patrons, so try not to disrespect each other in the time that he's here and I'm sure we'll all be able to get along quite well. In the morning we've got a special training session planned. And Perseus here has volunteered himself to be a dummy." Artemis smiled evilly.
"Percy." Percy muttered under his breath, already appreciating the shortened version of the name. Only the Goddess noticed this but she said nothing. He'd noticed that she'd managed to get it right a few times but seemingly resorting back to the formal version. He didn't mind her calling him Perseus, he just for some reason quite enjoyed her being more informal with him. He casually looked over at the Goddess with a face that seemed to portray fascination with the deity, not malice or ill will for her basically throwing him to the wolves that were her Huntresses, but rather sheer interest in who she seemed to be behind the legends he knew.
The girls all cheered at the revelation that in the morning they'd all have their chance to try and throw a beatdown his way. They cleared the camp up before those who weren't watching the perimeter overnight decided to go to bed and get as much rest in as possible, they knew that it was going to be a long day, and they were all going to give it their best shot at taking him down or causing as much damage as possible.
Meanwhile Percy decided to go and find a suitable spot to claim as his own. Ten minutes later and he'd settled on creating an elevated pitch for a shelter next to the creek. He had picked out a lofty embrace within two trees on which he'd hung several canopies of leaves. A faint rustle somewhere below him made him aware of the godly presence nearby. At first he didn't make any kind of movement that would suggest to her that he could tell she was there, he wanted to see what she would do if she believed stealth to be in her hands. She knew all too well that someone like him would have heard or felt her coming towards him, she wasn't trying hard enough to hide her footsteps for him to have genuinely not noticed her approach. Not that she particularly knew the extent of his senses. This Asgardian was a whole new level of unexplored territory.
"Percy." He heard Artemis' voice call out. He stopped fiddling with the layers of leaves that he was weaving a fresh canopy out of and simply craned his head enough for Artemis to be able to see his gleaming platinum eyes. They were powerful enough to make a mortal woman swoon. His eyes alone held a power that Apollo would ruin the world with, irreparably changing the gene pool of the population to be filled with Half Bloods.
She said nothing to him but she held her expectant look so he decided to drop down gracefully, landing next to her with a soft thud. "Yes milady." He said with a deep bow. He couldn't see it, but the bow had caused Artemis to faintly smile, but she knew to let it go before he saw. He'd feel far too smug to know that the Goddess had already smiled because of him, he might get funny ideas about the likelihood of actually completing his impossible task. What WAS the likelihood of him achieving success? She'd been bowed to before, it was customary to be bowed to, she was a Goddess after all. It wasn't the fact of the formality that had actually made her smile, it was the fact that it was him, the Asgardian Prince, that was bowing to her with no inclination necessary, he simply recognized that she was someone to bow to.
"I want to train with you for a little bit so that I know your skills myself before I plunge you into the deep end with the girls. If I know what you're capable of, I can gauge a training exercise that will test both you and my Hunters. First things first, archery." Artemis told him. She immediately noticed that he'd subconsciously backed up and paled slightly. A look of constrained fear and mild resentment flittered across his face before it was replaced with a look of lax fear. So he didn't like archery. Not a great start considering that she was one of the famed twin archers.
"But I can't shoot. Like, I REALLY can't shoot. I'd be more accurate throwing a spear over a hundred meters than I would be shooting an arrow a dozen feet." He argued, but he sighed when the stern look on the Goddess' face told him that he wasn't going to get out of it as easily as that. Archery it was. Artemis herself pulled out a silver bow with a wooden grip. It had ornate embroidery running the full length of the bow, intertwining at the tips with where the silver string was held. It was a beautiful show of craftsmanship and it deeply fitted the profile of the moon Goddess. They followed the creek downstream until they came to a more secluded part of the forest. The sounds of nature became more prominent the further away from the camp they got.
In that moment he wondered whether or not she was leading him to a secluded part of the forest so that she could murder him and bury his body… No, that wouldn't work, she likely knew that he could go nuclear and rain lightning down upon most of the forest… Probably.
Because of this ridiculous challenge that Zeus had bestowed upon them, Artemis found herself alone in the company of a male with a weapon in both of their hands and as of yet she hadn't killed him. This wasn't doing well for her reputation.
"The tree over there, I want you to pin this target on it." She said, holding up a circular wooden target that had a red circle crudely painted on it. It had flecks of fresh paint on it that could easily be scraped away to show what was likely months of hard target practice. It looked like it had once even experienced bullet holes judging by the fractures in the wood.
"Where did you get that? I didn't notice you carrying it." He said with confusion before he accepted the wooden board and made his way over to the tree, trudging through the crisp leaves that had fallen from the trees. It was strange because it was damn near the height of summer, there probably shouldn't have been that many leaves around.
"I conjured it up. It was made a few days ago, stop asking questions. We've only got all night before you need to be rested enough to dodge arrows flying at terminal velocity." Artemis quipped with a smirk. Great, he thought to himself, his working day was going to be so much fun now.
"Terminal velocity doesn't mean much if you're capable of hauling an arrow into orbit. Can your Hunters do that?" He asked with a single raised brow. He enjoyed the silence that he received in answer to his question before walking back over to her with an amused smile on show. It might not have been anything to her but to him it was the smallest inclination that she might just be capable of giving him some banterous jests in his time with the Hunt.
Once the target was pinned he returned. "Where is your bow and arrows?" Artemis asked him incredulously. Pulling her own bow into her hands. The twelve year old was showing him up badly. He grunted before shaking his spear in an odd way before it melded into glimmering metal before expanding outwards forming a beautiful bow.
"What metal is your weapon made from Perseus?" She asked him curiously, taking sight of it for the first time in its raw element. She truly had no idea how to even begin to describe the shifting weapon.
"I don't think it's made out of any metal. The weapon is a manifestation of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. You are welcome to try to hold it but before I would hand it to you, it should be placed on the ground. Any who are unworthy simply cannot carry it and would be crushed under its weight, ugh, not saying that you are unworthy but Yggdrasil is particularly picky." Percy told her. The Goddess went wide eyed.
"Really? How much does it weigh?" She asked stupidly before trying to pick up the bow. It was evident that after a few moments, she simply could not pick it up. Spending more time would be futile. She felt her grip close around the bow and the weight of it intensified around her fingers as she put more pressure into trying to lift it off of the ground. Never in her life had she ever been labelled as unworthy but this was a weapon made for a Viking Prince, she didn't mind not being worthy by the standard. Was her perception of Vikings even correct? The boy was nothing short of outstanding so far…
"I truly do not know. Probably about three hundred billion tonnes. That seems to be around the range of power it beholds." Percy explained before picking the bow up with one hand. "Anyway, onto the archery. Prepare to be shocked, I don't expect to ever be using this bow again just so you realize the gravity of how bad I am." He explained to the Goddess who sighed. He pulled back the string on his bow and before Artemis could stop him because his stance was all wrong, the legendary weapon fired and a lightning fueled arrowhead soared into orbit way above them, narrowly missing blowing up the moon.
"Yeah, no, turn that thing back." Artemis demanded straight away. It was evident that if he was able to miss an un-moving ground target and nearly hit the moon instead, that he should never practice with something that powerful before learning at least the basics. The heat of anxiety had reached her face as the realization of just how powerful this boy could actually be, had hit her. It was astounding, the sheer potential of the Asgardian Prince was dizzying. She had no doubts that if, if in some crazy world he managed to succeed with getting the Hunt to not only like him but trust him, he would be an extremely powerful man.
"You didn't have to fling it into space with lightning either." Artemis scolded him casually, watching through eagle eyes as the bow morphed back into a perfectly smooth pole of apparent destruction.
She couldn't help but be fascinated by it all. She knew of stories that originated from the northern lands towards the end of the Roman Empire when Diana had been roaming the lands she'd come to know as Europe. She never expected there to be any truth to these Norse Gods. But… Here they were, or at the very least here HE was. Was he even really a Demigod? All they knew was that he was the Son of Odin and that he was quickly showing them all that he was extremely powerful.
If that was the standard for Norse Demigods then Artemis was truly thankful that the two of them had never clashed with one another in the past, she feared that the children of Olympus might have been thrashed under the Viking might.
Perhaps not with an army of Spartans…
"I refuse to let you be that much of an accidental threat to everything around you. From now on you are not to unleash that weapon's true destructive capabilities unless yourself or my girls are under a genuine threat. And you are never to turn that into a bow unless I give you express permission." Artemis told him with a stern flash in her bright silver eyes. Percy understood the gravity of what she was telling him but gave her a well natured smile and nodded in agreement.
"You'll train with myself or Thalia exclusively and you will use a basic training bow that we will provide you with. We will spent a few hours each day working on your form and the basics of archery. If you progress at the rate that I expect you will then it won't be long before you're shooting arrows with the best of us." Artemis admitted slowly. Her eyes were intent and focused, trained on trying to perceive him at his very core. It was like she was talking through him rather than at him.
"No problem but I think that archery may well just be the one thing that I suck and and never get a basic understanding of." Percy answered with a shrug, retrieving Artemis' wooden target from the tree.
"Actually… Do you mind if I play around with this for a bit?" Percy asked, holding up the wooden target. Artemis nodded silently, watching as he put the target back on the tree and walked back over to where they'd been standing with the bow previously.
Percy morphed his weapon into a beautiful, gleaming platinum axe that he immediately pelted at the tree two dozen feet away. The power behind his throw and the apparent unfathomable weight in the weapon collided with the poor tree and decimated it right down to a stump studded with fractures of wood.
"Hmm, maybe I'll get Thalia to teach you how to hold back on an attack tomorrow after your thrashing." Artemis smirked at him. Percy groaned, trudging down the hill to fetch his weapon of mass destruction before they made their way back up the creek and the hunter encampment.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein