Hunt, the full story
About Aurora and Will, two special persons with special fates...
‘Aurora! Do you have any more arrows?!’ I threw myself on the ground with my quiver rattled empty on my back. I had exactly one second to get my shield ready before I felt the hot flames roaring above me, red sparks flew past my shield, falling on the dry grass where they quickly extinguished.
I looked past my shield and saw the 2 meter high Chimaera. His big cat eyes were looking sharply at me; he opened his mouth again and roared, showing her long poisonous fangs. I jumped up and ran to the tree where Aurora was kneeling between the branches, shooting arrows at the Chimaera. Aurora put a new arrow on her bow and sighed.
‘I hit him at least forty times, but he doesn’t seem to care allot about it’ Aurora stroked her auburn hair out of her face. ‘Maybe we should try something else…’. Chimaera’s have an impenetrable skin, the golden fur and the dragon like scales wouldn’t let trough a bullet shot by the best gun in the world from a distance of ten centimetre, let alone arrows. Still, this weren’t normal arrows, if any arrow would succeed it would be these. And even, an impenetrable skin is annoying, but doesn’t make it impossible.
Most animals and monsters have a weak spot. Badly enough, we still had to discover the Chimaera’s one.
Suddenly I heard a soft hissing behind me and felt something quickly wrap around my leg. Before I realised it I laid stretched on the muddy ground.
‘Will!’ Aurora yelled while she jumped out of the tree. Too late, the Chimaera’s tail had already dragged me toward its head, closer and closer to the hot mouth. I tried to get my knife out of my belt but I couldn’t reach it. I closed my eyes and prepared for the flesh ripping teeth.
But in place of my own screams I heard de monster above me crying out a terrible cry. I felt the tail-losing grip, I immediately kicked and I luckily got loose. I crawled away to the save shadows of the trees, I had to close my eyes for a second before I could throw myself in the battle again. I had to look twice to make sure that what I see is true. Aurora was sitting on the thick neck of the big Lion-reptile and pulled her sword out of the bloody manes. The Chimaera faltered a bit and then dropped on the ground with a heavy blow. I looked for Aurora and saw her climbing off the monster, putting her sword back in her bag.
‘Are you alright?’ She asked me. I scanned my body for injuries and discovered a burn on the hand where I hold the shield. Aurora looked at my hand and pushes her finger softly on my red skin, it hurtled. My skin turned immediately white, just before it became red again.
‘That shield must have been over an hundred degrees, let me get you some water.’ She got her water bottle and let the water stream on my hand. It felt immediately better. I also put some water on a piece of cloth and wrapped around my hand, I would have to wait till we reached the camp before I could completely heal it.
The Chimaera was lying on the ground.
‘Do you think he is dead?’ Aurora asked. I slowly walked toward the monster. In a distance of a view metre I could feel the hot hair escaping from her nose holes. When he noticed me she opened his eyes wider and growled.
‘Calm down, boy. Don’t move, we are going to help you’ It seemed like he understood me because he waited motionless when I exanimated his wound.
It wasn’t that deep, but the blood made it look worse than it was. I used my good hand to wipe it clean en put some herbs on it.
‘Is he goanna make it?’ I nodded ‘Monsters heal fast, and this herbs will help stop the bleeding’.
Now we must decide what to do with him. This Chimaera was terrorising the area, eating the cows of farmers and putting houses on fire.
‘I wonder why he acted like this, Chimaera’s aren’t this aggressive usually.’ Aurora asked. ‘I mean, there must be an reason…’ We start looking at him more specifically; there were no visible signs of farther harm.
‘He looks quit young, look how big his paws are compared to his body’. And indeed, she couldn’t be much older than a year, which was strange, Chimaera’s use to stay with their mother till they were big enough to be mistaken for an elephant.
‘He must have lost his flock’ Aurora nodded.
‘Sounds logical, but why wouldn’t he just have flown to his parents? They can’t be that hard to find.’ A little flame escaped from the Chimaera’s nose.
‘Maybe there is something wrong with his wings?’ Aurora carefully lifted the right wing of the monster and indeed, there was a big burn, almost the size of my shield.
‘Gods… That must have hurt allot’ The Chimaera replied on Aurora with a little moan.
‘I’ll contact Halliope, she can get the Ambrosia ready at camp, it isn’t far. Can you walk, Buddy?’ The Chimaera answered Aurora’s question by slowly standing up.
When we arrived at the camp, only a view Huntresses were standing ready to take the dragon from us. The camp is quite empty, because most of the people were still-hunting for the monster that, as we knew now, was a Chimaera.
Lira, a German girl who joined the Hunters 50 year ago, petted the Chimaera kindly before she tied a rope around his neck. She lead us and the Chimaera to Halliope’s tent, where she had already water boiling for tea. Lira, who shared the tent with her, invited us to us to sit down.
Halliope skilfully looked at the wound of the Chimaera and confirmed what I already thought.
‘It isn’t deep, some Ambrosia and an good night sleep and he will be strong enough to fly to his flock’. She mixed the Ambrosia berries out of the little sack on her belt with some water out of the river that’s streaming past our camp and put it on the wound. The Chimaera made a surprized but satisfied sound and his eyes became friendlier. It was obvious a heavy burden was fallen of his giant, but still young, shoulders. He yawned and fell asleep.
Lira turned back to us ‘You go wash yourself, you guys look terrible.’
I scanned myself; Ok, my clothes were a bit burned at the edges, and of course the regular scratches. No broken bones, bloody wound of bite-marks, quite a wonder compared to the battle we just fought.
I was relieved until I noticed the smell of burned hair. I grabbed my braid and stared at the end. And yes… my braid was charred for at least 6 centimetres.
Aurora followed my shocked face and started laughing.
‘Not funny.’ Obviously she thought it is because she began laughing even louder. I crunched some hair between the fingers of my good hand.
‘Well, if you would have taken the ground instead of the tree’s you wouldn’t think its that funny’. I said angrily.
‘Your fa… face.. hahaha’ she replied laughing.
My face expressed thunder ‘I’m going to wash the mud of my face at the river’
Aurora slowly stopped laughing while I looked at her with my angry face. ‘I’ll come with you, sorry… its just…’
She tried to keep her face straight, but failed. Her golden bracelet ringed against her armour while she followed me. Aurora seemed to have enjoyed her fun enough and said ‘Not funny, you completely right Will.‘ I could hear the river coming close now.
‘You bet I’m right, I’m always right’. I replied, still angry, but satisfied with her excuse.
I stepped into the water and let the stream wash the mud and earth from my arms. The Chimaera’s wound had left a thin layer of winered dried up blood, which itched. I felt much better when I was clean.
I saw Aurora sunbathing on a stone at the riverside to dry up, the sunlight reflecting on her gold-coloured hair and her eyes straight looking up to the sky without the bright light hurting her eyes.
The sun always seems to shine where Aurora is, even in the darkest nights she still had that a thin layer of light over her.
Which is kind of logical since she’s a daughter of Apollo, the sun god. The gods often had children; children of these gods were never born without a reason. There always seemed to be a perfect fitted place for them in the world, a task that, if they were lucky, didn’t lead to a horrible death, but mostly did.
Famous examples were heroes like Hercules, the son of Zeus- the king of gods and thunder, who defeated many monsters and made Greece allot saver. Or Ajax, who fought bravely at the battle of Troy, and was the son of Aphrodite, who always blessed him with her help.
Aurora, was born around 180 years ago, she didn’t found her task yet. But she was good with a bow and arrow and was looking for adventure, so she joined Artemis Hunters.
Artemis was Apollo’s twin-sister. She started the Hunters ages ago, to help her with her job. Not that she was much around; I only saw her twice in like, 100 years. She had other, more important things to do, the serious monsters, who got stronger trough the ages, famous creatures like Python, Minotaurus and Hydra. And of course the eternal politics on Olympus, the palace of the gods. Her father Zeus was known for his heated discussions where he often made more enemies then friends. Artemis, and her big sister Athena (goddess of wisdom, strategy and crafts) always tried to find a more peaceful and better fitting solution to the major problems gods deal with.
We didn’t know much about it. We did our task and the gods did theirs. Poseidon rules over the sea, Hades makes sure the Underworld kept spinning and Zeus, the king of gods, rules over the sky and of course, over the other gods and goddesses.
Apollo and Artemis had a classic sister brother relation, as we noticed when we were on a mission in Delphi. A huge swarm of Apis, giant bee-like creatures with a leathery yellow skin and a angle full of poison that made people pass out for hours (in which they usually had completely eaten the victim) had invaded Delphi, the mighty Oracle that Apollo owned (Prophecy, songs, poems and healing were also some of his many tasks). Lord Apollo called us to fix it. It had cost us 5 days to catch them and weeks to bring them back to the Pheriphonian fields, where they normally live. That mission was one of the two times I had ever seen Artemis.
Since their mother Leto had disappeared Artemis always had felt the need to take care of her brother, who was very annoyed by that and naturally did the opposed of what she said. Artemis had always taken her tasks very seriously while Apollo had more attention for partying with nymphs, making music or riding fast chariots. He had taken the “annoying brother” theme to a whole different level. The whole time we were busy with catching the Apis trying to not get stung Artemis and Apollo had been arguing.
Not that Apollo was a bad person; if you looked farther then his superficial behaviour to his sister he actually seemed a nice guy. He had the same almost golden hair, blue eyes and tanned skin as Aurora, even the same smile.
It was the first time Aurora had seen him; it wasn’t usual for gods to interfere with mortals. They lived on whole different levels, sometimes when their children were mixed up in godly affairs they contacted them to give advice, get them out of trouble or reward them with a blessing or present. Still, those visits were briefly and very polite. Only a very view number of them really succeeded in getting to know them better, but to reach that you had to earn your place at Olympus which is to say at least, difficult to impossible.
The sun began to sink and Aurora stood up.
‘I’m going to get something to eat, do you want to come with me?’ I shook my head.
‘I think I’m going to sit here a little while longer’. I pulled my feet out of the stream; to let the last bit of sun dry them up.
Aurora frowned ‘Its pizza-evening, are you sure?’ I nodded and smiled. ‘Still a bit sick in the stomach from fighting the dragon’ Aurora promised she would safe some pieces for me and then ran back to the camp.
The river wasn’t steaming very fast; it was actually a very nice river, full of fish and clear. I observed a big fish chasing a little fish. It was very amusing and interesting to see the little fish using its flexibility to escape from the big fish every time he got too close; whereupon the big fish seemed confused and had to seek the little fish again. Finally the little fish hid under a big stone and the big fish gave up and swam farther, disappointed about his lost battle.
The stones were still warm from the sun; I dipped my finger in the water and drew figures on them. It took a while till they were all dried up, the sun was completely gone and the moon laid a thin silver veil over everything.
I sat there a while, looking at the reflections in the water, when suddenly something strange happened. The water started to boil and seemed to change colour. The reflection of the stars vanished and was replaced by a deep black surface. In place of that the moonlight seemed to become solid and formed a thin sliver sheet. On that sheet appeared letters in a graceful writing. It said:
“Help me”
I looked past my shield and saw the 2 meter high Chimaera. His big cat eyes were looking sharply at me; he opened his mouth again and roared, showing her long poisonous fangs. I jumped up and ran to the tree where Aurora was kneeling between the branches, shooting arrows at the Chimaera. Aurora put a new arrow on her bow and sighed.
‘I hit him at least forty times, but he doesn’t seem to care allot about it’ Aurora stroked her auburn hair out of her face. ‘Maybe we should try something else…’. Chimaera’s have an impenetrable skin, the golden fur and the dragon like scales wouldn’t let trough a bullet shot by the best gun in the world from a distance of ten centimetre, let alone arrows. Still, this weren’t normal arrows, if any arrow would succeed it would be these. And even, an impenetrable skin is annoying, but doesn’t make it impossible.
Most animals and monsters have a weak spot. Badly enough, we still had to discover the Chimaera’s one.
Suddenly I heard a soft hissing behind me and felt something quickly wrap around my leg. Before I realised it I laid stretched on the muddy ground.
‘Will!’ Aurora yelled while she jumped out of the tree. Too late, the Chimaera’s tail had already dragged me toward its head, closer and closer to the hot mouth. I tried to get my knife out of my belt but I couldn’t reach it. I closed my eyes and prepared for the flesh ripping teeth.
But in place of my own screams I heard de monster above me crying out a terrible cry. I felt the tail-losing grip, I immediately kicked and I luckily got loose. I crawled away to the save shadows of the trees, I had to close my eyes for a second before I could throw myself in the battle again. I had to look twice to make sure that what I see is true. Aurora was sitting on the thick neck of the big Lion-reptile and pulled her sword out of the bloody manes. The Chimaera faltered a bit and then dropped on the ground with a heavy blow. I looked for Aurora and saw her climbing off the monster, putting her sword back in her bag.
‘Are you alright?’ She asked me. I scanned my body for injuries and discovered a burn on the hand where I hold the shield. Aurora looked at my hand and pushes her finger softly on my red skin, it hurtled. My skin turned immediately white, just before it became red again.
‘That shield must have been over an hundred degrees, let me get you some water.’ She got her water bottle and let the water stream on my hand. It felt immediately better. I also put some water on a piece of cloth and wrapped around my hand, I would have to wait till we reached the camp before I could completely heal it.
The Chimaera was lying on the ground.
‘Do you think he is dead?’ Aurora asked. I slowly walked toward the monster. In a distance of a view metre I could feel the hot hair escaping from her nose holes. When he noticed me she opened his eyes wider and growled.
‘Calm down, boy. Don’t move, we are going to help you’ It seemed like he understood me because he waited motionless when I exanimated his wound.
It wasn’t that deep, but the blood made it look worse than it was. I used my good hand to wipe it clean en put some herbs on it.
‘Is he goanna make it?’ I nodded ‘Monsters heal fast, and this herbs will help stop the bleeding’.
Now we must decide what to do with him. This Chimaera was terrorising the area, eating the cows of farmers and putting houses on fire.
‘I wonder why he acted like this, Chimaera’s aren’t this aggressive usually.’ Aurora asked. ‘I mean, there must be an reason…’ We start looking at him more specifically; there were no visible signs of farther harm.
‘He looks quit young, look how big his paws are compared to his body’. And indeed, she couldn’t be much older than a year, which was strange, Chimaera’s use to stay with their mother till they were big enough to be mistaken for an elephant.
‘He must have lost his flock’ Aurora nodded.
‘Sounds logical, but why wouldn’t he just have flown to his parents? They can’t be that hard to find.’ A little flame escaped from the Chimaera’s nose.
‘Maybe there is something wrong with his wings?’ Aurora carefully lifted the right wing of the monster and indeed, there was a big burn, almost the size of my shield.
‘Gods… That must have hurt allot’ The Chimaera replied on Aurora with a little moan.
‘I’ll contact Halliope, she can get the Ambrosia ready at camp, it isn’t far. Can you walk, Buddy?’ The Chimaera answered Aurora’s question by slowly standing up.
When we arrived at the camp, only a view Huntresses were standing ready to take the dragon from us. The camp is quite empty, because most of the people were still-hunting for the monster that, as we knew now, was a Chimaera.
Lira, a German girl who joined the Hunters 50 year ago, petted the Chimaera kindly before she tied a rope around his neck. She lead us and the Chimaera to Halliope’s tent, where she had already water boiling for tea. Lira, who shared the tent with her, invited us to us to sit down.
Halliope skilfully looked at the wound of the Chimaera and confirmed what I already thought.
‘It isn’t deep, some Ambrosia and an good night sleep and he will be strong enough to fly to his flock’. She mixed the Ambrosia berries out of the little sack on her belt with some water out of the river that’s streaming past our camp and put it on the wound. The Chimaera made a surprized but satisfied sound and his eyes became friendlier. It was obvious a heavy burden was fallen of his giant, but still young, shoulders. He yawned and fell asleep.
Lira turned back to us ‘You go wash yourself, you guys look terrible.’
I scanned myself; Ok, my clothes were a bit burned at the edges, and of course the regular scratches. No broken bones, bloody wound of bite-marks, quite a wonder compared to the battle we just fought.
I was relieved until I noticed the smell of burned hair. I grabbed my braid and stared at the end. And yes… my braid was charred for at least 6 centimetres.
Aurora followed my shocked face and started laughing.
‘Not funny.’ Obviously she thought it is because she began laughing even louder. I crunched some hair between the fingers of my good hand.
‘Well, if you would have taken the ground instead of the tree’s you wouldn’t think its that funny’. I said angrily.
‘Your fa… face.. hahaha’ she replied laughing.
My face expressed thunder ‘I’m going to wash the mud of my face at the river’
Aurora slowly stopped laughing while I looked at her with my angry face. ‘I’ll come with you, sorry… its just…’
She tried to keep her face straight, but failed. Her golden bracelet ringed against her armour while she followed me. Aurora seemed to have enjoyed her fun enough and said ‘Not funny, you completely right Will.‘ I could hear the river coming close now.
‘You bet I’m right, I’m always right’. I replied, still angry, but satisfied with her excuse.
I stepped into the water and let the stream wash the mud and earth from my arms. The Chimaera’s wound had left a thin layer of winered dried up blood, which itched. I felt much better when I was clean.
I saw Aurora sunbathing on a stone at the riverside to dry up, the sunlight reflecting on her gold-coloured hair and her eyes straight looking up to the sky without the bright light hurting her eyes.
The sun always seems to shine where Aurora is, even in the darkest nights she still had that a thin layer of light over her.
Which is kind of logical since she’s a daughter of Apollo, the sun god. The gods often had children; children of these gods were never born without a reason. There always seemed to be a perfect fitted place for them in the world, a task that, if they were lucky, didn’t lead to a horrible death, but mostly did.
Famous examples were heroes like Hercules, the son of Zeus- the king of gods and thunder, who defeated many monsters and made Greece allot saver. Or Ajax, who fought bravely at the battle of Troy, and was the son of Aphrodite, who always blessed him with her help.
Aurora, was born around 180 years ago, she didn’t found her task yet. But she was good with a bow and arrow and was looking for adventure, so she joined Artemis Hunters.
Artemis was Apollo’s twin-sister. She started the Hunters ages ago, to help her with her job. Not that she was much around; I only saw her twice in like, 100 years. She had other, more important things to do, the serious monsters, who got stronger trough the ages, famous creatures like Python, Minotaurus and Hydra. And of course the eternal politics on Olympus, the palace of the gods. Her father Zeus was known for his heated discussions where he often made more enemies then friends. Artemis, and her big sister Athena (goddess of wisdom, strategy and crafts) always tried to find a more peaceful and better fitting solution to the major problems gods deal with.
We didn’t know much about it. We did our task and the gods did theirs. Poseidon rules over the sea, Hades makes sure the Underworld kept spinning and Zeus, the king of gods, rules over the sky and of course, over the other gods and goddesses.
Apollo and Artemis had a classic sister brother relation, as we noticed when we were on a mission in Delphi. A huge swarm of Apis, giant bee-like creatures with a leathery yellow skin and a angle full of poison that made people pass out for hours (in which they usually had completely eaten the victim) had invaded Delphi, the mighty Oracle that Apollo owned (Prophecy, songs, poems and healing were also some of his many tasks). Lord Apollo called us to fix it. It had cost us 5 days to catch them and weeks to bring them back to the Pheriphonian fields, where they normally live. That mission was one of the two times I had ever seen Artemis.
Since their mother Leto had disappeared Artemis always had felt the need to take care of her brother, who was very annoyed by that and naturally did the opposed of what she said. Artemis had always taken her tasks very seriously while Apollo had more attention for partying with nymphs, making music or riding fast chariots. He had taken the “annoying brother” theme to a whole different level. The whole time we were busy with catching the Apis trying to not get stung Artemis and Apollo had been arguing.
Not that Apollo was a bad person; if you looked farther then his superficial behaviour to his sister he actually seemed a nice guy. He had the same almost golden hair, blue eyes and tanned skin as Aurora, even the same smile.
It was the first time Aurora had seen him; it wasn’t usual for gods to interfere with mortals. They lived on whole different levels, sometimes when their children were mixed up in godly affairs they contacted them to give advice, get them out of trouble or reward them with a blessing or present. Still, those visits were briefly and very polite. Only a very view number of them really succeeded in getting to know them better, but to reach that you had to earn your place at Olympus which is to say at least, difficult to impossible.
The sun began to sink and Aurora stood up.
‘I’m going to get something to eat, do you want to come with me?’ I shook my head.
‘I think I’m going to sit here a little while longer’. I pulled my feet out of the stream; to let the last bit of sun dry them up.
Aurora frowned ‘Its pizza-evening, are you sure?’ I nodded and smiled. ‘Still a bit sick in the stomach from fighting the dragon’ Aurora promised she would safe some pieces for me and then ran back to the camp.
The river wasn’t steaming very fast; it was actually a very nice river, full of fish and clear. I observed a big fish chasing a little fish. It was very amusing and interesting to see the little fish using its flexibility to escape from the big fish every time he got too close; whereupon the big fish seemed confused and had to seek the little fish again. Finally the little fish hid under a big stone and the big fish gave up and swam farther, disappointed about his lost battle.
The stones were still warm from the sun; I dipped my finger in the water and drew figures on them. It took a while till they were all dried up, the sun was completely gone and the moon laid a thin silver veil over everything.
I sat there a while, looking at the reflections in the water, when suddenly something strange happened. The water started to boil and seemed to change colour. The reflection of the stars vanished and was replaced by a deep black surface. In place of that the moonlight seemed to become solid and formed a thin sliver sheet. On that sheet appeared letters in a graceful writing. It said:
“Help me”
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