You Stoll my heart - A Tratie Story

Chapter 13

Travis

Katie was talking about something, but I stopped listening when I noticed something big and black a little farther from us. Once it came out of the shadows, I instantly recognized the monster. It was hellhound. The thing was sniffing the floor, probably following our sent. It hadn't noticed us yet, but that was soon going to change if Katie kept talking this loud. "Uhm Kates, maybe you should shut up." I pulled her away, making it harder for the hellhound to see us. "Shut up? You can't tell me to shut up! I-" I covered her mouth with my hand to stop her from making any other noise. Once I turned her around her eyes widened. I pulled my hand away.

"Oh my gods Travis that's a hellhound," Katie whispered. "Really? I hadn't noticed." She rolled her eyes at my sarcasm. "Do you have any weapons with you?" I asked her. "Only my dagger, and I really don't feel like getting close to that thing." She cursed under her breath. "What about your storage? Please tell me you have something in there." "I have things in there, but they're not exactly weapons." "Are you serious right now? We're demigods. We get attacked. That's basically our life and you're telling me you're not prepared for a situation like this? Even I have a bow and arrow in my locker!" She wanted to scream at me, but needed to keep her voice down which made her look like an angry chinchilla. But I told myself we needed to focus on more important things right now.

"Let's get to our lockers. I may not have actual weapons but I have lots of things to attack him with," I told Katie. She raised her eyebrows. "Isn't that like the definition of weapons?" I just shrugged. Katie sighed. "Fine, you go first. I'll cover your back." I was about to ask with what when Katie pulled a sword out of her boots. It wasn't that long, since it needed to fit in a boot that stopped a little under her knee, but that didn't mean it wasn't impressing. "Why didn't you mention you had a sword?" I looked at her in awe. "You didn't ask. Besides, it may be better than a dagger but this is still way too short to fight a hellhound with. I need my bow. Now get going!" I didn't realize I was still staring at her. I shook my head to get out of the daze and went into the direction of the lockers. Then I stopped, making Katie bump into me from behind. "Stoll what are you doing? This is not the time for acting stupid." I ignored Katie's remark. "What do we do? Come back with our weapons or have it follow us?" I asked her. "We'll have to come back. We can't risk people at their lockers seeing it," she reasoned. "Yes, but if we leave the hellhound here we have no idea where it'd go. We can't afford to lose it. Besides, with any luck people are still watching my masterpiece." Katie sighed. "I hate it when you're right. Fine, let's deliberately have a hellhound follow us. Should be fun." Katie threw something at the monster to catch its attention and we got moving again. This time followed by a hellish beast that could eat us at any time.

Teensy little woosh

"You have to crawl through it," I told Katie. "Wait, why me? It's your storage. Well technically it's the school's storage but that still doesn't explain why I have to do it." "You're smaller and less likely to get stuck," I explained, thinking about a few days ago. "Speaking from experience?" "Is that really important right now? We don't have time to talk about this." She rolled her eyes. "Fine, hold my bow." Katie pushed the thing into my arms and sat on her knees to crawl through the locker.

"What do you want me to get?" Katie asked once she was inside the room. "There should be a catapult laying around somewhere," I called to her. "Travis this room is a mess how am I ever going to find something as small as- Never mind I found it. Why is it this big?" "So it can shoot big things of course." "What are you gonna shoot with? Horses?" "Can you keep the criticism for another time please." I mean a hellhound chasing us was a pretty good excuse to get out off explaining why I did things. "How the Hades am I supposed to get this thing out of here? It's enormous. Don't you have something handier? We really don't have time for this." "Yes horrific beast following us and what not. Just fold it," I called to her. "Why the hell is it foldable?" "So it could fit! Dam it Kates we're being followed by a hellhound keep the stupid questions for later!" I checked behind me for the monster, but it hadn't caught up with us yet for some reason. Man, that thing was slow. "I'm coming, I'm coming." Katie climbed out of the locker. Right on time, because I saw the monster coming around the corner. Finally, I was almost beginning to worry.

I helped Katie up. She gave me my catapult and I returned her bow. "Now let's get this thing outside," Katie said. She took an arrow and placed it on her bow. "Prepare to run," she told me while pulling the bowstring back. When she let go, it landed right in the hellhound's eye. The monster howled in pain and began running in our direction. We turned on our feet and sprinted through the nearest doors. Unfortunately, the hellhound was a little too big for them and took out half the wall while following us outside. The loud noise made several people look up, but they didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary thanks to the Mist and went back to whatever they were doing before.

We ran into the forest. Katie made roots come up and branches come down. The hellhound stumbled, getting hit by several trees at the same time. Meanwhile I'd set up my catapult and was firing at it. "Travis we have to get up close, my arrows aren't enough to kill it. Can you distract it?" She hung her bow over her shoulder and got out her sword again. I started shouting to get the monster's attention. It worked instantly. The hellhound turned its attention away from Katie, not even suspecting this was an ambush. They might be big, but hellhounds really weren't the smartest monsters.

I tried to focus on distracting the beast in front of me and not on Katie sneaking behind its back, directly in the kill-zone. She was almost there, but I was running out of missiles. I forced myself not to look in her direction too much, or I'd give away her position. "Hey Ugly! Take this," I screamed at the monster, shooting a rock at it. It didn't do much, besides annoying the hellhound. That's when I made the mistake of looking at Katie, alerting the monster. She had her sword ready to stab the beast and sent it back to Tartarus, but a huge paw nocked her aside. I threw my dagger at the hellhound and it focused back on me, giving Katie an opening to stab it with her last strength. The monster turned to dust and Katie passed out. I ran to her side to asses the damage. She probably had a concussion from getting knocked to the ground, but there were no major slashes, thank the gods. I told myself it would be okay and gave her some ambrosia I had in my pocket. I picked her up and carried her to the nurse's office.