The mystery of the last island

Chapter 32

Sophie stood on a hill, holding hands with Keefe on one side and Fitz on another.

She had just teleported the members of the prophecy and Sandor, because he was being stubborn. She never realized this, until teleporting so many people, that more the people she teleported, the more she felt tired.

Are you wondering how she knew where to teleport? (A/N: There goes the fourth wall) Well there is such a thing as reading minds, with permission, of course.

So, here they were, all of them standing in the middle of a forest, which trees so bushy, that no sunlight fell on the floor. It was a good forest, with fruit trees, soft grass and small bushes growing here and there. The sounds of birds singing, crickets chirping and frogs creaking filled the air.

But it didn't feel right. Something was off about the forest. Maybe it was the fact that it was home to monster shifters, or maybe it was something else, she didn't know. But it didn't feel like the warm and bubbly forests she had seen when she went camping with her human parents. 

Gods, her heart ached thinking of them.

'Get a grip on yourself, Sophie, she chided herself in her mind. Now is not the time.'

Y, W and J started walking towards somewhere and they followed.

As they walked, Sandor whispered slowly, so that the shifters didn't hear, "There is something wrong here. I can't smell any other shifter."

Annabeth frowned, "You can't?" Grizel, Coach Hedge and Tyson shook their heads. "But I checked in Dedalus' laptop. This is exactly how it looked."

"You can see that in Dedalus laptop?" Sophie asked.

"Yeah, apparently, he sent a drone here." Annabeth nodded, "The laptop also said, that this is a forest of confusion, so if someone were to come here, they would get lost forever, no matter how many Mark's you make on the trees."

"I wouldn't mind being lost here. Just look at all those lush trees with fruits." Piper said.

"Careful." Marella warned, "It's an enchanted forest. You can't trust anything here."

Everyone nodded, especially Sophie, who had read loads of stories about enchanted forests. They kept walking, being very careful that they do not lose the sight of the shifters. Sometime during the walk, Percy and Leo started a game of think-up-ridiculous-titles-of-the-gods, soon to be joined in by Keefe and Dex asking them about who the gods were.

So the game ended up as a session of recounting stories of gods and mythology in ridiculously funny way. Annabeth supplied the incident, Percy said the story, with everyone chipping in dialogues here and there, with Keefe doing mimicking of every character, in his very funny Keefe way.

Just when Keefe was saying, "Ah, I am the goddess of love and beauty, fear me, or I will smother you with glitter." In a high pitched voice, fanning his face with hands (by now everyone, even Sandor were in giggles ), they appeared in a clearing.

It was a circle of trees, with a lake in the middle. It had crystal clear water, with not a single ripple disturbing its surface.

What they saw, was not suspicious at all. But Wylie, who had been working on illusions, could see that the water didn't ripple, when the breeze was particularly high. Even Linh and Percy sensed that it wasn't really water, Linh more than Percy, because lake water didn't exaclty qualify as sea water.

The shifters looked back to see that all of them were here, and jumped into the lake.The lake didn't ripple, like most of them had expected to, or cause sloshing sounds. The shifters just passed in it, like it was thin air.