The Sacred Thievery

Chapter XXI: Strategy.

Bryan wasn't lying about the minerals. The water tasted pretty good. I drained an entire bottle in five seconds, and I swear there was no gag reflex.

Ava, as a squirrel, quickly climbed up to the brown bed and began feasting on her stash of acorns. Jesse lay Leroy on the black bed and took the deepest breath I'd ever seen her take.

When I'd finished my water, I sat against a wall and tried to clear everything that had happened so far out of my mind. Which did exactly the opposite of what I wanted it to do. The whole situation bounced right back to me, opening a fresh set of questions.

"I don't get it," I told Bryan. "What's going on here?"

Bryan sighed. "I'll start from the beginning. Plasmaiads, kind of like krasiads, live together. Ava and I were in a traveling group of plasmaiads. We had it well off. Our parents were like us, raven and squirrel, dad and mom. The system works like how animals evolve and repopulate, affected by the animal world. I can telepathically speak with ravens, summon one like I did with the dagger Chari killed, and even turn into one, but Ava got it better. She can climb perfectly and pardon me, but I'm not a major fan of raven food."

Jesse's look seemed to tell Bryan that his complaining was getting off track.

"But, yeah. When I was your age, they died. Completely obliterated by a pack of cynocephali, dog-headed men, when only our family were on scouting duty. My mom and I were the only bird nymphs, so we flew, and I carried Ava as a squirrel. Mom went back to carry Dad, and that's when one got her. It was horrible."

Sadness tinged his indirect glare. "She and Dad were both gone in two seconds flat. But even after two years, Ava's still worse hit than I am. Then it got worse. Not too long ago, the council got a visit from 'Heaven.' We still don't know who that was. They said they had an offer to join them in exchange for protection and popularity since we and the krasiads aren't well known. The council rejected. The krasiads Heaven asked did, too, except one."

"Chari," Jesse said coldly.

"Yes. And after that, she's responsible for the deaths of all of the plasmaiads in our group, and in plasmaiad terms it was quite a good one to be destroyed single-handed. But that was Heaven's orders. We don't even know all her powers. Now she intends on killing us, the final two."

"Which is where we are now," Jesse said. She looked up to the roof of the cavern. "How have we gotten into this situation?" I sympathized with how different this seemed from our former situation.

I stood up and tried to stretch. But then I was reminded of the backpack on my back and brought back down to the ground by its weight, even though it wasn't that much.

"So what now?" I ask. "We just wait her out so we can leave?"

"Timothy!" Jesse exclaimed, glancing at Bryan in an Excuse My Friend's Manners way. "We can't just leave them."

I wondered if this had to do with Bryan, but Jesse hadn't fallen for a single boy in thirteen years, so I couldn't be sure.

"Fine, sorry," I apologize. "But what do we do then? Find a way to kill her? She's killed all the other plasmaiads besides Bryan and Ava. I'm only mortal."

"Let's ambush her," Jesse said. "I have a ranged weapon, and Bryan can fly. We have a satyr and a squirrel nymph, so tracking her down shouldn't be too hard. We can defeat her with the element of surprise like they had when they ambushed us in the clearing."

I interject. "There's no way that would-"

"Let's do it!" I hear the muffled voice from above me, and find that Ava is now in her human form and agreeing over a mouthful of acorns. I figure that she and Jesse would get along "dandy" from her agreement.

Ava swallows the mass of food and jumps down from her bed and looked at Leroy, asleep on Bryan's bed. "Who's the satyr?" she asked her brother.

Jesse answers. "That's Leroy. My friend."

Ava's face turned red. "Oh, so are you guys like...a thing?"

Now Jesse's face turned red. "No!"

"Ava, Jesse," I start, "this isn't the time. Let's focus on the plan we're making."

"Right." Ava drains the red from her face with a single deep breath and spits out an acorn stem. "We already have one. We go with the blond girl's plan. We ambush her."

"No!" Bryan shouts along with me.

"Come on," Ava complains. "I've been suggesting that forever, and we finally do one well, but now we can't do it again? We would've defeated her if we didn't have to deal with these three." She looked at us. "No offense."

Now a new voice joins the party. "None taken. I agree."

We all turn to see Leroy smiling knowingly at us. Ava looked like she could hug him for either just looking good, agreeing with her, not taking offense at her potential insult, or for all three.

"See?" she says. "You're outvoted."

"No," he responds. "I promised myself I'd keep you safe. I won't have you die if that's what it takes to defeat Chari."

"No one mentioned me dy-"

"What if Timothy leads it?" Jesse blurts.

Ava goes through everyone whose name she knows and figures out that Timothy is me. "What do you mean?" She sizes me up. "He doesn't look like much. I'm almost two inches taller."

I'm about to argue about this when Jesse continued.

"Not really lead. He could just be bait. He'd come in with a forceful threat and challenge her or something. And then we'd back him up at his signal. We'd have an even better advantage."

Bryan ponders the idea of this distraction. I disagree within a second of hearing it. "I obj-"

But Bryan's mouth is faster. "Fine. Let's do it."

***

Jesse really needed a new definition of the word lead. But before I knew it, were out of the tunnel through the ladder that led us back to the entrance, but according to Ava, the whole thing was covered by Mist and we seemed to be walking past the tree. We began walking down the path and pretending to talk and admire our surroundings, which didn't get too hard to do.

Along the way, Jesse cut out some fabric from my altered Camp Half-Blood shirt with an arrow when we were all alone on a path. She did this because Chari put her hand on my shoulder, but I decided not to mention how she could've taken some of Leroy's hoodie if that was why she did it.

Then she gave the piece to Leroy and Ava, who were supposed to be our trackers. They did their job. At least, Leroy did. Ava just stared at him work seeming very impressed by his sniffing.

In under a minute of waiting, Leroy pointed and picked up the pace, Ava close behind. We followed him, which was hard. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and the path didn't stop him once. I figured that he had some good senses, being half-goat, but jeez.

My impressed thought faded almost instantly when Leroy pointed us to our destination in the middle of a wider path.

We'd spent five minutes running towards a grape tree plant.