Born of the Gods

Chapter Five- Alive Again

I felt myself rising. Rising faster and faster. I could almost see. I could feel the coolness of the rocks and ground around me. I was rising more and more, farther each second. Sunlight pierced my vision. I began to feel again. To smell, and hear. The feeling was the worst. My back scraped against the ground as I was dragged by my feet. I heard leaves rustling and cracking as I passed over them. I heard footsteps breaking branches and crushing leaves as my pullers trekked through what seemed like a forest floor. I tried not to move,

I decided to risk a peek, opening them as little as I could. Suddenly my shoulder flared with pain and I yelled. So much for not moving. I began to twist and grab my shoulder. Whoever was pulling me dropped my legs and rushed over, kneeling at my side.

“Damn it, I just stopped the bleeding on this.” A voice complained.

“He’s awake, shut up!” another boy’s voice said. I couldn’t see clearly. My vision was blurry, and I could make out two shapes on either side of me. Tree branches seemed to be above and all around me. My eyesight began to get less and less foggy.

I moved my hand to my shoulder and felt warms sticky liquid. 

“Move your hand so I can patch you up,” one of them said and pushed my hand away. It passed in front of my face and I what I could see of it was red. I heard a rip that sounded like cloth. I looked over at my shoulder and saw and felt a bandage being wrapped around my shoulder, sealing in the blood that was seeping out of the two holes. 

“What happened to you, kid?” One asked.

“I…” I tried to said.

“Hey look, he can talk. Almost.” The other said.

They continued to wrap cloth around my shoulder until I could barely move it. I guess they figured the more cloth the better.

“Can you walk?” One asked, with a strange accent. I could see them clearly now. One was foreign looking. He was tall, and muscular with a large sword and shield strapped to his back. He wore a green tunic over a chain mail shirt. I could make out a tattoo of a bear's head. The sign of a northern Airguard noble.

“No, he can’t,” The other one said. He was slightly shorter and leaner. His arm had what looked like heiroglyphics on it. That, plus his darker skin, was a sign he was from the south, Ecryptia.

I tried to rise. I got to a squatting position and tried to get up. Instead I fell over on my hands and knees and threw up over the Ecryptian's shoes. Whoops.

“Shit, Kalrin. This is your fault.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” who I assumed was Kalrin said, “Go wipe it off in the grass.”

The Ecyrptian walked away to clean his shoes.

“Don’t worry about it. Tarik won’t stay mad for long. He usually doesn’t.” Kalrin said.

“Where am I?,” I managed to scrape out. My throat felt like someone force fed me sandpaper. 

“We're in Graceland still, about a hundred miles from Mount Olympus.” Kalrin said.

“Always wanted to climb Mount Olympus,” I mumbled, disoriented.

Kalrin looked at my strangely and asked, “You don’t know?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” he said quickly, "So, what happened to you? You near death when we found you."

I explained the hydra and my village, but intentionally left out my meeting with the two "gods."

"A village? We found you not too far from here and assumed you'd been bitten by some big snake," he said and began to think to himself, "You said it was a hydra? Like out of story books?" he asked, seemingly not believing me.