Warriors of Wisdom

Chapter Ten

It was a pretty quiet trip at first. "Hayden," I started to say, "where are we going anyway? Chiron said you helped interpret the lines."
   
"Well, the first line was pretty straight forward. The child of Athena shall reach the west. We're just going to keep riding west until we get a sign that we should land.
   
"Yeah Hayden, very straight forward indeed. We totally know where we're going." Alex commented sarcastically.
   
"Shut up, Alex," Hayden said with a smile.
   
"So that's it?" I asked, "we just keep on riding west until we find a sign to land?"
   
Hayden laughed. "Callisto, isn't that what I just said? Jee, for a child of Athena, you're not very smart."
   
"Shut up, Hayden," I said, but I couldn't help smiling. At least I knew that Hayden's sense of humor would help me get through this quest. We flew over who-knows-where for about an hour. Hayden already fell asleep on his horse. I started to close my eyes until Alex spoke up.
   
"Hey guys," he said, "is this enough of a sign for you?" We both woke up, and in front of us was a glittering trail of something. It pointed forward a little more, and after about a mile, it pointed straight down.
   
"I guess that's the sign," Hayden stated. "We should start landing there." Our horses must have understood. They picked up the speed and brought us to where the sky trail ended. Then, they shot downward, towards tall buildings and a field east of the city. The pegasi landed gracefully in the field, which luckily wasn't full of many people. We dismounted our trusty steeds.
   
"Well, that was our sign. Now, where are we?" Alex asked.
   
"Chicago, Illinois." I said.

"How do you know that already?" Hayden asked.

I pointed to a large billboard in the city that read, "Welcome to Chicago, Illinois!"

"See Hayden?" I started to say, "Even if you think us children of Athena aren't smart, at least we have some common sense."

"Shut up, Callisto," Hayden smiled.

"Well now we're all even," Alex complained, "And now that we're here, what do
we do now?

"I say we walk around Chicago until we see another sign of Asher. Maybe there
will be some other glittering trails here too." It was a hopeless idea, but I wanted to take any chances at finding Asher. We gathered our supplies, stationed the pegasi near a tree, and went on walking towards Chicago. It was beautiful. The skyscrapers could have torn open the sky. Cars raced past us. Pedestrians were either talking on the phone or trying to hold a million shopping bags. The smell of coffee and chocolate filled the air as we passed by multiple coffee shops.
   
"Alright guys," Hayden said, "We've been traveling for what, four hours? Six hours? Demigods have to eat, you know. Can we grab something? Maybe we can talk about strategy as well." I was hungry after the long trip. We stopped by a local fast food restaurant and ordered some food. We found a table and sat down to start discussing the plan.
   
"So, Miss Daughter of Athena," Hayden mumbled while chowing down a cheeseburger, "do you have a plan to save Asher?" I thought for a moment.
   
"Well, our best bet is to find someone or something that will give us a clue to where Asher is." I stated.

"And if we can't find anything?" Alex asked. He had a point.

"Then we'll keep on trying. I'm not losing a brother to some weird goddess." And it was true. I was going to find Asher, whatever it took.
   
"Hayden, what did the rest of the prophecy mean?" I questioned. I took out the notepad and showed the boys the prophecy.
   
"Alright, this might be wrong, and I hope it is, but the line, wade through the river of cursed and blessed, Chiron and I thought that would be one of the Underworld rivers. It's the only one that made sense." So me, being new to the demigod world, didn't know if this was good or bad. I learned a little bit about the Underworld in school, but we didn't go into it that much. But Alex probably knew this was bad news.
   
"Well, none of the Underworld rivers are good news. You're right. Let's hope it's not that," Alex mentioned. He looked at the notepad. "You will find what you seek where the enemy lies. That has to be Asher. He's the reason we're on this quest."
   
"Yeah, but the part about where the enemy lies," I said, "I may be new to this demigod stuff, but don't demigods have a lot of enemies? Monsters, gods, mortals. How are we supposed to figure out which enemy?"
   
"Good question," Hayden scratched his chin like he was a detective, "Maybe they're talking about some of Asher's personal memories. Do you think Marcus would hide Asher out here in Chicago? Asher was never a big fan of Marcus." I've seen Marcus at camp. I didn't think it was likely that a camper would take this much effort to hide a camper.
   
"It can't be that," I thought, "Let's not worry about that right now. We'll find this enemy when we do. Now that last line: And if all fails, the night shall rise. I don't know what this means. Alex?"
   
Alex shook his head. "Even I don't know what this means. Maybe it has to do with Artemis, goddess of the moon? Sorry guys, I'm stumped. And there aren't any interpretations in here either." We both glared at Hayden accusingly. He put his hands up in surrender.
   
"Hey, I'm sorry! I didn't get this either. Neither did Chiron." I found that strange. I always thought that Chiron was the kind of person that would know everything, especially with his age and experience.
   
"It's fine. We'll get it." In all honesty, I wasn't sure. We ate in silence for the next few minutes. After we were all done our food, I volunteered to throw away all of our trash. I gathered it all and brought to the trash can near the window when I saw something peculiar: there seemed to be creatures coming towards us, but from their distance I couldn't tell what they were. They were definitely not human, because I could see them walking on all fours. I started to make out distinct features: pointy ears, silver fur, fierce eyes that could pierce through ice. I dropped my tray. No one seemed to notice except for Hayden and Alex. They saw me staring out the window and rushed towards me.
   
"What?" Alex hollered. "What is it?" The boys looked outside and saw what I was so afraid about. The animals had gotten closer, and I wish they hadn't, because now I could tell what they were: wolves.
   
"Maybe they belong to Artemis?" Hayden asked, though he sounded nervous about it, like he knew it wasn't true. "What do we do? We can just run away. Wolves have an incredible sense of smell. And they're fast. No matter how far we run, they'll always catch up to us. We might have to fight back."
   
"Are you crazy?" I exclaimed. "They could kill us!"
   
"Well, it's worth a shot." Alex said. He stormed out the door towards the wolves, and Hayden followed behind after him. I had just enough time to think boys are dumb before I ran out the door after them.
   
I caught up to them. The wolves were standing in a semicircle in front of us, with their piercing eyes staring straight through us. They snarled and snapped, as if they were thinking about the best way to eat three helpless demigods were.
   
They were probably wild wolves, because there seemed to be no owner of these wolves around. And I don't think they would be living around here on the streets of Chicago. Alex drew his dagger. Hayden nocked a bow and was ready to shoot. He seemed ready to pull out his sword if he needed to. I pressed the owl on my ring, chanted the words, and it flew off of my ring finger with perfect ease. The ring started to transform, and it grew into a sword.  Then something happened that was even weirder than these wolves even showing up: the one in the front, probably the alpha, started talking.
   
"What a pleasure it is to see such pleasant demigods," he snarled. "So small, so frail, so, delectable." He licked his lips. He really was trying to eat us. "But enough talking my friends! Let the fun begin, and I think it would be best if we did this quickly, to, you know, get over the pain as quick as we can." He barked a few orders in whatever language wolves spoke, and the wolves started strutting towards us, licking their lips, getting ready to feast on some delicious demigod flesh.