“Never…Flaixor minthamya!” He screamed, his eyes closed and his fists clenched. Jay urged for the heat waves to flow through one thing and one thing only. The snake woman.
“Aaah,” she shrieked, loosening her grip and dropping Jay on the floor. He picked himself up and stood there urging more and more heat into her body. He reached out his hand and touched the snake woman’s forehead.
Silence surrounded him and the shrieking and hissing cries of the dying creature. He reached for her head, and…
She erupted into flames. Burning. Curling up and turning to ashes, before Jay’s eyes. The shrieking stopped and the ashes beside Jay got sucked into the tarmac beneath him.
He raised his head.
Hollie, Jordan, Broudie and Claire were all awestruck and so were the two remaining snake women, who didn’t even attempt to move and crush their victims.
Broudie sliced his sword into both snake women without even turning round. He pocketed his sword and then started clapping. They all joined in.
“That, my friend, is how to kill a dracaenae,” Broudie congratulated him, walking over and patting him on the back.
“Never mind that one, did you see his controlling spell, he flung the dracaenae back with its own weapon.” Jordan added.
“Was that a good start?”
“Was that a? That was awesome. Add some ninja moves in and it would be the best killing streak ever,” Claire declared.
“You were all great, I killed three, but Broudie killed four? That is awesome,” Jay told them.
“For Broudie that was alright, you should see him sometimes. Anyway, that was impressive. Wasn’t that your first kill?” Hollie questioned.
“Yeah, Claire killed the Panotii.”
“Well, now you can officially say you are saving the word against the monsters that are escaping Tartarus,” Jordan said. “Three cheers for our new official helper in the capturing of all the escaping monsters of Tartarus…Jay! Hip, hip.”
“Hooray.”
“Hip, Hip.”
“Hooray.”
“And hip hip.”
“Hooray.”
“Thanks an all that, but I am really tired, don’t know about you?” Jay hinted.
“Let’s just go inside and ask where the nearest hotel is,” Broudie suggested.
Half an hour later they were safe inside a nearby hotel, just about to enter separate rooms.
“This is our room, that’s yours. We will meet you at lunch, twelve ‘o’ clock.” Hollie and Claire strolled into their room and closed the door.
Meanwhile, Jordan was trying to open the door with the key. One of those stupid cards which only ever work if you put them in at a certain speed.
In the end he gave up.
“Misgardio.” There was a click and Jordan pushed open the door.
And that was the last Jay remembered, he must have been so sleepy that he fell asleep right there.
“Ugh,” Jay yawned stretching out his arms. His back was cold and stiff. He was lying on a hard surface.
“You up for some more battling, if we find it we’ll be going in today,” Jordan chirped.
Jay lifted himself up. He’d had a really good sleep for someone who’d slept on a laminate floor.
When he eventually stretched properly he had a quick shower with some spell-made shower gel, and got ready.
“So, maybe that heat wave spell is useful to ya now you can control it,” Broudie said.
“Yeah, oh and thanks for killing that dracaenae that was about to swing at me.”
“Oh it’s alright.” Broudie walked over to a bed, perched on the corner, and put on his shoes.
“Thanks for that fire blade as well. Hey, did you use your shield?” Jordan questioned.
“No, can’t wait to see if any of them enchantments and attachments are actually going to work in a real situation.” Jay remembered the nights he spent fixing and adding bits to his shield.
“Didn’t tell us you added anything did ya? You said you could look through it and that was it.” Broudie stared up at him.
“Nothing that great really.” Jay pictured the scene where he added the hidden grappling hook, and tied it inside with some shrinking spell in the weapon book.
“What sort of stuff?” Jordan stopped sorting and they both glared at him.
“You’ll have to wait and see.” Jay put his shoes on and pushed his shield and sword away, which he had removed the invisibility from that morning.
“Well, you certainly didn’t wait to even get to the bed. I mean, you collapsed in the hallway,” Broudie said.
“Yeah, tried to wake ya but you didn’t move.”
“I was tired.”
“Really? You didn‘t even look around at this place,” Jordan told him.
Jay realised that he actually hadn’t taken any notice to where they were. But where they were was a place you could certainly live in. The beds were nice and soft, all pure white and clean. Curtains were red, blocking the sunlight from shining through the one, and only, window in the room.
The walls were also white, slightly duller than the beds but still clean. There was a light wooden desk opposite the beds, which held a television and a lamp. Beside that were two comfy single sofas, and then another plain wooden chair sat along a short coffee table. The floor was laminate and cold (Jay would know).
“It’s well nice,” Jay admired.
“Yeah, did you take any notice to downstairs, y’know the reception and eating hall?” Broudie asked.
“No, me eyes were already closing when Hollie marched us up the stairs.”
“Oh well we best get a move on, Hollie said to meet at lunch, and it’s gone twelve.” Jordan checked his watch.
Jay looked over at it and recognised the same cloudy eye that he had on his shield.
Jay regretted not trying to put a spell on his shield to turn into a smaller object as now it was proving quite an awkward thing to carry around. That’d be a job for when he got back. If he got back that was.
The three boys checked the room for stuff that they might have left, and then they took the room card and strolled out of the dorm. They walked along the corridor and then down the steps.
The corridor was laid with burgundy carpet and the stairs were made of hard stone, white and black patterns marbled within it.
They got down to reception and handed their keys in. Then they turned to face the pub/café/restaurant. It was dark, but the people in there seemed to lighten the atmosphere.
“They’ll definitely be down by now, even at Hollie‘s standards, this is late, and Claire will make sure she has had enough time to get ready,” Broudie laughed.
“C’mon then.” Jay led Jordan and Broudie to the room. It was made of dark wood and it was set out quite like most English pubs. There was a bar and then loads of seats and tables. It was a bit of a mash up between a posh Greek spa restaurant and a typical English pub.
They first caught glance of Claire when they passed the sign for the toilets.
“Hi guys, nice sleep?” Claire questioned.
“If you count lying on a laminate floor nice, then yeah,” Jordan chuckled.
“Wasn’t there enough beds?” Claire sounded genuinely devastated.
“No, there was, but Jay didn’t really fancy a proper sleep,” Broudie giggled.
“Why didn’t you want a proper sleep, is everything ok?”
“Everything’s fine, it’s just when we got in I was really tired and couldn’t walk to the bed. So, I collapsed onto the floor and slept there.”
“Must have had a lovely sleep then.” Claire rolled her eyes and led them over to their table. Hollie was sat there with a cup of tea.
“Mornin’. Anybody else want a drink or anything to eat?” Hollie asked.
“Oo yeah I’m starving,” Broudie announced.
Hollie passed him the menu, which was once again written in Spanish. Broudie settled by looking at the pictures. Then when he was finished, Jay and Jord
an had a look as well.
“Ok, orders please.” Claire pretended to be a waitress, everyone else played with it,
“Oh, might I have the beef, rice, chips and salad thing. Obviously I cannot say it in Spanish,” Hollie told her, clapping her hands together and leaning forward in a sort of ‘darling, pass one the honey’ way.
“Churrasco. And you?” She moved to Jordan pretending to note down the orders.
“Could I have the soup, I seem to like most soups so I should like this one?” He spoke in a low, higher-class voice.
“Locro times two, one for me and one for you. Next?” Claire moved on to Jay.
“Please may I have the same as Hollie?”
“Yes that’s two Churrasco. And finally we have Broudie.” Claire stood there, her eyebrows lost up in her hair.
“Right, I shall have the pork thing with those potato cakes.” Broudie sat back in his chair to relax.
“Ok, that’s two Churrasco’s and two Locro’s, plus one fritada. Purse please.” Claire held out her hand and Hollie passed her the enchanted money bag.
She grasped it and strolled off to order.
“Fritoda? What in the name of Gaea is fritoda?” Hollie questioned.
“I think she likes her new talent.” They all looked over to the bar where Claire was stood. She was laughing with the bar men, she said something along the lines of ‘bla-bla-bla, bla bla-bla-bla’.
“So, anybody ready to get that jewel?” Broudie asked.
“I don’t think we’ll go in today, we got to fly over to the Galapagos Islands first. And then we’ll be there at night, which means we’ll all be tired and someone will get killed,” Hollie instructed, saying the last word a bit too casually.
“So what are we doing today, taking pictures of things like tourists?” Broudie seemed a bit downhearted.
“No, today we will find the entrance, camp out and then enter in the morning.”
Claire returned, a smile spread on her face.
“Alright?” Jordan questioned.
The answer wasn’t exactly what he was wanting. Something very Spanish sounding.
“Claire, we are English not Spanish. Wake up.” Hollie shook her head.
“Oh sorry, those guys are so funny. It’ll be ready in no time, here’s your purse.” Claire handed back the purse and sunk into her chair.
“Right.” Hollie pocketed her purse.
“So, does anybody know anything about this jewel?” Broudie asked.
“Nope,” Jay replied.
“Hol, anything? Seems as you are the oldest member here.”
“Nothing at all. I do reckon though, that this quest is strange. This quest has been so not planned out. We knew that Frederick was in France, somewhere above ground. But there are loads of places in France that are ‘above ground’, it was just a coincidence he was there, he could have been taking a trip to China, who knows,” Hollie explained.
“What d’you mean strange?” Jordan thought.
“Not strange, but it just doesn‘t feel so important, it feels like we‘re acting and that this jewel isn‘t that important. Well, it sounds like it is important, but it‘s not as hard as its been made out, if you know what I mean? We’ve never had a real quest before and then suddenly Athena throws out a quest that sounds so hard to complete. Not in a challenging way, but in an impossible to find sort of way. You’d think she would give us a small thing to do, as practise first,” Hollie said.
“I suppose, but maybe this is a little test, I mean Frederick was right there when we found him, and he gave us the position of the temple quite easily once Jay got through to him,” Claire said.
“So how did the Panotii know about Frederick and the temple? They knew all about it. The dracaenae were probably after Frederick as well, except the taxi driver phoned them up and told them that we were heading to the exact same place. He was probably some creature in disguise, and could tell by the way we reacted and spoke. Then they came to us to try and get the whereabouts of the temple out of us,” Hollie concluded.
“Well they weren’t very persuasive, they were more, and let’sss kills them,” Broudie mimicked.
“Or they were going to kill four of us and get it out of the last one, and then it would be harder for one of us to escape.”
“Well I think we’ve come to an end with that debate,” Claire stated.
“Yeah and anyway. I didn’t hear or see you click the gooble watch when we finished killing them dracaenae, did you?” Jay questioned.
“She must have, everyone’s moving around,” Jordan pondered.
“Actually I didn’t,” Hollie answered.
“What d’you mean you didn’t, you haven’t lost it have you?” Broudie started panicking.
“No, what I mean is, I didn’t turn it off purposely, I accidentally must have clicked it when I fell over,” Hollie said.
“So was this whilst we were fighting the dracaenae?” Jay asked.
“Yeah, hopefully nobody saw anything though. Amy and them’ll be wondering if that was us if they see it on the television,” Hollie replied.
“Aren’t they going to talk to more demi-gods?” Jay wondered curiously.
“No, not for that long,” Hollie said astounded how he could possibly think that.
“Gods no, it’s hard enough trying to be nice to them for a few minutes, but for two days!” Broudie huffed.
“But didn’t they go for a good few days when they went to the Snowdonia camp?”
“No, they probably did a bit of climbing and had a bit of fun too, us ring bearers don’t just hang out at camp y’know, we do go out,” Jordan said.
“This job is getting better and better.”
“Yeah, and it’s about to get even better. Dinners here,” Claire announced, two waiters walked in with plates balancing on their arms.
“Locro?” one asked.
Claire directed each dish as they were called out.
“Fritada?” the waiter held out a dish and Claire pointed towards Broudie, where the waiter placed the dish and swept off behind the bar again.
“Looks nice,” Jordan decided after taking a good look at his soup from different angles and smelling it, his nose nearly touching the orange concoction.
“Yeah this rice, chips and beef thing looks nice too,” Jay agreed.
“Forget how nice it looks, how about how nice it tastes.” Hollie shovelled down a mouth full of rice and a small slither of beef. She nodded in approval.
“Oo, what is this soup? It’s soup-er,” Jordan slurped.
“It’s Locro,” Claire answered, ignoring his humour.
They laughed.
“What? It is Locro?” Claire shrugged, gulping down her spoonful.
They finished off their lunch and set off again. Jay was getting used to travelling. He’d done loads of it ever since Jordan flew them to that dirt path when they first met. He kind of felt a little travel sick.
“Ok, do we know where we are going?” Broudie asked as they exited the hotel onto the path opposite the airport after they’d eaten their lunches.
“Yep, back into the airport and over to the islands,” Hollie answered.
“No more flying,” Broudie wined.
“You can stay here if you want,” Jordan suggested, “Do us all a big favour.”
“Offended!”
They headed back towards the airport.
It was when they were crossing the drop off area, that Jay felt the unusual sensation. He looked around and everything went into slow motion and the background noises were enveloped by a ferocious, muffled, buzzing sound.
Jay’s eyes went blurry as he turned to see what was going on. Coming to a stop in the middle of the road, Jay spotted roughly ten people crossing the road about twenty metres away from him. Most of them seemed quite similar, walking immaturely, but one of them was much taller than the others and wearing a nest of curly locks. He was wearing nothing on his top half but on his bottom half he wore…correction, his bottom
half wasn’t wearing anything either, it was just simply a mane of fur running from his waist to his…hooves?
Jay squinted hard, trying to work out and interpret what it was he was seeing. The weird thing was he had a strange feeling as if he should’ve known who the people were. All he could do was stare, and, by the looks of things, it seemed they reflected the same sea of startled expressions.
But then, before Jay could say anything, his whole body started churning and a flash of white engulfed his vision, sucking his thoughts and his automatic reactions from him. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was happening. ‘Come to think of it, what was I doing?’ Jay questioned himself as the light faded and the background noises returned. He felt like he’d just blinked, just closed his eyes for a second. He couldn’t remember what had just happened but he had a feeling something had. If that made any sense. It was as if he just blanked out.
Jay kept silent and just continued to walk behind the others, his thoughts about what had happened trailing away and eventually completely disappearing.
By the time they’d reached the ticket queue, he’d completely forgot the experience and he simply put the strange feeling as if something had happened down to some good old daydreaming, something he tended to do a lot.
“Nice to be here again,” Broudie continued to moan, breaking the silence which had hung over them for the past ten minutes.
“Great isn’t it.” Jay pretended to be really excited.
“Will we have to travel back by plane, or could we get back some other way?” Broudie asked.
“Well, unless you learn to teleport then no,” Hollie replied.
“Can you learn to teleport?” Jay questioned.
“You can try, but you need some sort of power to transport between places.”
“So it can be done.” Claire sounded interested in this subject, probably because it was much better than hearing Broudie wine.
“Yeah it can be. But you need some sort of permission, either off Hermes or another god I presume,” Hollie said.
“Permission?”
“Well, not really permission, but the power to do it. I mean it was a lot asking for part of their powers, and they weren’t happy with that. So they would probably try and blast you with a thunderbolt or something if you asked them to give you the power of teleportation.”
“What if I got it off Ares? I haven’t had my gift yet,” Broudie suggested.
“Doubt it. You’ll probably get an amazing sword of some sort.”
“So who else hasn’t had their gifts off their gods?” Jay asked.
“Oh well there’s you, Broudie, Jordan, Claire, Alice, Amy, Bobby, Liam and Philippa,” Hollie replied.
“Does it come with instructions of how to use it?” Jay questioned.
“No, it just floats down or is carried down to the selected person. Then they spend a good few days trying to work out what it does, like it took me ages before I found out what my gooble watch did,” Hollie said.
“So what gifts have people got so far?” Jay said.
“Oh, I have the gooble watch, Cameron has the flying shoes but he thinks they do something else as well, Lochlan has this drain band thing that, when touching a plant, can absorb the energy and use it to cure himself. Then finally there’s Amy, who has the purse that gives her what she wants. It’s not her gift off Athena though, it was our gift off Athena. A type of group present and, as you’ve seen already, it comes in quite handy.”
“What do you mean when you say Cameron think there’s something else to his gift?”
“Well he says he has a feeling, but I reckon his god has spoken to him and told him that’s not all that his gift does,” Hollie smiled.
They went through the same procedures as the ‘other million times’, according to Broudie. Thankfully, there were no more dreaded beeps at the luggage scanner, and they moved swiftly through into the departure lounge and ready to get on.
“Tame airlines, sounds good,” Broudie said.
“Any stops or is it a direct flight?” Jay asked.
“It takes thirty minutes to get to Guayaquil, where we stop for thirty minutes, then another one point five hours to get to Galapagos. We leave at three thirty and get to Galapagos at five ‘o’ clock. There is a time distance if you think I’ve done the calculations wrong,” Hollie said.
“Another stop, that means we might get attacked by another group of dracaenae,” Jordan moaned.
“Well if we arrive at five then we can have a quick scan of the island, have a proper meal, and then have a really good sleep. Then we get up really early in the morning and set off to this temple,” Hollie instructed.
“You got it all planned out, haven’t ya?” Jay said.
“Yeah, I like to think so.”
The speaker came on and the gate opened. Everyone piled into the queue and moved slowly into the tunnel. It was a much shorter tunnel and wasn’t very air tight, there were draughts sweeping in from every corner.
When they got into the plane they found out that they weren’t sitting near the back this time, but near the front.
“Change of scenery I suppose,” Broudie chirped.
“Half an hour to have another little sleep I think,” Jay declared and rolled over. He was near the window this time, sat next to Jordan, Broudie on the end.
Then he closed his eyes before the plane took off. He didn’t wake up at all through the thirty minutes and managed another well-deserved nap.
He awoke when they were about to descend.
“Had a nice nap?” Jordan asked.
“Ugh,” Jay yawned.
“Well here’s a sweet for the landing.” Jordan passed him another caramel sweet and he placed it in his mouth.
They landed with a bump and the seatbelt signs went off. Then they filed out of the plane into a sitting area where they had to wait another fifteen minutes whilst the other passengers arrived.
When they sat down, they got playing a game, a game where you had to go around in the circle saying a mythical creature that you knew. You couldn’t repeat any, and the person who couldn’t think of a creature went out. The game continued until one was left, the winner.
“Jay you should start off seems as you won’t know as many as us,” Hollie decided.
“Ok. The Panotii,” Jay started.
“Dracaenae.”
“Hydra.”
“Chimera.”
“Charybdis.”
“Eh, tree nymph.”
“Otherwise known as a dryad, eh, Geryon.”
“Orthus.”
“Scylla.”
The list went on and on, Jay was only in for three times round, but everyone else kept going. There were millions of different animals, at one time they had a rally of everything beginning with ‘hippa-’: Medusa, Euryale, Echidna, Stheno, Ladon, Automatons, Cerberus, centaurs, satyrs, Empusa, Laelaps, Hippocampi, Hippalectryon etc.
On and on. Then eventually everyone was out, apart from Hollie. She finished the game off by saying one last monster,
“And just for the record, Stymphalian birds.”
“Show off,” Claire wined.
“Thank you.”
“How about we try playing the game with gods and goddesses instead,” Jay suggested.
“Nah, we might as well crown Hollie the winner now,” Broudie told.
Then the speaker started announcing once again. They hurtled into the queue and re-joined their plane to the Galapagos Islands. This time when they got aboard, every seat was full up. There was no room.
“Another cheerful plane journey,” Broudie muttered as the safety announcements started.
“You know, I could probably beat a hostess in mastermind with the topic being safety announcements on plane journeys. The amount of times we’ve been on planes these past two days is ridiculous!” Jordan laughed.
“Yes, and please welcome our first contestant Jordan Quelch,” Broudie announced, Jay giving a round of applause.
&n
bsp; “You have two seconds to answer these questions, starting now.”
“Centre, middle and back,” Jordan said with a serious concentration face.
“And that’s it, one question answered.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
“You mind if I have another sleep?” Jay questioned.
“Blimming hell. Anybody’d think you had the ring of Hypnos.” Broudie shook his head.
Jay decided not to ask and get to sleep again for a good hour and a half. More flying, more sleep, more unenergetic situations. That only meant one thing…They were saving up for the temple.
Horse-fish.
(Chapter 11)