[X][Eagle Finale] Use speed-imbued vines to create either a ladder to climb up or a harness to drag yourself up on the back of the eagle without bring cut by the sharp golden feathers.
-[X] Multitask and try to get Kurt and Blossom out of the way of the diving eagle with the grass around them.
[X][Eagle Finale] Use speed-imbued vines to create either a ladder to climb up or a harness to drag yourself up on the back of the eagle without bring cut by the sharp golden feathers.
-[X] Multitask and try to get Kurt and Blossom out of the way of the diving eagle with the grass around them
Vote Tally : Fantasy Modern What is Fate? (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Quest) [Posts: 1898-1930] ##### NetTally 2.0.1
[x] Threaten to stab the Eagle in the chest
-[x] Try to "call it a draw or a checkmate"
-[x] Follow through only if you're sure the bird's not bluffing. And you're close to the ground. No. of Votes: 2
-[x] Imbue all the seeds you have on you with the Concept of Suppression and Speed
-[x] Grow them around the neck of the Eagle in a constricting noose. No. of Votes: 1
—————————————————————————————————————————————— Task: Eagle Finale
[x][Eagle Finale] Use speed-imbued vines to create either a ladder to climb up or a harness to drag yourself up on the back of the eagle without bring cut by the sharp golden feathers.
-[x] Multitask and try to get Kurt and Blossom out of the way of the diving eagle with the grass around them. No. of Votes: 7
[x][Eagle Finale] Throttle the chicken
-[x] Imbue all the seeds you have on you with the Concept of Suppression and Speed
-[x] Grow them around the neck of the Eagle in a constricting noose No. of Votes: 3
[x][Eagle Finale] Try to use the grass around Kurt and Blossom by infusing it with Speed to drag them out of the way of the diving eagle. No. of Votes: 1
[x][Eagle Finale] Throttle the chicken
-[x] Imbue all the seeds you have on you with the Concept of Suppression and Speed
-[x] Grow them around the neck of the Eagle in a constricting noose
-[x] Have some of your plants grab our weapon and use it on the Ultra Mega Chicken No. of Votes: 1
[7][Eagle Finale] Use speed-imbued vines to create either a ladder to climb up or a harness to drag yourself up on the back of the eagle without being cut by the sharp golden feathers.
-[7] Multitask and try to get Kurt and Blossom out of the way of the diving eagle with the grass around them.
You pull one hand away from the eagle's soft chest feathers and reach for your belt. You're not reaching for your war-scythe, you don't feel like you could do any significant damage to the eagle without seriously risking somebody's health. This early in your quest, that simply wasn't an option if you wanted to bring everybody home, or back to camp, safe. Instead, you grabbed your pouch of seeds. As fast as you could, you imbued them with the concept of speed even as you grew them. A thin, viny harness grew around the eagle with alarming speed.
At the same time, you couldn't climb onto it's back before it reached Blossom and Kurt. You might have spent a full summer training your body at camp, but there was only so much a ten-year-old could do, even a ten-year-old demigod. Even if you could, what would that do? Instead of making a failed attempt like that, you focused on spreading out your powers.
It was difficult to reach the grass underneath Blossom and Kurt. It wasn't the distance so much as the fact that you weren't touching the ground, you had to sort of throw your magic at them directly rather than moving it through the ground. You hadn't even realized you'd been using the ground as your conduit until now. As you're doing so, you hear more than see the bolt of lightning that the Eagle sends at your companions. Whatever ideas you had about the eagle not trying to kill you are thrown out the window.
You might not be able to judge the way it looks, but just the sound of it, and the flash you can see out of the corner of your eye suggest that it isn't one of the eagle's earlier "non-lethal" lightning bolts. You feel the grass around the dagger Kurt stabbed into the ground die as he dives out of the way, his other dagger discarded, the cord tied between them literally disintegrating. Kurt dives out of the way, so you focus your attention on Blossom, who is unable to move quite as quickly. The grass around her rises up and yanks her backward, out of the path of the eagle. Her crutches aren't so lucky, as she loses hold of her right one, her arm being occupied holding onto her pistol.
You hear a snap as the eagle's talons scrape the ground, cracking the left-behind crutch into two pieces you feel lying on separate parts of the grass.
Then, the eagle starts to climb again. The harness is fully grown, all that's left for you now is to climb it. You start to move. Careful not to let the exposed parts of your body scrape against the sharp talons, you climb onto what would roughly be described as the eagle's shoulder. At least, you climbed onto the part closest to its chest. With the size of this thing, you could fit several of yourself on its shoulder alone.
As you continue climbing, you feel the eagle's flight pattern shift. You don't know for sure what its reason is, but you have a guess. Your guess is that the test is to get onto the eagle's back.
You would say that the way that the eagle starts to fly erratically when you make progress supports your hypothesis, but you're a bit busy hanging on for dear life. You don't need to look down to confirm that a fall from this height would definitely end up in a gory half-blood pancake, so you don't. Instead, you focus on climbing, feeling very thankful for all those times you drilled yourself on the rock wall back at camp.
Unfortunately, even with you growing extra parts to the harness to try and prevent yourself from touching any of the eagle's razor-sharp feathers, the thrashing becomes too much for you. Small lacerations start to appear on your forearms and shins. They're truly not enough to cause you any true harm, but the sight of them, along with the bone-deep tiredness you feel from expending a significant amount of magic is deeply demoralizing.
For a few moments, you brace yourself against the thrashing eagle that's somehow remaining in the air. The sky around you twisting and turning in ways that make you focus only on the eagle itself. You feel a strong surge of hopelessness. The task in front of you feels insurmountable. Were you doomed from the start?
No.
You've already died once. What the hell have you got to lose? You're not gonna die because you gave up. If this damn eagle kills you, then you'll go out like a true demigod, doing something ill-thought-out and very lethal.
You feel the surge of motivation fueling your limbs as you climb further along your makeshift harness. You're pretty sure the eagle is flying loops now or something because you definitely can't tell which way is up.
You're not sure how much time passes, or how you managed to keep going, but when you pull yourself out of your fugue-state of pure determination, you find yourself sitting comfortably on the back of the eagle as it smooths out its flight path. You grow the harness around you some more, resting against the spot of soft feathers. You don't know why it's there, but it could fit two people comfortably, three if you squeeze using the harness. Maybe the eagle will give you a ride?
As the eagle descends, you get a bird's eye view of Kansas City. It's not really anything impressive when compared to New York, but it's certainly a sprawling city. You can even make out the park you were in and wow the damage is visible even from up here. You wonder how the mist will explain that.
The eagle lands surprisingly softly, and the last of the adrenaline works its way out of your system. You can practically feel your body deciding that now is a good time for rest, despite your knowledge that you are currently bleeding and sitting next to a lot of very sharp objects.
Fortunately, at that very moment, you're beaned with a plastic baggie. You aren't quite sluggish enough to drop it, but it does take a real effort to catch it. You're left holding the Ziploc bag with 6 golden squares of ambrosian and a plastic knife. Classy.
"How much of this am I supposed to eat?" you call down. The eagle is being surprisingly docile. You'd assume that you passed the test, but frankly, you're just too tired to care.
"I think about half a cube should be good," Kurt calls back.
You hook your legs into the harness and lean back onto the eagle's soft feathers as you carefully take out the knife and a single cube. Deliberately, you slice it in half, putting one half and the knife back into the bag. Then, you put the other half into your mouth.
It tastes like garlic bread, fresh out of the oven. Just like the way your mom used to make it. Your old mom.
Fuck.
You didn't need this right now, not when you're so emotionally raw from your most recent near-death experience. You let your head fall back onto a cushion of feathers.
You close your eyes.
A few tears drip down your cheeks.
You take a few moments to collect yourself.
Thankfully, if Blossom and Kurt saw, they don't mention what just transpired. You collect yourself. It feels like a combination of warmth and energy was just injected directly into your veins. The temptation to eat the other half of the cube is strong. You distract yourself by looking down at your companions. They appear to be prodding at the bottom of the harness. They've gathered up all your stuff as well as their own, from where it was dropped at the beginning of the fight. Kurt's even got some duct tape and taped together the two halves of Blossom's broken crutch. It's not perfect, but it'll do for now.
The eagle appears to be prodding at the harness with its beak. It doesn't look like it plans on snapping it. Yet, at least.
"So now what?" Blossom calls up to you.
"I think it'll give us a ride."
The eagle caws in a way that makes you suspect it said something rude in bird-speak, but it also doesn't sound like it's disagreeing with you per se.
Kurt ensures all three packs are strapped securely to himself and reaches for the bottom of the harness you've made.
The eagle makes a comically offended-sounding squawk and backs up.
"Umm…" Kurt says.
The eagle starts to flap its wings, gaining height from the ground. Once it gets a decent height into the air, it swoops down on Blossom and Kurt and plucks them right off the ground with its talons.
Judging from the terrified shrieking you hear below you, they're not hurt, though the experience is harrowing. You feel perfectly safe on the harness you're continuously reinforcing.
As the ground gets further away, you murmur a prayer to Demeter, thanking her for granting you the ability to overcome your trial. You would pray to Zeus as well, but you'd definitely struggle to sound sincere.
After what feels like half an hour of flying and a lot of shrieking from your companions, the eagle descends.
It drops Blossom and Kurt off at the bottom of a hill. Their landing doesn't seem rough, but it's not gentle either. Then, it lands next to them and starts pecking the harness. The message is pretty clear. You climb down, ensuring that you don't cut yourself on the feathers and that you've secured the bag of ambrosia.
When you get off, the eagle begins the process of pulling the harness away with its beak.
You rejoin Blossom and Kurt and take a look at your surroundings. The hill you're in front of is the only one for miles around and seems to be conspicuously in the middle of a wheat field. Looking at the fields stretching off into the horizon, you feel as though your guess about the "golden sea" was more correct than even you knew.
Examining the hill itself, you can see it's covered with all sorts of flowers. You could sit here all day just naming off the different kinds. Of course, that's just on the surface. When you reach for your, somewhat strained, magic, you can feel that the hill is laden heavily with it. The flowers seem to be suppressing something in the middle, and there's something else that you don't quite understand-"
BOOM!
The three of you watch on, half-terrified and half-shocked, as the eagle incinerates the flowers on the hill. All but one.
You try and feel with your magic what makes this one so special.
The feeling of Purity you get in response is so overwhelming that you barely notice the eagle flying off into the distance.
The three of you walk, almost in a trance, up to the crest of the hill, coming across the flower that survived. A white lily.
"Is this it?" Blossom breathes. Her voice is heavy with disbelief.
"I think it might be only part of it," Kurt replies. "More than one flower goes in a flower basket, right?" Neither of you answers the rhetorical question. "So what do-"
He cuts himself off and when Blossom reaches down and plucks the flower. You half expected her to go up in flames or something ridiculous, but nothing happens.
She turns and puts the flower in your hair. It feels like an almost exact mirror to what happened with Pear a year ago.
With the lily in your hair, you feel better, more somehow. No, purer.
Still, you can't afford to be too distracted. You can already see the sky beginning to darken as the sun dips closer to the horizon. Staying here, in a space so full of magic, with three demigods is just asking to get attacked by monsters. With the vantage point given to you by the hill, you look outwards. Both east and west, seem to have wheat fields that stretch on and on to the horizon. To the north, you can make out what looks to be some sort of farmhouse quite a ways away. To the south, you think you can see some trees, though they're even further away than the farmhouse.
You've gained the Lily of Purity
You've gained 5 Ability EXP. You may spend it now or save it for later.
[][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[][Ability EXP] Write Ability here.
[][Ability EXP] Save it for later.
You need to find a place to rest for the night.
[][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
[][Rest for the Weary] Head East, away from the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
[][Rest for the Weary] Head North, towards the farmhouse, maybe they'll let you sleep inside for a night.
[][Rest for the Weary] Head South, towards the forest, surely there's a nice concealed place you can sleep there.
ΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦ
Votes for the next chapter:
The Romans for sure if the quest makes it that far. I'd like to think it will, since so far it's been quite enjoyable, but you can never know what life throws at you. The Kane Chronicles and Egypt are a pretty big maybe. They don't tie in well to the Greek/Roman stuff since they're a spin-off, and even though I read them, I'm nowhere near as familiar with them as the ten books featuring Greek/Roman stuff.
I haven't read Trials of Apollo or Magnus Chase, so they won't be appearing in this quest at all. I just don't know anything about them.
Schedule:
Tomorrow: Tinker of Fiction
Wednesday: Wishing for Adventure
Thursday: Smite Quest
Friday: What is Fate? (Again)
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] dirt manipulation
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
Ooh, so that's what this line is about! Let me look up some Flower Language, real quick.
Edit: So, apparently roses are for Gratitude, Faith might be Iris or possibly blue Violet, Cheer could be Chrysantemum or Jasmine, or a few other options, really.
Your name is Oscar Woods, and you are frustrated with yourself.
No, that was a complete understatement. You were fucking pissed at your inability to protect your child from monsters, gods, notice something different in your god damned house, and-
Stop.
You promised to yourself to stop from thinking and brooding with what you can't control. You also had to consciously hold back cussing and showing your true worries and feelings in front of Sam whenever the unexpected occurred in his life.
Breath.
You fell back into your Ranger training in keeping your emotion under control. It was a process done numerous times, but recently you felt the stress building up regardless. It was making your attempts to keep calm harder, and you noticed that you were becoming more irate at your coworkers and others that did not deserve your frustration. You thought you understood the responsibility and and consequences of loving a goddess when you met your love glowing gold with a wreath made of golden wheat on her head as she held your son.
You never regretted your decision to love both the woman and your son as they were the most beautiful and precious persons in your life, but you never knew that your child would be this exceptional, this prone to attracting danger and unnatural. You thought you had a few years before you needed to let go of your child to that... that camp(a boot camp?).
At times, you felt grateful that your child was a genius who showed remarkable amount of maturity in his actions and words since it made taking care of him easier than you ever imagined. You read and heard from multiple books and other parents from your coworkers how children of your son's age was more akin to devil spawns, but aside from his mostly antisocial tendencies from his unnatural maturity and education making him unable to associate with his age group, peers, and classmates, Sam didn't cause you particular grief with his school life(you initially worried if his antisocial behavior was crippling, but Blossom proved that worry was unnecessary).
Really, his attempts to connect with you by joining you outdoors, hunting, trapping, and learning how to survive in the woods reassured that he loved you, and that you still had a lot to teach your genius of a son various things in life. You wished that he would be a bit less precocious in playing and befriending dryads(trees?) rather than humans, but with his mother being who she was, you accepted that their attraction to him was natural.
However, stalking Greek zombies and the kidnapping and attempted murder on your child by a vampire revealed to you a whole different aspect of single parenting a demigod. None of your researches in parenting revealed to you that your child would frequently face danger by monsters and worse entities from Greek legend, and even if Demeter explained to you the basic concepts of demigod rearing, you never intrinsically understood just how helpless you would be. The studies in child-rearing never revealed to you that your son would become something akin to a superhero with plant-based powers, able to grow plants from seeds in moments into lethal weapons. They never explained that your child would need to learn how to wield a lethal weapon(a motherfucking war scythe, which you can't even see clearly because of course it's made of magical metal) to slice up abominations that can kill adults as easily as an apex predator can.
You felt way out of your depth.
You weren't sure if you were supposed to feel better after sending your child to Camp Half-blood, but you supposed that Sam looked and sounded better and more lively after meeting other demigods like him. However, you had taken to reading Greek mythologies, and you hoped that Sam would make more friends there instead of enemies through his precocious behavior. For while demigods and heroes usually managed to overcome, trick, or kill monsters that killed common men by droves, they usually fell by the machinations born of jealousy or hatred of other demigods, heroes, and gods even more frequently. While Camp Half-blood may show Sam how to take care of himself, you felt that it was woefully inadequate in actually taking care of children as you learned more and more about the place.
You didn't know just how many demigods came from an abusive or neglectful family like Blossom did, but if what your son said about Hermes tent rang true, then the gods were equally neglectful on children that they didn't care about. You knew that a favored and exceptional child like Sam would be a great target of jealousy from other children, and you also knew you couldn't help your son, separated by a wall call Mist, which left a major part of your son's life and protection on factors you couldn't even notice.
So you prayed.
Staring at the moon on your porch, surrounded by plants that your son grew, you prayed to Demeter that your child would mix into the camp safely and make other friends that would care for him as much as, if not more than Blossom did. You prayed that your child would stay safe and wouldn't suffer any serious injuries to his body, spirit, and mind. You prayed that Sam would still remain as Sam even after experiencing surreal magical environment known as Camp Half-Blood. You prayed that your child was one of those few demigods that lived full and happy life and died of old age.
Your nightly silent prayer was a habit by this point. While you didn't know if these prayers would have any effect, it still let you have a peace of mind, believing that Demeter wouldn't ignore Sam.
As you stood up from the porch, a warm summer breeze caressed your skin. Trust me love, he will be fine.
?
For an instant, you felt as though someone had kissed you on your forehead, and whispered something to you, but shrugged off the feeling as a coincidence and returned back into your house.
________________________________________________
1020 words. The crossed out words are thoughts he's consciously trying to suppress.
AN: Ugh, it's been such a long time since I last wrote an omake. This took me far too long to pump out, and in the middle of it, I realized that maybe I should have separated it to two 500 word omakes for 6 points instead of 5 points, but too late. My muse demanded me to write a long one. We'll see if I write more later. @Monk Penguin, I would like to put all my omake points to war scythe skill
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] dirt manipulation
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] dirt manipulation
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
-[X] Ready protections in case whatever was sealed in the hill attacks. In particular, Purity seemed to work, so try to ward your sleeping place with that concept.
I'm tempted to learn about Dirt Manipulation (so versatile!) But focusing on Purity even if we don't get any immediate boons seems thematically important - we might not easily get the chance or the conditions necessary to cultivate it later on.
I'm thinking on how Purity might manifest as a power and things like purifying corruption and warding off monsters or evil comes to mind.. That, and growing divine plants.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
If we're allowed to get Purity, then we might want to spend this Quest's EXP earnings towards learning the flower concepts that we're supposed to nab. It wouldn't give the short-term gain that an Ability Up would, but, well, these things are supposed to be Quest Items. Eventually being able to grow them sounds pretty sweet.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] dirt manipulation
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
-[X] Ready protections in case whatever was sealed in the hill attacks. In particular, Purity seemed to work, so try to ward your sleeping place with that concept.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now.
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity.
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now.
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity.
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now.
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity.
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
-[X] Ready protections in case whatever was sealed in the hill attacks. In particular, Purity seemed to work, so try to ward your sleeping place with that concept.
Whatever ideas you had about the eagle not trying to kill you are thrown out the window.
You might not be able to judge the way it looks, but just the sound of it, and the flash you can see out of the corner of your eye suggest that it isn't one of the eagle's earlier "non-lethal" lightning bolts. You feel the grass around the dagger Kurt stabbed into the ground die as he dives out of the way, his other dagger discarded, the cord tied between them literally disintegrating.
That sounds like a barrow, with the magic and purity sealing whatever creature was buried within... and we probably just picked the flower holding the seal together.
[X][Ability EXP] Spend now
-[X][Ability EXP] Concept of Purity
[X][Rest for the Weary] Head West, towards the setting sun, find a place in the wheat-fields to rest.
-[X] Pray to your mother for rest and protection among the grain to be harvested.
-[X] Ready protections in case whatever was sealed in the hill attacks. In particular, Purity seemed to work, so try to ward your sleeping place with that concept.
Yeah, this concept of purity might be able to break curses. That's helpful with the Blossom situation.
Earthbending can wait.
