"Are you a warrior?" His mother's voice dripped with venom.
"Yes." Artemis clenched a hand under her cloak. A horrible dread had come over her, along with a possible vent for her rage and grief.
"Backroom…" The mother whispered, gingerly touching her bruised face. "Kill them both."
She stepped aside, and Artemis felt herself move forward, a horrible gut twisting emotion clawing its way into her heart. She paid no heed of the interior of the villa. The only thing that fueled her mind was the distant orange glow that shone past an open courtyard, and the muted moans of sexual pleasure.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
Her fingers drummed against her knee, the hunter's tunic she wore bunched up around the middle of her thighs. Artemis looked over her hunters, who all were watching her with rapt attention.
"I'm not proud of what happened next." Artemis admitted quietly, "I won't get into the details, but I killed Medeia and her lover. Medeia had taken a lover only a year after he went on campaign… his mother's letters never reached the army."
"My Lady…" Zoe started, before the veteran hunter closed her mouth, failing to find any words.
"Medeia committed adultery. A crime. But I killed her with an arrow through the heart out of rage, out of revenge. Not justice." Artemis sighed, leaning back against the hard bark of the oak tree. How easy it was to look back on that memory, the terror on Medeia's face as she had dispatched her male lover without blinking an eye. The blubbering false grief and pleas Medeia stuttered out before Artemis had silenced her quims, without even speaking as to why.
"Lady Artemis, I don't blame you for what you did, I don't think any of us do. Perseus was your love, and you treated his mother like family. I know that if Anna, or Phoebe, or Zoe, or any of us were harmed, I would seek vengeance… vengeance without justice." Christina spoke.
Artemis opened her eyes and watched carefully as Christina looked to each sister she named, before looking over to Artemis herself. A steady warmth trickled into her heart, as Christina smiled at her.
"Did you stay with Perseus's mother for long? I recall that you were absent from the hunt for at least… a year after Alexander died," Phoebe asked, her arm around Zoe's shoulders.
"I did, for a couple of months. We got along well. We had… one specific thing in common." Artemis replied. She felt that it was not the time to tell them when… when he had met his end. There was time for that later.
"Which was?" Anna asked.
"Her son." Artemis smoothed down her tunic, and smiled sadly at Anna's stricken expression.
"No need to be apologetic Anna. I loved his mother, and visited her often for many years. But I am getting ahead of myself, as I had last told you of my travels with him when I had reached the Macedonian encampment. We marched to the Cilcian Gate at sundown, both he and I in the vanguard of the column." Artemis felt the memories swirling within her as she spoke, "I was still angry, and on edge, but I had not killed any of Alexander's Scouts. I owe that to him, not myself…."
The once blinding white sun had now sunk into the distant mountains, seemingly swallowed by their enormity. Long threads of golden-orange light were all that remained, casting long shadows over the rocky soil and landscape. Yet here she stood. Mortal. Aging, watching her life slip away like sand in the wind. The desert land beyond this forest of trees was basked in reddish light, making the entire horizon a blood ridden mess of jagged rocks, ridges, and low-lying hills. Artemis paused for a brief second from her current task to take it all in. The beauty of Nature was something she didn't stop to look at in her daily, godly existence. Yet here she was. Mortal.
Although without her powers, Artemis could still feel some of her former strength within her. So close, so tantalizingly within her reach, but locked away. She longed to reach out and whisk herself away from this madness, her own personal prison, her own mind. The very thought infuriated her to no end, if only because she knew that Zeus had done this purposefully.
Her more innate powers, including her senses, had more usefulness, in her current form, which was a blessing. Zeus may be the King of the Gods, with powerful domains, but at least even he could not fully extinguish her immortality.
Using her senses, she had felt Apollo's gaze upon her throughout the day. His watchfulness could not hold her attentions, much less the dozens of Macedonian and Agrarian men who leered at her, as she practiced with her bow and arrows. Despite her appearances, she was deep in thought, brooding of a time after exile. She had always found brooding to the song of quivering bowstrings and the dull thuds of arrows hitting their marks to be the very best background music
The gift from her brother was nothing like her bow, that she no longer possessed, but it was a durable thing. Simple, but effective. Even though Apollo irked her, she knew that this simple gift was not a jibe or falsehood. In her state, the bow she had now was the extent of her abilities. Looking past the sleek black bow, Artemis breathed deeply, tendrils of hair blocking her vision, as she stared down a lone tree with a small plate sized target hung on its lowest branch. It didn't matter. She didn't need her godly strength for this.
Her actions came with thousands of years of experience. Drawing an arrow, ready and nocked in an instant. A cool, calm breath, before she arched her back, feeling the tensions and tendons in her muscles pulling the string back, letting her thumb gently touch her cheek. There was a twinge of resistance in her muscles, as the struggled to remain steady, which Artemis cursed darkly, finding mortality extraordinarily humiliating. But she could not change that, not now. Her target lay down her track of vision, the yellow grasses lit by the fire of the sun, swaying softly across from her. At that moment, her fingers slipped ever so carefully from the string.
Artemis blinked, and the next moment, her last arrow arced through the evening air, slamming into the wooden target next to twenty-three other tightly packed arrows. She sighed, before beginning her trek to retrieve her arrows, a walk she had made many times by now.
A couple of murmuring men from behind her distracted Artemis, pulling her out of her contemplation. Unfortunately, she couldn't make out the words, but she didn't doubt their intent.
'You are lucky Perseus, that I do not have my powers, or another arrow would have found a mark in a Macedonian throat.' Artemis thought darkly, running a hand through her auburn curls. She marched over to the target, careful to pull the arrows out by their points, to save as many as she could for reuse. She would not beg another archer for arrows, or tools, or any sort of assistance. It would not be a wise idea to owe a Macedonian, let alone a man. However, all her arrows were intact, every arrow slamming into the soft wooden target without impacting each other. At least her accuracy was sound. A dull throbbing in her shoulders and back told her that her constitution was less so.
"Cleoxene! It's almost time! We march for the Cilician Gate now! And you lot, get on your feet, move! MOVE!" A gruff voice called out, which Artemis instantly recognized as Perseus. She turned, only to catch the back of a swirling purple cloak and the back of Perseus's head, with his short black hair. The other Macedonian soldiers were all hurriedly packing up last minute supplies. Artemis ran a hand down one of her arrows in barely contained rage. Athena had gracefully given her this armor, but it was very form fitting; her tight bodice reminded her of that fact.
She finished slotting the rest of her arrows into her quiver, before throwing it back over her shoulder, tightly securing it to her back. The walk back to the command tent was a short distance, and she paid all the men she passed no mind, only searching for one purple cloaked man. She found him, talking with the officers once more. The command tent was down, and a half a dozen donkeys were mulling their time, all laden with contents too big to be carried and folded up.
Artemis glanced towards the west, where the sun had finally arced down over the horizon. The sky was still bright, but with every moment, it would get darker and darker. There was no fire, only the stars to guide them. Which meant that she would use the sky, like she had done with her huntresses for hundreds of years now.
The thought of her hunters, awaiting her return while they camped at Argos was a somber one. She had never left them for this long since the hunt's creation. They were safe at Argos, as Artemis knew. Hera wouldn't dare harm them, even with the slightly… unfriendly relationship Artemis shared with the Queen of the Gods.
It wasn't worth it to brood over that subject, she needed to find Perseus.
Fortunately, the Macedonian and Agrarian scouts were already forming ranks, and Artemis followed the chain until she set her eyes upon Perseus. He had moved away from the command tent and now stood at the head of the column, staring directly at her. He was leaning on a sturdy pole, giving her an amused expression.
For some reason, she didn't mind his gaze on her. Although that may have been because she knew with certainly that he didn't leer at her with a disgusting degree of lust in his eyes.
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