By The Angels (PJOxSH)

12

A chapter???? and it's not the 18th yet?? What is this????

When Lou awoke, it was cold, dark, and her arms burned and with righteous fury. Probably because she was chained up by her arms, strung too high to be able to properly kneel on the ground (stone, she noted) below her. Her ankle was sprained and she was covered in bruises she couldn't see, but felt clearly. At least there wasn't a gag in her mouth, but gags typically weren't something that monster used, preferring to hear their victims scream instead.

Lou shuffled about, testing and trying her chains, being as quiet as she possibly could in order to see how much movement she had available to her and to attempt to find a more comfortable position. Her sprained ankle ached as she stretched it out, testing to see if she could hit a wall with her foot from her current position. She kicked bars about a yard in front of her, but she couldn't feel the walls to her left and right.

Conclusion: she was currently stuck in a cell, chained up by her arms at an intentionally agonizing length, and the cell was long and narrow. Lou was also pretty certain it wasn't a run-of-the-mill monster either. She was starting to worry that she might've run herself into a corner. It was more likely than not that the very person who she had been targeting had pulled a quick one on her and trapped her instead.

Lou could barely remember the events leading up to her current imprisonment. Just a blur of her following faint clues and rumors of both the Shadow World and the Greek World. A cloaked man with a black-silver sword, following a string of murders. Murders which she came to figure out were all downworlders. She should have known better than to get involved in Downworld affairs.

Lou's knowledge of the Shadow World was limited, but not nonexistent. She was a daughter of magic after all, and she could easily claim to be a warlock or magician if she wanted to blend in. She had come across it a few times, particularly the Shadow Markets, prior to her Camp days, not only to earn some easy coin with her blossoming magic, but to hide from the greek monsters constantly at her own heels. They tended to stay away from the Shadow World as a whole, but that overlap existed, and she could find protection there. But not now. Now she had run head-long into danger.

Lou had screwed up. Maria was dead, and now she was quickly following in her footsteps.

A door was pushed open, letting fluorescent lights stream in through the crack, before a hand snacked inside and flicked on the light switch. The light seared into her eyes, bright white fluorescent bulbs lining the ceiling, burning her eyes. She let out a pained groan, attempting to tuck her head down to hide from the white, artificial lights. She struggled and rapidly blinked, trying to clear her blurred and unfocused vision.

And then he was there. Less than a meter away from where she was chained, on the opposite side of iron bars that had definitely seen better days. The hooded murdered. The one who skewered both Maria and her boyfriend. He was right there in front of her, examining her with sickening interest like she was a dissected fetal pig. She hadn't heard him enter or approach, much less notice him crouch down to her eye level.

His hair was a bright platinum blonde, and his eyes were like someone had shoved two pieces of coal into his sunken eye sockets. He would've made a child of Aphrodite envious if he wasn't already past the brink of insanity. His features were sharp, somewhere between that of a fox and a viper, with a feral, mad glint in his eyes that made her situation that much worse. Particularly because she could still see the horrifying, twisted intelligence he still possessed. His sword was visible on his back, but the dark cloak covered the rest of his body. But at the base of his neck, she spotted something she was vaguely familiar with, especially since she had recently seen two individuals decked out in similar runes.