( Allen POV )
Noon, Olympian Army
He couldn't stop the tremble of his knee as he looked down at his hands caked in dried blood, his breathing deep and slow as he tried to calm himself.
He'd just gotten back from making another round checking his division after being up all night helping bring in some of the injured demigods left of Athena's Vanguard to Apollo's med-tent, the last being a demigoddess that barely missed being crushed by a falling chariot. Her left leg hadn't been as lucky and Allen honestly wasn't sure if the limb could be saved.
With a grimace he shook his head as he did away with the thought, instead trying to focus on his immediate surroundings. The panicky murmurs and sound of pacing, scratching, and shuffling around him did little to help his nerves. His deep grey eyes shifted as he heard a muttered curse, watching as one Clarisse La Rue was gathering a dropped shell for her modified Desert Eagle.
Listening and now watching as the veteran demigoddess endlessly unload and reload the clip, at times popping out the rounds to check them before replacing them was driving the demigod mad at this point.
A whisper in the back of his head just wanted him to get up, grab the damned thing from her hands, and smack her with it. He wasn't about to indulge though, not with the seething rage within her eyes, the blood caking some of her hair only making her look near rabid. Last thing he needed was to give Clarisse a focus for her own agitation.
So instead he tore his eyes off her and looked around, watching as other demigods and the mortal commanders of each division sat or paced near their spots within the large table centered in the command tent. At the head of the table was the spot for the gods to sit, some still not being present and the reason the meeting wasn't underway. Those that were present weren't doing much better than the mortals, many shifting in their seats and looking around as if they expected an attack to come from any shadow, almost non-existent as they were.
He glanced around the near absurd number of lights present within the large tent. Magical torches hung from above while modified mortal lamps were set at foot level, bathing everything in some form of light and minimizing the possible shadows. It was all done in an effort to cut off points for the primordial to possibly spy on them along with a barrier so densely powered that even Allen could sense it encompassing the tent and formed solely for preventing the 'extended gaze' of divine beings.
He'd asked about it once and his sister had explained it to him as a way gods could directly see through the substance or objects/beings connected and associated with their domains. Of course, given the nature of domains and the connections formed, the barrier couldn't truly cut a god off but was more suited to 'scrambling the signal' and making spying far harder.
Of course the present gods were also constantly monitoring their surroundings, searching for any presence not associated with them but so far everything has come off as clean within the camp. The surrounding forest on the other hand, well, from the mutterings going around the gods couldn't detect anything but the presence of Rhea saturating every tree and the earth around them.
'And as if we couldn't get more bad news,' he thought with a heavy snort as his gaze fell on the table before him.
Knowledge of Rhea's presence and her ascended status spread like wildfire moments after the attacking primordial pulled back and the army somewhat moved past the initial shock of Artemis' death. Though her abilities beyond direct combat couldn't be confirmed and Hera wasn't exactly chatty about her thrashing at the hands of her former mother so no one dared ask.
The attack had basically shot an arrow through the knee of the collective army. Over a hundred demigods simply vanishing, most assumed dead even if Allen suspected more along the lines of kidnapping after having had the primordial offer for sanctuary confirmed by his sister. After all many of those taken were in fact part of Athena's Vanguard and his siblings along with many young demigods that he knew didn't want to fight in this war to begin with.
If he were colder by nature he'd say the attack was somewhat of a failure in some aspects due to who they targeted for their kidnappings since they took the younger, weaker, and less threatening demigods. An ambush like last night would have far more devastating effects if they'd taken/killed more of the stronger and experienced demigods, especially the veterans, and left the young ones to incite more panic.
But, even if dead or not, the effect of last night's attack was chokingly palpable. After counting the MIA demigods, another hundred or so were unquestionably dead thanks to the bodies left. Allen needed only close his eyes and the image of Craceus being pulled apart by those branches would appear. Shivering he shoved that memory away as quickly as it came, his mind focusing on the reports of the night instead.
Though figures were still being determined and since no one wanted to risk moving into the forest surrounding them beyond the clearing the closest estimates were about some 200 to possibly 300 casualties within demigod ranks alone. Of those loses, the majority was dealt to three divisions; Athena's Vanguard, Hera's Escort mainly consisting of Amazons, and Artemis' Hunt. While Allen assumed a large number of those from his mother's division were thanks to being the rescue/kidnapping of the demigods given the lack of bodies, the other two divisions suffered a far grimmer fate.
Artemis' Hunt was gone.
At least half of Artemis' odd hundred or so hunters had been butchered with huntresses cut to pieces, bodies broken, and left as mauled corpses. The cleanup was sickening to say the least and most the demigods doing the recovering couldn't even sleep or eat afterwards, himself included. He could only pray that his three sisters in the Hunt had been taken since their bodies hadn't been found. The rest of the members left were either those that had been routed or left over after Percy took Artemis away to fight.
Allen wondered if any of those girls would join other divisions or even think of fighting again after last night. Following the Hunt's complete lose was Hera's Escort, a group mainly formed of Amazons and some demigods selected by Hera for their skill … and bloodthirst. It wasn't surprising the few males in that group had been sons of Ares and extremely vocal towards attacking soon, something that Hera had been encouraging.
If anything their casualties had been the highest among any division and unlike much of the demigods declared MIA, the losses to Hera's division were decidedly KIA. And most of those loses could be attested to the battle between Rhea and Hera, the clash of the two goddesses having mulched any mortal trying to interfere. Of course Hera's Amazons tried to back their patron as much as they could, even going as far as throwing themselves into danger just to injure the primordial.
It did little good from what Allen had seen later on, with Rhea only sporting light injuries while Hera had a shattered arm, broken armor, and lost a good chunk of some of her best Amazons. Her second in command, Hylla, had been furious as she led those recovery efforts while ignoring her own broken foot and limp after having taken a counter from Rhea and dodging the worst of the hit. At least, that was assuming Rhea had been aiming higher up and Hylla escaped a possibly fatal hit to her body.
As for the last bit of casualties, the loses had been rather spread out through other divisions but, as if to add more salt to the wound, those casualties had been more along the lines of friendly fire and collateral. Several demigods were found trampled in the confusion by Party Ponies, some hit and crushed when the chariots of the minor gods were blasted out of the skies, and some had been caught near explosive, Styx-fire rounds fired by panicking demigods trying to take out the ambushing wolves.
"What a mess," he murmured under his breathe before his attention was caught as someone sat in the chair next to him.
His eyes met intense gaze of the only living praetor, Reyna, her light brown eyes narrowed as she sat stiffly, her helm held under one arm. He saw her glance down to his bloody hands, her eyes softening for just a moment before she nodded slightly and looked towards the table while muttering, "Indeed."
He followed her line of sight just as the tent flap opened and Hylla along with a near look-alike to Reyna to the point Allen could have mistaken her for the third, eldest Ramirez-Arellano sister.
He watched as Bellona walked in, her own helm and most of her armor gone save for her dirty breastplate covered in scratches and one cut that looked like it almost made it through. The goddess also had several bandages wrapped around her left arm, several splotches of gold appearing underneath it along with the large bruise over her left eye.
Hylla wasn't much better than her mother, sporting numerous cuts and without the breastplate showing her shirt caked in blood. Most worryingly of all was the fact that she was more or less hobbling in with a crutch under her right arm, her right leg from the middle of the shin down covered in thick wrappings that even now looked to be gaining a red coloration. Rumor was that Hylla managed to rush and slice into Rhea's thigh before the winged goddess gave a wild swing back at her just as the demigoddess tried to pull back.
The glancing blow had apparently crushed the thin layers of bronze guarding Hylla's ankle behind it. It was only sheer coincidence that Hera attacked the goddess moments after Hylla, the collision knocking her away before she could finish the downed Amazon queen.
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