September 2nd, 1907, Morning

I was woken by a soft horn, but it didn't come from outside the tent. Eryth was standing next to me, slowly blowing a hunting horn for it not to be so loud.

"You have deep sleep, huh?" She chuckled, but she wasn't wrong.

"Do you always wake up the hunters like that?" I complained, stretching.

"No, but you're a special case because nothing else seemed to wake you up." Peggy chuckled, throwing behind herself some small bells. "We needed to get up early to start moving. Artemis says a phoenix was seen south from here, and she wants to hunt it before it gets too old and rebirths."

This time, phoenix was pronounced differently from Phoenix. The former was pronounced 'Fee-Nyx', while the latter 'Fee-Nee-Kah'. That hurt my still-tired brain.

"South Texas?" I asked, remembering a bit from the conversation I had listened to the previous night.

"I didn't think you'd know that. Did you get geography classes from Elisa?" Peggy gently punched my shoulder."Anyways, get your dagger, coat, and bow and we'll get moving.

I stood up and got my things, but I couldn't find my bow anywhere.

"Eryth, do you know where my bow is? The small, wooden one I was given yesterday. I can't find it."

"You mean the one that is enchanted to appear whenever you need it?" Eryth grinned and extended her arm. From what seemed like thin air, silver light gathered and the bow materialized.

I smiled. I loved that trick, but had never thought I could do it myself.

I extended my arm and concentrated. I need it… to test if I can actually do it. Is that enough of a need?

The bow weighed nothing, so it took me a long time to realize it had finally appeared. It was silver, continuing the shining lining around myself, and had the pressed fingers of Artemis decorating its handle from when she guided my bow to kill Lycaon. I smiled at that thought.

"Come on, don't want to get trapped inside the bag." Eryth hurried outside, followed by Peggy.

"Inside what?" I rushed behind them.

"Everyone out?" Kassandra shouted inside the tent once it was empty. "Actaeon.

The tent Peggy, Eryth, I, and so many other hunters had just been sleeping in folded into itself in a matter of seconds. In less than a minute, a tent which could hold around 10 teen girls laid on their backs turned to the size of a backpack. The other tents did the same. Kass and two other girls picked the bags. I assumed Naomi and Sipriotes, the girls from the previous night.

"Kalila, let's go. We need to stick together. We don't want any more unnecessary problems to arrive, alright?" Peggy pulled from my hand, and we walked along the other hunters, using the sun to guide ourselves south.

Noon

I soon realized the sun was over our heads, not perfectly, but enough to notice it was supposed to be. This didn't seem to disorientate any huntress, and I found comfort in that fact. I, too, confidently walked on, guided by the compass in my mind.

"Kalila! You never left the house, right? So does that mean you never left Texas?" Peggy stuck next to me to talk. She chuckled a bit, like the idea of not moving constantly was odd to her. "My father was a historian, and my mother, though she couldn't really do it, liked to dig up old artifacts, so we moved around often. I was surprised when Elisa decided to settle."

I had no problems with Peggy, but her mentioning her parents made me temporarily dry.

"Yes well, my father is an absent god and my mother... If only I had an idea, don't you think?"

The hunters definitely didn't understand what wanting to be alone was. Always working in a group seemed to make them seek out the lonely to include them. A good act performed in the wrong ways, sometimes people wanted to be alone.

"Well, just remember you don't need your parents. You got this far on your own."

As Peggy spoke, I felt my hair being touched. I turned only to find Eryth trying to make a braid out of my hair.

"We could stop with the family drama," She sighed with a grin. "We'll be together for a long time, so it might be better to be friendly," Eryth messed up my hair again, undoing her work.

"Everyone, we'll make a shadow trip with the daughters of Hades. Hold your things tight and make a round." Lieutenant spoke with seriousness constantly, as if everything was a matter of life and death.

I didn't know what that meant, but I placed myself between Eryth, to my right, and Peggy, to my left. Eryth took the hand of Kassandra, who took the hand of another hunter. Peggy took the hand of Sipiriotes, the girl who had slept next to me the previous night, and she took the hand of a pale hunter that I didn't remember seeing. If you weren't too careful you could lose her between the shadows of the trees. The huntress had little to no colour of her own to display. Suddenly, from her hands erupted a wave of shadow which turned all of our bodies into darkness.

In that moment, I realised I enjoyed having a physical body which was not made out of shadow.