Pretty as a Picture::OPEN

[Aurora Milla Rosaria]

The sun beat blantly down upon the archery range, unsubdued by clouds and the sparse spattering of trees around the range. Many of the campers avoided this place, not out of lack of interest, but out of fear that, for some reason or another, Percy Jackson's Hellhound, Mrs. O'Leary, would show up andlick them to death in one fell swoop. Other campers had also befriended the hound, and she had started to get slightly protective of them. Oh the hazards of befriending deamons.

Sun glinted brightly off the tip of a steel arrowhead, which was attached to a shaft, notched in the bow of the one and only Aurora Rosaria. She had tuned out of her surroundings and was trying to use today to practice focusing a bit more. Lately, ADD ro not, she could not sit still, she could not be calm. She breathed in deeply, letting her lungs expand to their full size. She held the breath, counted to three, and then let her arrow fly, glinting, into the target some hundredfeet away. It hit slightly off center, but none the less it was a good shot. Silently, she reloaded her bow.

A twig snapping in the trees behind her made her freeze, and turn around, her bow loaded, though downcast. She couldn't see in the gloom, and she most definitle had not gone in the woods first to make sure her training area was safe. A lump rose in her throat. "... Hello?" She asked the trees quietly, taking half a sideways step towards the trees. She tried to swuint, looking in, in an attempt to see anything, but she couldn't. "... Mrs. O'Leary?"

Suddenly, Aurora was flat on her back/ Winded, she wheezed, trying to get some air back into her lungs and failing horribly. She couldn't breathe at all, and that was starting to make her panic. If she could breathe, she would be in hysterics. Spots danced before her eyes as she ran out of air. Aurora forced herself to cough, and luckily it cleared her lungs. She took a deep breath, and finally looked at the thing sitting on her chest. A tiny Cerberus pup, The air came back out of her lungs in a scream as she pushed it off her chest and back into the center of the range.

Where there were Cerberus babies, there was a Cerberus mommy. A deep, gutteral growl came out of the trees, ten feet from where she had been. She raised her bow once more, at the trees, ready to strike, should the mother Cerberus attack.

"Yip!" Aurora looked down at her side. The pup had followed her. Oh that was fantastic. She looked back at the trees, panic etched on her face.

"I didn't take him!" She yelled at the trees, her voice waivering. "He followed me! I swear!"

[Damien Timothy Creed]

Damien stepped in between Aurora and the hellhound. His eyes locked with the beast and he saw the power and fury that lay within, the monster was a byproduct of the underworld afterall, the reassuring shiver of death shuddered through him as he kept his gaze.
"Easy there," he said, knowing it could understand him. Technically as a son of Hades, the beast was bound to obey his commands, but it wouldn't exactly be smart to bet on that. "I don't think your bow is going to help much," he said to Aurora. The beast continued pacing them, its muscles hunched up. It was slightly confused by the presence of Damien, but otherwise it still had its eye on its offspring.
Why did it have to be a hellhound? Skeletons were easy, even ghosts would be less of a challenge, but hellhounds were as close to living as a dead creature got. It had thoughts, instincts, and some would say emotions, although that was debatable. To actively control them required great force of will, and banishing them back to the underworld would cost a great deal of energy, Damien wasn't sure if he was up to that, he felt his lungs cave in slightly and his breath grow shallow. His illness was getting worse every day. He frowned as he eyed the hellhound.