Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

1.03

Beauty could be found in every aspect of life -- in every glimpse of earth and milling people, in greenery and blues and browns, in buildings and nature, in beachfront. There were beautiful people and beautiful things, there were things to see wherever you go.

But Kassandra didn't have any time for sightseeing, not when she was in a bit of a rush.

Clarisse was waiting for her, it seemed, always, and gods did she hate when people waited on her.

(Kassandra had so much experience with waiting, had so much experience with that endless hopeful feeling that always crested with the sunset on the horizon that left you abandoned and lost in the dark unsure and longing for that feeling of being loved and wanted and desired.)

And they had a time limit, a crunch of the looming threat over their shoulder, chasing them faster than they could go urging them onward to save them. She could almost imagine the pleading, crying voices of her friends, of familiar faces that called for their help -- that begged and wondered where they were, wondered why they haven't come back yet to help. So many were depending on Clarisse and Kassandra by proxy, that she didn't know quite yet how she was going to turn that pressure into action and action into success.

She was the daughter of a god but that didn't mean she possessed almighty strength. She was the daughter of Apollo but that didn't mean that she knew all as though she was an oracle predicting possibilities of a future through the rhythmic spew of senseless words that only truly made sense in hindsight.

And sure she was trained and honed the skills that she had, but that didn't mean that she had the gods favour -- least of all her father -- so she wouldn't count on him for a single thing in her life. Certainly not when it came to the lives of others.

Kassandra knew enough of the gods that she knew that they would not intervene when it came to the safety of their children, especially when a prophecy complicated the entire affair.

In Maryland, stood on the bank of some river that likely connected to some beach or ocean, holding her bow in one hand, the other hovering over her arrows, as she waited for the moment something would go wrong and she would inevitably be overtaken by monsters since her luck was never that good.

She sent a silent prayer to Tyche, asking her to spare a little bit of luck to her and their cause.

It was after a little while when it was night and she was gazing up at the moon through the branches of trees, that she heard the chugga chug that she had from the Iris message with Clarisse. The steamship, an ironclad now that she saw it (something that she only knew was because of Ares kids and their interest in past battles and the Athena Cabin lessons) that came up was much older. It was dented, almost, the phantom touches of battered beatings that no longer fully appeared.

Stepping up to the edge of the bank, she waved a hand in greeting, grinning at the fact that she would be away from mosquitoes.

"You got here faster than I thought you would," Clarisse calls to her, stomping across the deck to the railing. "Get her on board!"

Beings move. Those weren't ghosts as she had first thought. They were zombies, it seems, souls of soldiers that probably owed something to Ares.

Once onboard, Clarisse clasped her hand in hers, pulling her in so that their shoulders bumped together. She winced slightly at the sheer mass of muscles and strength that Clarisse used, an unconscious thing that she was used to from roughhousing with her equally as muscled siblings.

The children of Ares were strong, all half-bloods were strong in body without much trying, but they were weight builder type of strong. They were the burly, heavy-lifter, dead-weights type that made their strikes deadly, each blow could decapitate and each attempt at defence would make your arms ring and buzz with the strain, and none of that strength limited their ability in a fight, limited their potential for speed and precision.