Jace Irons: The Shard of Chaos

Chapter Three: I Go On a Nature Walk

Briar gripped the armrests of his seat so hard, his knuckles were white.

"You alright?" I chuckled. The dude looked scared out of his wits. His head was pressed back into the headrest of his seat, eyes wide open. He turned towards me as a bead of sweat trickled down his temple.

"Huh? Me? Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" he said skittishly.

If I had known he was gonna be so scared of flying, I wouldn't have tried to convince him so hard. When I asked how we were gonna get to New York, he suggested we hike there. I asked why not fly? He said he had just enough money for two economy-class tickets. Briar told me that flying would be a terrible idea because the sky was Zeus's domain, and he didn't like the kids of other gods using his space. I convinced Briar to fly because if I was a son of Ares, which was likely, then that made me Zeus's grandson, meaning it was probably okay for me to fly.

"Come on, man," Briar pleaded. We don't even know who your godly parent is yet. How do we know you're Zeus's grandson?"

"Come on, bro," I replied. "I had a terrible childhood, and I've been a fighter my whole life. Sounds like an Ares schtick to me."

"Fine, fine, whatever!" Briar said. "I'm only agreeing to this because we're short on time. But when a bolt of lightning blasts us outta the sky, don't come cryin' to me."

We managed to buy two economy-class tickets to D.C., not New York. It was almost summer vacation, and a lot of flights were booked up by families going on trips for summer vacation. Sure, D.C. wasn't our first choice, but Briar said it would only be about a week-long walk to Camp Half Blood from there.

The plane landed, and Briar couldn't wait to get off that plane. He shuffled out of the gate into the D.C. airport and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Damn, are you really that afraid of flying?" I joked.

He wheeled around. "We are NOT doing that again, man, we almost got our asses fried up there!"

"Whaaat?" I said. "Come on, man it wasn't that bad."

"Did you not feel all that turbulence?" He asked, incredulous. "It smelled like ozone the entire time. Zeus was NOT happy we were flying."

I thought about it, and come to think of it, there was a lot of turbulence on that flight, and the air did smell, I don't know, electrical? Briar had said it was ozone, which is supposedly what you smell before a lightning strike happens where you are. Might've dodged a bullet there.

"Well good thing we're hiking the rest of the way." I said, looking around the airport. "How much money do you have left?"

"Like ten bucks."

"Gotcha. I got about 150."

"Good," Briar said nodding. "That should be enough to get you a bedroll and some MRE's."

We found a big, lit-up map of D.C. on a wall in the airport and located the nearest outdoor supply store. We walked there from the airport and bought me a sleeping bag, and some freeze-dried camping food. I was going to buy some for Briar too, but he said he already packed all his food. He opened up his backpack to show me a stash of crushed aluminum cans. I didn't question it. We walked to the edge of town, and set off on our journey.

When we got to the edge of town, Briar pulled a map of the east coast out of his vest pocket. There was a big red dot on the coast of Long Island. "Let's go," he said. We shouldered our packs and started on our journey. We walked along the road sometimes, and other times walked through the woods.