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chapter forty-nine ☄︎. *. ⋆
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AFTER HANK AND CHUCK, our lovely statue friends, dropped us on a ferry dock in San Fran, we decided our next best bet was to find Nereus, because Apollo had told Percy to. And hey, I wasn't about to be the one to question my father's morals.
The rest of us waited on a nearby dock while Nereus and Percy had this big tangle in the ocean, because, as Thalia had informed me while we watched Percy try to hold onto Nereus's slippery seal form, Nereus would do whatever he could to break out of Percy's grasp so he didn't have to answer any questions. Percy had to hold on tight, no matter how much Nereus put up a fight. And a fight, he gave; if Percy wasn't the son of Poseidon, I'd bet he wouldn't have been able to hold on as well as he did.
But finally, Nereus collapsed on the edge of the boat dock. He was gasping and heaving. As we all ran down the steps toward Percy, Nereus moaned, "Oh, how wonderful. An audience for my humiliation! The normal deal, I suppose? You'll let me go if I answer your question?"
"I've got more than one question," Percy said.
"Only one question per capture! That's the rule."
Percy looked to me. I lifted my shoulders in a helpless shrug. This wasn't good. We needed to find Artemis, and we needed to find out what the doomsday monster was. Percy and I also wanted to figure out where Annabeth was and if she was still alive... and I wanted to know what Percy had meant when we were on the canoe and he leaned in. How could Percy word all of that into one question?
But when we met eyes, I could tell we were both thinking the same thing; Annabeth would kill us if we saved her and didn't save Olympus.
"Alright, Nereus," Percy sighed, giving me an apprehensive glance. "Tell me where to find this terrible monster that could bring an end to the gods. The one Artemis was hunting."
The Old Man of the Sea smiled, showing off his mossy green teeth. "Oh, that's too easy," he said evilly. "He's right there."
Nereus pointed to the water at Percy's feet. Percy furrowed his brow and shared a look with the rest of us. "Where?" he asked.
"The deal is complete!" Nereus gloated. With a pop like a bubble, he turned into a goldfish and disappeared into the sea.
"He tricked us!" I said. "Gods, I can't believe we fell for it. That scaly son of—" Then, I caught sight of something that literally rendered me speechless for a second. "Um, what is that?"
"Moo!"
It was a cow. In the water. But not a cow, really—at least, not fully. It had the tail of a water-serpent. It had sad brown eyes and was nudging Percy's shoes.
"Ah, Bessie," he said, like this was a common occurence, "not now."
"Moo!"
Grover gasped. "He says his name isn't Bessie."
"You can understand him?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. But for some reason, that didn't surprise me that much.
Grover nodded. "It's a very old form of animal speech. But he says his name is the Ophiotaurus."
"The Ophi-what?"
"It means serpent bull in Greek," Thalia said. "But what's it doing here?"
"Moooooooo!"
"He says Percy is his protector," Grover announced. "And he's running from the bad people. He says they are close."
I was wondering how you got all that out of a single moooooo.
"Wait," I said, looking at Percy. "You know this cow?"
He seemed impatient, but he went on to tell us the story of how he'd saved Bessie from being tangled in some pollution and how Bessie'd been following him around for the entire quest. I was dumbstruck. He meant to tell us that a half-cow, half-fish had been following all of us for our entire quest, and none of us had noticed?
I couldn't believe it. "And you just forgot to tell us?"
"Well.." Percy shrugged. "Yeah."
"I am a fool," Zoë said suddenly. "I know this story! From the War of the Titans. My... my father told me this tale, thousands of years ago. This is the beast we are looking for."
"Bessie?" I looked down at the bull serpent. "But... he's too cute. He couldn't destroy the world."
"That is how we were wrong," Zoë said. "We've been anticipating a huge dangerous monster, but the Ophiotaurus does not bring down the gods that way. He must be sacrificed."
"MMMM," Bessie lowed.
"I don't think he likes the S-word," Grover said.
"How could anyone hurt him?" I said, as Percy scratched Bessie behind the ear and patted his head. "He's harmless."
Zoë nodded. "But there is power in killing innocence. Terrible power. The Fates ordained a prophecy eons ago, when this creature was born. They said that whoever killed the Ophiotaurus and sacrificed its entrails to fire would have the power to destroy the gods."
"MMMMMM!
"Um," Grover said. "Maybe we could avoid talking about entrails, too."
Thalia stared at the cow serpent with wonder. "The power to destroy the gods... how? I mean, what would happen?"
"No one knows," Zoë said. "The first time, during the Titan war, the Ophiotaurus was in fact slain by a giant ally of the Titans, but thy father, Zeus, sent an eagle to snatch the entrails away before they could be tossed into the fire. It was a close call. Now, after three thousand years, the Ophiotaurus is reborn."
Thalia sat down on the dock. She stretched out her hand. Bessie went right to her. Thalia placed her hand on his head. Bessie shivered.
Thalia's expression bothered me. She almost looked... hungry.
"We have to protect him," I reasoned with her. "If Luke gets hold of him—"
"Luke wouldn't hesitate," Thalia muttered. "The power to overthrow Olympus. That's... that's huge."
"You can say that again," Percy said. He hesitated, and I was pretty sure we were thinking the same thing: What if this was the decision?
I'd heard about the great prophecy. Of course I had—I'm the god of prophecy's daughter, for Apollo's sake. I knew it had to do with the child of one of the big three. When they turned eighteen, they would make a big decision; one that would determine if Olympus would rise or fall. Up until this summer, I—along with the entire rest of the camp—had thought the prophecy was referring to Percy, since he was the only known child of the big three. But then Thalia came back and complicated everything. She was closer to turning eighteen than Percy.
Two days away, in fact.
And if the prophecy was true to its word, Thalia would be making the moneymaker decision for Olympus's sake. Of course the prophecy didn't tell us what this decision was, but there was a good chance it was this: Sacrificing the Ophiotaurus and bringing its entrails to fire to gain power greater than the gods'.
So long story short, Thalia could either pass on killing Bessie, or sacrifice our cattle friend and cause the destruction of Olympus and everything it stands for.
