Poseidon's Daughter; A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

Jail Break

Y/n's POV

The left tunnel led us straight for what felt like forever, and at the end of it, a huge boulder was blocking out way. Behind us, I heard heavy breathing and someone dragging their feet. Someone not human. Tyson slammed his shoulder against the boulder, pushing it free, and as soon as we were all into the next room, he heaved the rock back into place, stopping whatever was chasing us from getting to the room.

"Good," Percy breathed out. "We trapped it."

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover opposed. It was then that I noticed we were in a square cement room, and the wall opposite of us was covered in metal bars.

"What in Hades?" Annabeth murmured and tugged on the bars, which didn't budge.

"Guys, look," I direct and point through the bars. There were rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard: at least three stories of metal doors and catwalks. "A prison. Hey Tyson? Maybe you can-"

"Shh!" Grover hissed. "Listen." Above us, someone was sobbing, and the noise echoed through the building. There was another voice too. This one was much raspier, and they were muttering something in a language I had never heard before.

"What's that language?" Percy whispered.

"Can't be," Tyson mumbled and pried the bars on our cell door apart so that he could slip through. Even though we yelled for him to stop, he didn't, so we had no choice but to follow after him. The prison was dark with only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above. The sound of our footsteps bounced off the walls and echoed everywhere.

"I know this place. This is Alcatraz," Annabeth realized. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

"But Alcatraz is on an island by San Francisco," I point out. "How could we have gotten all the way over here already?"

"Freeze," Grover warned and grabbed Tyson. "Stop! Can't you see it?"

On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, there was the worst looking monster I had ever seen. It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. And instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon: long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Her legs looked like they were tangled in vines, but then I realized they were sprouting snakes, hundreds of vipers darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes, like Medusa's. The weirdest part though was her waist. Where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals.

"It's her," Tyson whimpered as the creature continued speaking in the weird language.

"What's she saying? What's that language?" Percy asked.

"The tongue of the old times," Tyson replied. "What Mother Earth spoke to Titans and her other children. Before the gods. I can translate. 'You will work for the master or suffer.' 'I will not serve.' 'Then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares. If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return.'

"H-h-horrible," Grover stammered as the woman sprouted bat wings and flew away. "I've never smelled any monster that strong."

"Cyclopes' worst nightmare. Kampê. Every Cyclops knows about her. Stories about her scare us when we're babies. She was our jailer in the bad years," Tyson stated.

Annabeth nodded. "I remember now. When the Titans ruled, they imprisoned Gaea and Ouranos's earlier children – the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires. The Hundred-handed Ones. They called them that because, well, they had a hundred hands. They were elder brothers of the Cyclopes."