Alister Reid finally finished his quest with Leo, Jason and Piper. But now the hard part begins. Knowing where camp Jupiter lies, heading over there should be hard, right?
Will Percy be okay? Will meeting the rest of the eight be okay? We're just go...
authors note: there is smut in this chapter. its not much, but if you are uncomfortable with it, there is three stars on where it starts and ends. thanks for reading!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE to a different ship's horn—a blast so loud it literally shook me out of bed.
I wondered if Leo was pulling another joke. Then the horn boomed again. It sounded like it was coming from several hundred yards away—from another vessel.
I rushed to get dressed. By the time I got up on deck, the others had already gathered—all hastily dressed except for Coach Hedge, who had pulled the night watch.
Frank's Vancouver Winter Olympics shirt was inside out. Percy wore pajama pants and a bronze breastplate, which was an interesting fashion statement. Hazel's hair was all blown to one side, as though she'd walked through a cyclone; and Leo had accidentally set himself on fire. His T-shirt was in charred tatters. His arms were smoking.
About a hundred yards to port, a massive cruise ship glided past. Tourists waved at us from fifteen or sixteen rows of balconies. Some smiled and took pictures. None of them looked surprised to see an Ancient Greek trireme. Maybe the Mist made it look like a fishing boat, or perhaps the cruisers thought the Argo II was a tourist attraction.
The cruise ship blew its horn again, and the Argo II had a shaking fit. Coach Hedge plugged his ears. "Do they have to be so loud?"
"They're just saying hi," Frank speculated.
"WHAT?" Hedge yelled back.
The ship edged past us, heading out to sea. The tourists kept waving. If they found it strange that the Argo II was populated by half-asleep kids in armor and pajamas and a man with goat legs, they didn't let on.
"Bye!" Leo called, raising his smoking hand.
"Can I man the ballistae?" Hedge asked.
"No," Leo said through a forced smile.
Hazel rubbed her eyes and looked across the glittering green water. "Where are—oh...Wow."
I followed her gaze. Without the cruise ship blocking their view, I saw a mountain jutting from the sea less than half a mile to the north. On one side, the limestone cliffs were almost completely sheer, dropping into the sea over a thousand feet below, as near as I could figure. On the other side, the mountain sloped in tiers, covered in green forest, so that the whole thing reminded me of a colossal sphinx, worn down over the millennia, with a massive white head and chest, and a green cloak over its back.
"The Rock of Gibraltar," Annabeth said in awe. "At the tip of Spain. And over there—" She pointed south, to a more distant stretch of red and ochre hills. "That must be Africa. We're at the mouth of the Mediterranean."
The morning was warm, but I shivered. Despite the wide stretch of sea in front of us, I felt like I was standing at an impassable barrier. Once in the Mediterranean—the Mare Nostrum— we would be in the ancient lands. If the legends were true, our quest would become ten times more dangerous.
