a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

0.5 birds from hell

0.5 A Swarm of Aggressive Birds Interrupts Our Already Deadly Activity of Chariot Racing

The next few days were stressful, to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I loved Tyson. What I did not like, however, was people making fun of him and pissing me off when I was already freaked out about Camp and Grover. Thankfully, after I systematically sent nineteen kids to the infirmary within a week (under the guise of teaching swordsmanship classes), the looks and comments all stopped. I was banned from the chariot races for it by Tantalus, but I hadn't really cared about them anyway. After getting banned, he seemed to come to the conclusion that I'd do better as a cheerleader, so for the entirety of the races, I'd have to be stunting and tumbling, uniform, bow, makeup, and all.

Now, normally I wouldn't be mad about that. I was on the Columbia cheer team my Freshman year of college and I had recently gotten the news that I'd made the team again and practices would start near the end of August. However, my anger was fueled and I did not like getting used as entertainment for Tantalus. He made my blood boil and I knew he'd enjoy watching me in the air.

From the start, my amazing friends never said a word against Tyson (at least where I could hear it). Instead, we all worried together over Grover and the Camp's respective predicaments. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything we could do, save organizing border patrols on the sly (Tantalus insisted that they weren't necessary, and wouldn't let official patrols be organized), so we tended to just get on with everything and pray to the gods for inspiration. That we were resorting to asking our non-responsive parents for help was a mark of how bad things had gotten.

I loathed being helpless, so I tried to keep my mind off my problems as much as I could.

Silena gave me my first riding lesson on a pegasus. She explained that there was only one immortal winged horse named Pegasus, who still wandered free somewhere in the skies, but over the eons he'd sired a lot of children, none quite so fast or heroic, but all named after the first and greatest.

Being the daughter of the sea god, I don't normally enjoy going into the skies. I fly whenever I have to for movies, premiers, photoshoots, tours, and such, but I had to specifically ask Zeus for permission before I could even do that. That didn't mean he didn't like to scare me every so often and would almost crash a plane I was on before letting me fly safely. Poseidon had this rivalry with Zeus, so it was very unusual that I'd gotten that special permission. But riding a winged horse felt different. I had always loved horses, and the pegasi didn't make me nearly as nervous as being on an airplane. Maybe that was because my dad had created horses out of sea foam, so the pegasi were sort of... neutral territory, I suppose.

I could understand their thoughts. I wasn't surprised when my pegasus went galloping over the treetops or chased a flock of seagulls into a cloud.

The problem was that Tyson wanted to ride the "chicken ponies," too, but the pegasi got skittish whenever he approached. I told them telepathically that Tyson wouldn't hurt them, but they didn't seem to believe me. That made Tyson cry.

The only person at camp who had no problem with Tyson was Beckendorf. The blacksmith god had always worked with Cyclopes in his forges, so Beckendorf took Tyson down to the armory to teach him metalworking. He said he'd have Tyson crafting magic items like a master in no time. I honest-to-the-gods threw my arms around him in a hug for his support. My other friends did their best, but their discomfort came across when they were around Tyson.

After lunch, I worked out in the arena with Clarisse and her siblings. Swordplay had always been my strength, from my first day there. And it had only improved over the past year. I'd gotten better at the other things, like archery and hand-to-hand, but swordplay, that's where I excelled. Riptide and Shaker were the best swords I'd ever used and dual-wielding them made me practically indestructible. Thank the gods I was ambidextrous. My hand-to-hand class had even gone better than usual. Clarisse said I was doing better than ever, but she still won. I wasn't surprised.