The Cult of Dionysus

Callida

I find myself trying to remember that phrase, for when you get out of one situation and end up right in another one? Something about a frying pan, or a furnace, and into something else.

Either way. I finish one journey on a ship, fighting all kinds of sea monsters, and I end up on another quest, on another, smaller, dinkier boat, with a new sea monster. Sure, there were a few months in between and all, but right now it doesn't feel like it.

We chug along for another fifty feet or so, long enough for me to wonder if the threat is imaginary.

Leo nudges Apollo. "Look over there."

On the far embankment wall, peeking over the waterline, is the brick archway of an old sewer main, the entrance blocked by golden bars.

"How many sewers have you seen with gold grates on them?" Leo asks. "Betcha that one leads right to the emperor's palace."

Apollo frowns. "That was much too easy."

"Hey!" Meg and I both exclaim simultaneously.

I scowl at the ex-god. "You never say stuff like that."

Meg pokes him in the back of the neck. "Yeah, remember what Percy said? Never say stuff like We made it or That was easy. You'll jinx us!"

"My entire existence is a jinx." Apollo tells us.

"Pedal faster." Meg instructs.

Since it's a direct order form Meg, Apollo has no choice. He picks up the pace. Leo steers our teal plastic ship toward the sewer entrance.

We're ten feet away when we trigger the First Law of Demigods. Our jinx rises from the water in the form of a glistening arc of serpentine flesh.

Apollo screams. Leo shouts, "Look out!"

The boat tilts sideways. More arcs of scaly snake skin breach around us- undulating hills of green and brown ridged with serrated dorsal fins. Meg's twin blades flash into existence. She tries to stand, but the pedal boat capsizes, plunging us into a cold green explosion of bubbles and thrashing limbs.

Luckily, the canal is not deep. My feet find the bottom and I'm able to stand, gasping and shivering. The water is just below my nose, but if I tilt my head up, I'm fine.

Apollo is standing a few feet away, gasping and shivering, the water up to his shoulders.

Leo pops to the surface, his chin barely at water level. He wades toward the sewer grate, climbing over a hill of serpent flesh that gets in his way. Meg, bless her heroic heart, slashes away at the monster's coils, but her blades just skid off its slimy hide.

I look between Meg and Leo, unsure if I'll be of more use helping fight, or helping get into the sewer.

Then the creature's head rises from the canal.

Bingo.

I push the paddleboat upright and climb aboard, dripping with dirty smelly water.

"Uh, Cal?" Leo calls over nervously. "Nothing stupid, right?"

"Stupid? Me?" I ask, about to do something very stupid. "Never!"

The monster's triangular forehead is wide enough to provide parking for a compact car. Its eyes glow as orange as Agamethus's ghost. When it opens its vast red maw, it's breath smells worse than the sewer we're trying to enter.

The creature snaps at Meg. Despite being neck deep in water, she somehow sidesteps and thrusts her left-handed blade straight into the serpent's eye.

"Hey!" I complain. "Eyes are my thing!"