take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die, i don't belong
𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖍𝖎𝖈𝖍 a mortal girl is thrown
into the godly world and forced to
save everyone before its too late.
[ percy jackson x oc ]
[ percy jackson & the olympians ]
[ the ligh...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Thalia demanded.
Zoë glared at her. "I cannot control traffic."
"You both sound like my mother," Percy said.
"Shut up!" they said in unison.
Zoë weaved in and out of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun was sinking on the horizon when they finally got into Marin County and exited the highway.
The roads were insanely narrow, winding through forests and up the sides of hills and around the edges of steep ravines. Zoë didn't slow down at all.
"Why does everything smell like cough drops?" Percy asked.
"Eucalyptus." Annabeth pointed to the huge trees all around them.
"The stuff koala bears eat?"
"And monsters," she said. "They love chewing the leaves."
"Especially dragons," Zoë informed.
"Dragons chew eucalyptus leaves?"
"Believe me," Zoë said, "if you had dragon breath, you would chew eucalyptus too."
Percy didn't question her, but he did keep his eyes peeled more closely as they drove. Ahead of them loomed Mount Tamalpais. Percy guessed, in terms of mountains, it was a small one, but it looked plenty huge as they were driving toward it.
"So that's the Mountain of Despair?" he asked.
"Yes," Zoë said tightly.
"Why do they call it that?"
She was silent for almost a mile before answering. "After the war between the Titans and the gods, many of the Titans were punished and imprisoned. Kronos was sliced to pieces and thrown into Tartarus. Kronos's right-hand man, the general of his forces, was imprisoned up there, on the summit, just beyond the Garden of the Hesperides."
"The General," Percy said. Clouds seemed to be swirling around its peak, as though the mountain was drawing them in, spinning them like a top. "What's going on up there? A storm?"
Zoë didn't answer. Percy got the feeing she knew exactly what the clouds meant, and she didn't like it. He looked to Annabeth for the answer, but she just shook her head sadly.
"We have to concentrate," Thalia said. "The Mist is really strong here."
"The magical kind or the natural kind?" Percy asked.
"Both."
The gray clouds swirled even thicker over the mountain, and they kept driving straight toward them. They were out of the forest now, into wide open spaces of cliffs and grass and rocks and fog.
Percy happened to glance down at the ocean as they passed a scenic curve, and he saw something that made him jump out of his seat.
"Look!" But they turned a corner and the ocean disappeared behind the hills.
