Trials of Apollo : Alternate ending because DUH

Apollo on the beach

For the next few hours my mind deserted me. I do not remember Tempest dropping us on the beach, though he must have done so. I recall moments of Piper yelling at me, or sitting in the surface shuddering with dry so, or uselessly clawing gobs of wet sand and throwing them at the waves. A few times she slapped away the ambrosia and nectar I tried to give to her. I remember slowly pacing the thin stretch of beach, my feet bare, my shirt cold from the seawater. The plug of healing goo throbbed in my chest, leaking a little blood from time to time.

We were no longer in Santa Barbara. There was no harbor, no string of super-yachts, just dark Pacific stretching before us. Behind us loomed a dark cliff. A zigzag of wooden stairs led up toward the lights of a house at the top. Meg McCaffrey was there too. Wait. When did Meg arrive? She was thoroughly drenched, her clothes shredded, her face and arms a war zone of bruises and cuts. She sat next to Piper, sharing ambrosia. I suppose my ambrosia wasn't good enough. The pandos Crest squatted some distance away at the base of the cliff, eyeing me hungrily as if waiting g for his first music lesson to begin. The pandos must have what I'd asked. Somehow he'd found Meg, pulled her from the sea, and flown her here. . . Wherever here was.

The thing I remember most clearly is Piper saying he's not dead. She said this over and over, as soon as she could manage the words, once the nectar and ambrosia tamed the swelling around her mouth. She still look awful. Her upper lip needed stitches. She would definitely have a scar. Her jaw, chin, and lower lip we're one gigantic eggplant-colored bruisem I suspected her dentist bill would be hefty. Still, she forced out the words with steady determination. " He's not dead."

Meg held her shoulder. "Maybe. We'll find out. You need to rest and heal." I stared incredulously at my youngasterm "Maybe? Meg, you didn't see what happened! He . . . Jason . . . the spear -"

Meg glared at me. She did not say Shut up, but I heard the order loud and clear. On her hands, her gold rings glinted, though I didn't know how she could have retrieved them. Perhaps, like so many magic weapons, the automatically returned to their owner if lost. It would be like Nero to give his step daughter such clingy gifts.

"Tempest will find Jason," Meg insisted. "We just have to wait." Tempest . . . right. After the ventus had brought Piper and me here, I vaguely remembered Piper harassing the spirit, using garbled words and gestures to order him back to the yachts to find Jason. Tempest had raced off across the surface of the sea like an electrified waterspout. Now starting at the horizon, I wondered if I could dare hope for good news.

My memories from the ship were coming back, piecing themselves together into a fresco more horrible than anything painted on Caligula's walls. The emperor had warned me: this is not a game. He was indeed not Commodus. As much as Caligula loved theatrics, he would never mess up an execution by adding glitzy special effects, ostriches, basketballs, race cars and loud music. Caligula did not pretend to kill. He killed. "He's not dead." Piper repeated her mantra, as if trying to charmspeak herself as well as us. " He's gone through too much to die now, like that." I wanted to believe her.

Sadly I had witnessed tens of thousands of mortal deaths. Few of them had meaning. Most were untimely, unexpected, undignified, and at least slightly embarrassing. The people who deserved to die took forever to do so. Those who deserved to live always went too soon. Falling in combat against an evil emperor in order to save one's friends . . . that seemed all too plausible a death for a hero like Jason Grace. He'd told me what the Erythraean Sibyl said. If I hadn't asked him to come with us...

Don't blame yourself, said selfish Apollo. It was his choice. It was my quest! Said guilty Apollo. If not for me, Jason would be safe in his dorm room, sketching new shrines for obscure minor deities! Piper McLean would be unharmed, spending time with her father, preparing for a new life in Oklahoma. Selfish Apollo had nothing to say to this, or he kept it selfishly to himself.