Andy Jackson: Child of Land & Sea

High As The Sky

Act IV — To Stop The Tide

Part V — Just remember in the darkest hour within your heart is the power for making you a hero, too.

The left tunnel was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yard, they ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked their path. Behind them, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor.

"Tyson," Andy said urgently, "can you—"

"Yes!" He slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. The boulder gave away with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and they dashed through behind it. They got on the other side of the boulder and pushed. Whatever was chasing them wailed in frustration as they heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Andy said relieved.

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.

Andy turned around. They were in a twenty-foot-square cement room, and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. They'd tunneled straight into a cell.

"What in Hades?" Anthony tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Somewhere above them, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something that Andy couldn't make out.

"What's that language?" she asked.

Tyson's eyes widened. "Can't be." Before Andy could ask him what exactly couldn't be, Tyson grabbed two bars of the cell door and bent them wide enough for them to pass.

"I know this place," Anthony recalled. "It's Alcatraz."

"That island near San Francisco?" Andy asked.

He nodded. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

They got out of the cell, only to find themselves facing a horrible creature. It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon. Her hair was made of snakes.

"It's her," Tyson whimpered.

The monster didn't see them though so they crouched in the shadows. She was talking to someone inside a cell on the second floor, where the sobbing was coming from. "What's she saying?" Andy muttered. "What is that language?"

"The tongue of the old time," Tyson shivered. "What Mother Earth spoke to Titans and... her other children. Before the gods."

"You understand it?" Andy asked. "Can you translate?"

Tyson nodded. "She says, 'You will work for the master or suffer.' The other one is refusing. She says, 'Then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares. If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return.'"

The dragon lady tramped toward the stairwell then disappeared around the corner.

"H-h-horrible," Grover said. "I've never smelled any monster that strong."

"Cyclops's worst nightmares," Tyson murmured. "Kampê."

"Who?" Andy asked.

Tyson swallowed. "Every Cyclops knows about her. Stories about her scare us when we're babies. She was our jailer in the bad years."

Anthony nodded. "Yes. When the Titans ruled, they imprisoned Gaia and Ouranos's earlier children—the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires."

"The Heka-freaking-what?"