The Children of Egypt

Sapphire I

Running for your life sucks. Running for your life on the first day of July while having whole mountain ranges thrown at you is a torture on par with those of the Field of Punishment.

'Left!' Jay warned. Sapphire darted far to her left and just barely missed being hit by a ginormous rock. OK, so it wasn't an entire mountain, but it sure felt like it. She didn't even have the breath to say thank you.

'How much farther is it?' Jay asked. He wasn't breathing as heavily as Sapphire, but his fur was still sticking to his sides.

Jay, by the way, was a cat. Specifically, he was one of the cats that had been grown from the teeth from the Smithsonian's saber tooth tiger exhibit seven years before. He had been one of the gifts from Sapphire's mother and father on her sixteenth birthday. The other gift had been a Stygian Iron wakizashi, which made up a matched pair with her katana, Swift Death. Her father had apparently wanted to make sure that Sapphire survived her first year before investing in a perfect daishō for her.

Sapphire was a demigod, and demigods don't tend to have long lives. She probably had double demigod scent as her father was Hades and her mother was Persephone. Don't ask how.

Another rock flew over her head and landed somewhere in the trees to her right. 'My gods, why won't he just give up?' she thought to Jay.

'Think later, run now.' the cat panted. Sapphire replied by putting on a burst of speed. The two of them were running through the stretch of Rouge Valley that their town was built around. The high school backed onto it from the south and the Old Village lined its northern edge, with the two parts of town joining about five kilometers to their west. They were headed towards the school because that's where possible reinforcements were waiting.

Possibly.

Assuming Leo wasn't late.

There was a satyr, Sapphire didn't know who it was, who had flagged two new demigods in Sapphire's school. Despite the claiming promise that Percy had wrested out of the gods, Canada didn't get paid much attention to when it came to recruitment. Mr. D probably thought they were too far away.

Dionysius was famously lazy when it came to anything other than wine, parties, and gaming.

Leo had volunteered himself and Festus, his bronze dragon who was also occasionally a flying warship, to pick up the satyr and the new demigods. He also said that he'd pick up any demigods in the area that wanted a free ride, something that Chiron couldn't say no to, even though Sapphire and Malcolm, Annabeth's brother, were the only other demigods nearby. Malcom lived in Ajax, which was about half an hour away.

Sapphire saw the grey bricks of the high school through the trees ahead of her. She let out a mental cheer when she caught sight of the telltale bronze plating of the Argo II. Unfortunately, she also heard crashes in the woods behind her and realized that her pursuer had decided to stop throwing rocks and actually try to catch her. Great.

She broke through the tree line ten seconds later. The Argo II was sitting on the football field right in front of the chain-link fence that separated the field from the backyards of a row of houses, one of which was Sapphire's house. After running a few more meters, Sapphire stopped to catch her breath.

"Good morning!" Leo called from the deck of his ship. Sapphire raised a hand in greeting. Then she turned around and twisted the skull on the silver ring she wore on her right hand. Swift Death appeared first in her right hand, then her wakizashi in her left hand.

"Just one little thing I have to take care of!" she shouted over her shoulder. "A little extra firepower would be nice!" Leo didn't have time to answer as at that moment a Laistrygonian-sized man burst through the trees. His upper arms were about the size of cannons and his legs were spotted with green scales. He had a thick scar that went down the centre of his face and neck and disappeared under his shirt. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that read "THIS IS MY DEMIGOD KILLING SHIRT".

He had obviously not come by for milk and cookies.

"Half-bloods!" he bellowed when he saw the ship. "Come out so I can tie you to trees and rip you apart!" Sapphire coughed and he looked around, confused.

"Down here pinhead! Or, should that be pine-head?" Sinis the pine-bender looked down and just missed seeing Sapphire slice through his ankle. He yelled in pain, causing Jay to yelp in fright and turn into a giant sabre-toothed cat whose form occasionally flickered to show his entire skeleton.

Hey, Percy had a pet hellhound; Sapphire could have a pet Spartoi-cat.

Sapphire dove out of the way as Sinis reached down to try and grab her. Jay yowled and launched himself at the nearest part of the half-giant, which happened to be his face. Sinis howled and staggered back, giving Sapphire time to run around him and take her swords to his other ankle, which crumpled under his weight. She also had time to wonder exactly how she had gotten into this mess, and decided it was probably because she had run towards the place where flying deer were coming from rather than away from it.

Seeing deer catapulted through the air with a bent pine tree was not at the top of her bucket list, or at the bottom, or even on the list.

Jay tore at Sinis' face with his claws, and leapt clear when the man tried to grab him. After a few more chops with her swords, Sinis was no longer able to even try to stand due to the fact that his feet were a meter away from him. "Like father like son, eh?" Sinis screamed wordlessly. "I don't think you'd fit on any of his beds though. Maybe we should take a little off the top?" On cue, a fireball flew over her head and hit Sinis' already mauled face. "Nice shot! Maybe a little lower?" The second fireball burned right through Sinis' chest, making his shirt read "MY DEOD KING SRT". Since he was missing a mouth, and most of his face, Sinis didn't say anything as he crumbled to dust.

Jay shook monster dust out of his fur before shrinking back into his house-cat self. 'Is that what normally happens around here?' he asked.

"That was actually my first monster since March." Sapphire replied. She put her swords away, and then shrieked as someone grabbed her shoulders from behind. Taking from Annabeth's lessons, she grabbed the person's wrist and sent them flying over her head and onto the ground.

"Ow." Leo said once he'd gotten his breath back. Sapphire laughed and helped him up.

"Sorry." Leo grinned and gave her a quick kiss.

"It's OK."

They walked back to the Argo II. Festus clicked at Leo. "Yah, that was stupid. You don't have to rub it in." More clicking. "When I get judo flipped by Annabeth, which will never happen because I'm not that stupid." More clicking and a creak, accompanied by the bronze dragon head rolling his eyes. Sapphire smiled.

"Festus lecturing you about the dangers of sneaking up on demigod girls again?" Leo nodded. "You should listen to him."

Sapphire and Leo climbed onto the ship and helped Jay up after them. Jay immediately walked over to the figurehead and demanded to be introduced. "Jay, this is Festus, who saved our butts back there. Festus, this is Jay, who you will not eat."

Leo pulled the rope ladder up onto the deck. "You're stuff is already on board. Did you say goodbye?"

"This morning at breakfast." Sapphire leaned over the railing and gave Festus a rub under his chin. "I'm the last to arrive?" Leo started pulling up the anchor and Sapphire rushed over to give him a hand.

"Everyone else is getting settled below decks." Leo replied once the anchor was back on the ship. He picked up a Wii remote and gave it a shake, causing the sails to unfurl. "Malcolm, Doren Bush, and the new demigods." The way he said new demigods, with a smile on his face, made Sapphire suspicious. He was definitely hiding something.

"Anyone I know?" she asked. His smile got bigger. Definitely someone she knew. The only way Leo would know that was if it was someone he'd met when he and Nico visited, which they had done a few times. There were a lot of people on that list. "Who?"

The ship started rocking and slowly rose into the air. Sapphire idly wondered what the people walking by the school saw the ship as. A flock of seagulls? Leo pushed the A button on his Wii remote. Air filled the sails and the ship gained enough altitude to fly over the school building. Sapphire felt her stomach twinge as they rose into the air. She reminded herself that the Argo II was a strict no-strike zone for Zeus, no matter who was on the ship.

Leo looked up from his controls. His eyes shone with amusement. "Why not head below and see for yourself?"


A/N: And here's the first chapter for the sequel to my story "The Children of Hades". This is also going to sort of be a sequel to "The Revenge of Uncle Vinnie", but you don't have to read that story to understand this one. Speaking of understanding, here's a bit of clarification for some words I use above.

A wakizashi is a samurai sword that is the companion sword to the katana. They are both curved swords that were worn by samurai. When the swords were worn together they were called daishō, and were an official sign that the person wearing them was a samurai. Wakizashi could also be worn by people who weren't samurai. Just search for 'wakizash', 'daisho' or 'wakizash katana pair' if you want to learn more that isn't off of Wikipedia.

Spartoi is what the skeleton warriors grown from dragon teeth are called. Again, you can look them up.

Hope you enjoyed reading this!

-Cynder2013