A/N: And here we introduce the ever-elusive Carly!
I Show the World my Awesomeness
I was stuck in my prison for three days. Three days. And I still couldn't get through to Chiron or anyone else, and Annabeth and Grover were still missing. I didn't see Carter or Sadie again, so I guessed that they had returned to Brooklyn or wherever the Hades they lived. At this point, I didn't really care.
There was a faint click as the door to my cell was opened. It was a little early for my daily rations, and I had recently been taken out to go to the little demigod's room. I looked up, intrigued. A tallish girl with shoulder-length brown hair and amber eyes was standing there, holding keys and glancing around.
"C'mon, I'm here to bust you out," she whispered.
I frowned, uncertain. "Uh, okay? Who are you?"
"No time!" she hissed. She was right: I heard the sound of someone coming.
"Let's go then," I said. She rolled her eyes, but grabbed my hand and practically yanked me through a maze of corridors and out into the hot desert sky. Without giving me a moment to breathe, she shouted something in another language and the strange dust cyclone I had seen with Sadie and Carter appeared again. We jumped through and popped out in some ballroom or another. A door opened and Carter came out.
"Heya Percy," he said, smiling. "We suspected you were one of us, so we had you brought here. This is Sadie's apprentice, Carly, by the way. She's quite a protegeé."
Carly blushed. "Oh, it was nothing. I just had to get him back to Brooklyn, that's all."
We're in Brooklyn? That's close to Manhattan, and where Annabeh and Grover had disappeared! Maybe these people knew something about the monster that chased me. But first I had to find out what their 'kind' was, and if I really was one too. Maybe they were demigods? The Egyptians had gods too, and their HQ was in Egypt. So maybe...?
"Uh...are you demigods?" I asked outright.
"What?" Sadie asked.
"Demigod. Half mortal, half god," I said slowly. Had these people grown up in a hole or something? Had they ever been to a school?
Instead of the nods of recognition I expected, everyone burst out laughing. "Gods don't interact with mortals," Sadie gasped out. I hated feeling stupid, so I decided to show off.
"Do you have a pool?"
Carter showed me the pool out on a balcony (gods these kids were lucky). A few other kids of varying ages showed up to observe. I looked into the pool and noticed an albino alligator. Since I don't think he would hurt me (me being the son of Poseidon and all), I decided to ignore him.
I glanced around to make sure everyone was watching me. They were. Grinning, I raised my arms. The now-familiar twinge in my gut told me my powers were working. A second later the water rose up and swirled around me, forming into a slow moving hurricane. I waved my arms around smoothly. I didn't need to, of course, but I just had to show off. There was a collected gasp from my audience.
"Percy," Carter whispered. "Elemental power is so hard to achieve...well, we just don't train for it any more. Where are you from?"