A/N: New chapter! Are you excited? Taylor, you'll love the ending. XD.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After approximately five minutes of spitting up sea water and attempting to get breathing room from all the people hugging me, I told my friends the story.
"That's amazing," mumbled Olivia.
"Yeah," agreed Ben.
"I don't know how," I told them, "but somehow images of all the people I'd be giving up on appeared before me, and then, at the end, Ellie appeared and pointed upward signaling for me to try again."
Ellie smiled. We were different than most siblings. Typically we'd get along well. And all of my friends? I think it was the Fates that brought us together. Normally it's hard enough to find one demigod in any school. But there were fourteen demigods in my school, the fourteen of us being me, Ellie, Hunter, Rosa, Ben, Andrea, Dmitri, Olivia, Melanie, Brianna, Trevor, Jack, Heather and Gwendolyn. But I have no clue where Christian and Spencer came from. But anyway, it's hard enough to find a demigod in one school, and the fact that all of the demigods had somehow banded together as friends…I don't know. It was the Fates. I know it.
"Well," said Melanie, "I think we've had enough excitement for one night, don't you think? We should probably be going to bed. According to the Locater," she walked over to the device that tracked Gwen, Christian and Spencer with an automated female voice, "we should be getting to the three of them by tomorrow afternoon, at latest, in the evening."
"Great," I said with joy.
"Let's go to bed," said Hunter with a yawn. "I'm tired.
"Me too," Brianna admitted.
We walked down a different staircase from where I took earlier, and into a large room. There were two beds at the far end of the room and five beds on each side of the room, which meant we had enough beds and room to spare. I slept on the bed at the far end of the room, and Ellie slept on the bed beside me. I didn't pay much attention to where everyone else crashed, because I was tired after almost drowning in Charybdis.
It only took a matter of seconds for me to fall into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
I woke up to a scream on the upper deck.
My eyes snapped open. Some of the beds were vacant, so I figured some people must've already been awake. Melanie was always an early riser, her father being the god of the sun and all, but everyone else was awake in a totally random order.
Stretching leisurely and completely forgetting about the scream, I walked into the bathroom of the ship. Surprisingly, the ship seemed to be an interesting twist of old and modern, so despite it looking similar to an ancient ship on the outside and all that, we thankfully had nice plumbing.
I took a shower, and it felt nice after having so much sea salt in my hair. I hadn't had much time to take a shower of recent, but it felt good.
After getting out of the shower and dressing myself, I walked out onto the main deck. Clusters of people were on different corners of the boat. I could see Andrea and Ben looking out at the sea on one side, Ben's arms around Andrea's waist, of course. I could see Melanie looking through a telescope, obviously searching for land, and Rosa, who was just looking out at the sea while the wind brushed her face slightly.
"Are you not worried?" Rosa asked when I walked over to her. "I mean, your dad is Zeus. We're in Poseidon's domain. He could've drowned you."
"I was worried about that at first, but Hunter and Brianna told me that I'd have nothing to worry about anything."
"Ah," she said.
After a few moments silence, I asked, "Rose, did you see how I fell off the ship and into Charybdis?"
"You tripped on that rope," she said, pointing in another direction. I followed the gesture to find that where I had been standing, there was a thick rope on the deck. I had been so clumsy to trip over that? I laughed at the thought. Rosa smiled.
"You know," said Rosa. "You don't have to call me by the nickname Rose anymore. I'm starting to like my name.
I chuckled. "Good, cause it's a nice name."
"I'm still not into the whole Spanish name thing, though."
"I didn't say you have to be."
I wrapped my arms around Rosa's waist and we looked out over the ship and at the sea together. The waves lapped beautifully. The sea was a beautiful greenish blue color. I rested my head on Rosa's shoulder. She kissed me on the cheek.
"What's going to happen once we find them?" I asked. "I can only imagine what disastrous things will happen once you and Gwen are on this ship together."
"I'll try being good as long as she acts just as good as I am."
"I'll tell her to keep calm."
"Good boy," she said as if I were a dog. I rolled my eyes and we continued watching the sea.
Having forgotten about the scream, I asked Melanie, "Hey, who was that, screaming?"
"Ben was chasing Andrea around. It was a playful scream."
Oh, I thought. That's what woke me up?
Finally, I took some time to admire the sunlight. Looking up at the sun, I tried imagining it having a handsome face like Melanie's dad would, winking and smiling.
Suddenly, Melanie gasped.
"Land," she said.
I instantly took Rosa's hand and ran up to the higher deck where Melanie was standing. I looked out the telescope, and saw a line of brown and blue that was becoming a bump emerging in the distance. Melanie was right.
"Go get the others," Melanie said in a cheerful tone.
"Okay!" I replied.
I ran downstairs into the bedroom where everyone else─Ellie, Dmitri, Olivia, Brianna and Hunter─was sleeping.
I screamed at everyone telling them to wake up since we'd be approaching land soon, and they did. Once I got back to the main deck, I looked at the locater. After a few moments of staring, the female automated voice said, "Gwendolyn Shapiro, Christian Cunningham and Spencer Underwood are near."
I smiled.
A few minutes passed, and finally we were at the island. It was somewhat small, and had lots of mountains. The island looked sort of volcanic, which I was afraid of, but otherwise it seemed okay.
The ship slowed to a stop on the sandy shores of the island. We all jumped off the side of the ship and onto the sand.
"It says Gwen, Christian and Spencer should be on this island," I told everyone. "I hope they didn't leave."
"Let's split up into three groups. We'll have the children of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon leading," said Olivia, always coming up with the brilliant ideas. "Ethan and Ellie, you lead one group of your choice. Ben, you lead a group, and Hunter and Brianna, you lead a group."
Since exactly half of us are children of the Big Three, Ellie and I took Rosa and Melanie. Hunter and Brianna took Dmitri and Olivia, and Ben took, of course, Andrea.
Rosa, Melanie, Ellie and I explored the island for a while, hiking up mountains and such until it seemed like it was afternoon, where the sun was at its highest. We took a ten minute break and talked and laughed.
Eventually, when we got back to searching, we stumbled upon a cave.
It wasn't that much of a cave. There was an opening and the inside of the "cave" was kind of dark, but it wasn't necessarily a cave. I kept hearing something clatter against my foot whenever I walked.
"Watch your step!" Melanie shouted suddenly. I froze in my tracks. There was a tiny pool of water in front of me, and judging from the sun that shown from above, it had to be at least six feet deep.
Then I looked in the pool of water. There was tons of gold coins, both regular gold and drachmas, lying at the bottom of the pool, as if someone had thrown them in and wished for something.
I took off my shirt.
"What the hell are you doing?" screeched Rosa.
"I'm getting the gold in the bottom! Duh…!"
"Do you not notice the statue?" asked Ellie.
I looked in the pool to see that Ellie was right. A life-like statue of a man lay at the bottom. To test something, I threw a rock in the pool, and gasped in relief.
If I had jumped in the pool, I was a goner. I hugged Ellie and put my shirt back on.
I looked at the ground to find other drachmas and gold coins at my feet.
Then, I looked to my left. There was a pool of crystal blue water. Melanie, distracting me, said,
"This is the island of King Midas. It has to be."
"In the myth," I remembered, "everything he touched turn to gold. How come it's a pool that turns people to gold?"
"I don't know," said Rosa. "Just modern, I guess? It'd trick a lot of people into death."
"Hang on," I said, looking at the pool to the left of crystal blue water. "Isn't that the supposed pool that can reverse the gold curse?"
"Probably," said Rosa.
"If I'm correct," said Ellie, "it was actually simply running water that stops the curse."
"Whatever." I said. "How 'bout I just─"
My sentence was cut short by a small, clattering noise. Not too loud, but not faint enough to be inaudible. I listened for it again, but it wasn't there.
And that's when I saw the shadow.
"Melanie," I called.
"I got it."
She waved her hand and a burst of light exploded from her fingertips. I looked around the small cave, but there was still nothing. I figured I had heard something.
"How did you─"
"My dad's the god of prophecy. So, I can see tiny bits into the future. That's why I've been answering questions before them being asked of recent."
I had noticed that Melanie seemed to know what was going on about things, but how did she not sense me almost drowning in Charybdis? I guess because she wasn't forcing herself to do that.
"Can you see when and if we're going to find them?" asked Ellie. "I mean, Gwen, Christian and Spencer?"
"I'll try," she said.
Her eyes began to glow a bright shade of yellow. Then, the glowing died down. Melanie was grinning, and at one point she broke into a laugh.
"What is it?" I demanded. "Why are you laughing?"
I heard a faint whisper in the distance.
Melanie smirked. "Just come on out Gwen; you too Christian and Spencer. I've already seen the future. We're gonna find you one way or another."
Then, the figures walked out of the darkness. I gasped.
We had found them.
"What were you thinking?" asked Olivia once we had brought the three children of the minor gods back on the ship. We began sailing just as she finished her sentence.
"Our parents," said Gwen. "They came to us in a dream."
"Yeah, well Perseus isn't going to be happy when he sees you. I don't think you'll be seeing Helios"─I looked at Gwen─"Hecate,"─then at Spencer─"or Nyx"─and Spencer─"for a very long time."
"They were telling us to go to Miami," Christian admitted, "to see the Sunset Eclipse. They said they'd be attending."
"I had the dream too," I informed them. "That's the only reason I know you escaped. I saw all of you as you turned into mist and escaped through the vents."
Andrea raised her hand nervously. "Um, Perseus would like to speak to all of you on the lower deck."
"What?" I asked. "There's no way he could be here with─"
"Hermessage."
"Oh."
"What's a Hermessage?"
"It's kind of like a video chat thing, but with the images of the people in front of you."
"Oh," said Gwen.
We walked onto the lower deck and sure enough, the image of Perseus stood there with his arms crossed.
"What were you thinking?" he asked of Gwen, Christian and Spencer.
"We had a dream," Spencer said after a short silence. "Our parents told us to go to Miami, and they said they'd be there, attending the Sunset Eclipse."
"An event courtesy of Apollo and Artemis," Perseus said, "I know all about it."
"We wanted to go. We've never met our divine parent."
"Some people never meet their divine parent," Perseus replied.
Yet my friends and I stood there awkwardly, as one of our enemies and two people we barely knew argued with a holographic image of our headmaster.
"Please," Gwen pleaded. "We want to meet our parents. Badly."
Perseus looked at her, and began to scratch his short, neatly trimmed beard. He sighed.
"Fine," he said finally. "You may attend your silly event."
I stood there with my mouth wide open. "So we came all this way for nothing? I almost drowned in Charybdis yesterday!"
"Did I hear Charybdis?" asked a foggy voice I identified as Jason.
"Go away, Jason," Perseus demanded. Jason's voice died.
"You're just going to let them go?" asked Brianna. "Even after we were sent on a quest to find them…?"
"Your ship will help them get to Miami."
"What?" screeched Rosa. "There is no way I am helping her." Rosa glared at Gwen.
"You went on a quest to save us, I thought."
"I wanted to bring you back to the Institute so Perseus could whoop your ass," Rosa retorted. Soon they began getting in each other's faces and fighting, and I had to step in between them.
"You will take them to Miami," Perseus concluded. "And you will then proceed to return to the Institute. Either way, Gwen, Christian and Spencer, you will receive punishment."
Rosa smiled slightly, while Gwen, Christian and Spencer held their heads in shame.
Perseus's image disappeared.
That night, I looked at the stars while everyone was asleep.
Or at least, I assumed everyone.
Rosa and I had a talk for a few minutes, and then she decided to go to bed.
Then, as she walked away, a voice said, "Hey."
I turned around. Gwendolyn Shapiro stood there. I rolled my eyes. "What?"
I said it as more of a sentence than a question.
"I was just saying hey."
She began approaching me, and I was nervous. We stood in an awkward silence for a while, when finally I asked, "Why did you call Rosa a slutty bitch or something like that a while ago?"
Gwen sighed. "I guess…I guess I was just jealous.
"Gwen," I said, "you have to accept the fact that I'm not dating you anymore.
And that's when it happened. I didn't know how long it lasted, but I hated every pure─second? Minute? Hour?─it lasted.
I felt something against my lips. Gwen's lips.
I instantly pushed her away. "What the hell was that?"
Gwen grinned seductively. "I needed to─"
Her voice was cut off by the loudest scream I had ever heard. I looked in the direction it had come, but the source of the screaming moved.
And the next thing I knew, Rosa was standing in Gwendolyn's place with her arms over the side of the boat as Gwen screamed while flying through the air.
Rosa had seen what Gwen had done…and pushed her off the boat.
A/N: Gotten the hint yet, Gwen? ETHAN BELONGS TO ROSA. ROSA BELONGS TO ETHAN. I can't believe you'd do that! Then again, I forced you.
Rosa: RAWR. Why would you do such a terrible thing?
Ethan: *wipes lips* I know right!
Gwen: *drowning* Umm, kind of dying right now?
Rosa & Ethan: *lets Gwen die*
A/N: XD. Anyway, because I'm in a happy mood, I won't ask any questions at the moment, but I might later. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Especially the ending. That was especially for Taylor─I mean, Rosa. xD.
