Daria was furious at her mother.
Gaea was plain and simply fucking with them. She had complete control over Daria's mind and Daria knew that, even when she was done with her training, she wouldn't relinquish it. The earth goddess had captured Nico and had left Hazel and Percy to drown... Daria expected an apology.
She had to figure out an endgame for this. Not for this quest specifically, but for the Prophecy of Eight. It was foretold that she would betray her friends, that she would play the main role in their demise. But was that really what Daria was doing every night?
Hazel led them along Third Avenue. They thought about stopping at the Seward Hotel, but Daria didn't think it would be a good idea to traipse into the lobby covered in mud, nor was she sure the hotel would give a room to four minors.
Instead, they turned toward the shoreline. A rickety old house stood on a barnacle-encrusted pier. The roof sagged. The walls were perforated with holes like buckshot. The door was boarded-up, and a hand-painted sign read: ROOMS STORAGE AVAILABLE.
"Come on," Hazel said.
"Uh, you sure it's safe?" Frank asked.
Not giving him a response, Hazel found an open window and climbed inside. The three of them followed. The room hadn't been used in a long time. Their feet kicked up dust that swirled in the buckshot beams of sunlight. Mouldering cardboard boxes were stacked along the walls. Their faded labels read: Greeting Cards, Assorted Seasonal.
"It's warmer in here, at least," Frank said. "Guess no running water? Maybe Daria and I can go shopping. We're not as muddy as you guys. We could find us some clothes."
Hazel didn't seem to hear him.
She climbed over a stack of boxes in the corner that used to be her sleeping area. An old sign was propped against the wall: GOLD PROSPECTING SUPPLIES.
Frank's fingers hovered over a photo. "Who...?" He saw that she was crying and clamped back his question. "Sorry, Hazel. This must be really hard. Do you want some time — "
"No," she croaked. "No, it's fine."
"Is that your mother?" Percy pointed to the photo of dark-haired woman. "She looks like you. She's beautiful."
Then Percy studied the picture of a curly-haired troublemaker. "Who is that?"
Daria didn't understand why he looked so spooked
"That's... that's Sammy. He was my — uh — friend from New Orleans." Hazel managed.
"I've seen him before," Percy said.
"You couldn't have," Hazel said. "That was in 1941 . He's... he's probably dead now."
Percy frowned. "I guess. Still..." He shook his head, like the thought was too uncomfortable.
Daria cleared her throat. "Look, we passed a store on the last block. We've got a little money left. Maybe we should go get you guys some food and clothes and — I don't know — a hundred boxes of wet wipes or something?"
"That would be great," she said. "You two are the best."
The floorboards creaked under Frank's feet. "Well... We're the only ones not completely covered in mud, anyway. Be back soon."
Daria couldn't help but notice that she had spent significantly more time with Frank than Hazel on this quest and yet she knew the least about him. She didn't think the son of Mars liked her very much. That, or he was afraid of her. Neither option made her feel better really.
"You know I meant what I said back at breakfast," she ventured. "There's something about you Frank, you were born to lead."
He glanced at her, "Yeah maybe."
Okay. She would try again. "My first quest-actually both Jason and I's first quest, went miserably. The second day out I got hypothermia and Jason broke his shoulder."
"It's just," Frank struggled to find the words. "Ever since I joined the legion, after Jason disappeared, you seemed to be this leader who didn't take any, sorry, crap from anyone. You always expected the best, you and Reyna. I keep feeling like I've disappointed you."
"Frank," she paused. "I really didn't know you cared that much about my opinion. I always thought of you as an equal, as one of my friends after this quest." She frowned, "I'm sorry."
He shook his head, "It's not you. Well, it is," he stumbled. "Everyone in the legion thinks you're super cool for standing up to Octavian and everything."
"I'm not that cool Frank." She said firmly. Which was an odd thing to say but given everything she'd messed up in her life, it was the truth. "And I'm not disappointed with you. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I stole Scipio without telling Reyna…"
They climbed in, triumphantly holding some shopping bags. "Success!"
Daria and Frank showed off his prizes. From a hunting store, he'd gotten a new quiver of arrows for himself (Daria made him promise to teach her how to shoot), some rations, and a coil of rope.
"For the next time we run across muskeg," he said.
From a local tourist shop, they had bought three sets of fresh clothes, some towels, some soap, some bottled water, and, yes, a huge box of wet wipes. It wasn't exactly a hot shower, but Hazel ducked behind a wall of greeting card boxes to clean up and change.
The Feast of Fortuna — all the luck that happened today, good or bad, was supposed to be an omen of the entire year to come. One way or another, their quest would end this evening. Daria couldn't stop thinking.
"So," she said. "Now we find a boat to Hubbard Glacier." She tried to sound confident, but it wasn't easy.
Frank patted his stomach. "If we're going to battle to the death, I want lunch first. We found the perfect place."
Daria led them to a shopping plaza near the wharf, where an old railway car had been converted to a diner. While Daria, Frank, and Percy ordered, Hazel wandered down to the docks and asked some questions. When she came back, she needed cheering up. Even the cheeseburger and fries didn't do the trick.
"We're in trouble," she said. "I tried to get a boat. But. ..I miscalculated."
"No boats?" Frank asked.
"Oh, I can get a boat," Hazel said. "But the glacier is farther than I thought. Even at top speed, we couldn't get there until tomorrow morning."
Percy turned pale. "Maybe I could make the boat go faster?"
"Even if you could," Hazel said, "from what the captains tell me, it's treacherous — icebergs, mazes of channels to navigate. You'd have to know where you were going."
"A plane?" Frank asked.
Hazel shook her head. "I asked the boat captains about that. They said we could try, but it's a tiny airfield. You have to charter a plane two, three weeks in advance."
They ate in silence after that. Daria's cheeseburger was excellent, but she couldn't concentrate on it. She'd eaten about three bites when a raven settled on the telephone pole above and began to croak at them.
Suddenly, the raven's cawing changed to a strangled yelp.
Frank got up so fast that he almost toppled the picnic table. Percy and Daria drew their swords.
Hazel followed their eyes. Perched on top of the pole where the raven had been, a fat ugly gryphon glared down at them. It burped, and raven feathers fluttered from its beak.
Hazel stood and unsheathed her spatha.
Frank nocked an arrow. He took aim, but the gryphon shrieked so loudly the sound echoed off the mountains. Frank flinched, and his shot went wide.
"I think that's a call for help," Percy warned. "We have to get out of here."
With no clear plan, they ran for the docks. The gryphon dove after them. Percy slashed at it with his sword, but the gryphon veered out of reach.
They took the steps to the nearest pier and raced to the end. The gryphon swooped after them, its front claws extended for the kill. Daria gathered a block of muddy dirt and washed it into the bay. The gryphon squawked and flapped its wings. It managed to scramble onto the pier, where it shook its black fur like a wet dog.
Frank appraised her. "Nice one, Dars." Percy grunted in surprise at the stolen nickname.
"Yeah," she said. "Didn't know if I could still do that in Alaska. But bad news — look over there." About a mile away, over the mountains, a black cloud was swirling — a whole flock of gryphons, dozens at least. There was no way they could fight that many, and no boat could take them away fast enough.
Frank nocked another arrow. "Not going down without a fight."
Percy raised Riptide. "I'm with you."
Then Daria heard a sound in the distance — like the whinnying of a horse. She must've been imagining it, but Hazel cried out desperately, "Arion! Over here!"
A tan blur came ripping down the street and onto the pier. The stallion materialized right behind the gryphon, brought down his front hooves, and smashed the monster to dust.
Hazel had never been so happy in her life. "Good horse! Really good horse!"
Frank backed up and almost fell off the pier. "How — ?"
"He followed me!" Hazel beamed. "Because he's the best — horse — EVER! Now, get on!"
"All four of us?" Percy said. "Can he handle it?"
Arion whinnied indignantly.
"All right, no need to be rude," Percy said. "Let's go."
They climbed on, Hazel in front, Frank and Percy balancing precariously behind her, and Daria last because "I've got the arm muscle, Perce.". Frank wrapped his arms around Hazel's waist and it brought some joy into Daria's heart to see that before they all died.
"Run, Arion!" Hazel cried. "To Hubbard Glacier!"
The horse shot across the water, his hooves turning the top of the sea to steam.
Riding Arion was like the calm before the storm. If you could call going five hundred miles an hour calming. He raced over the water at the speed of sound, heating the air around them so that Daria didn't even feel the cold. Making this journey on foot, she never would have felt so brave. On horseback, she couldn't wait to charge into battle.
Frank and Percy didn't look so happy. Their teeth were clenched and their eyeballs were bouncing around in their heads. Frank's cheeks jiggled from the g-force. Percy sat in back, hanging on tight, desperately trying not to push Daria off the horse's rear. Daria hoped that didn't happen. The way Arion was moving, they might not notice she was gone for fifty or sixty miles.
They raced through icy straits, past blue fjords and cliffs with waterfalls spilling into the sea. Arion jumped over a breaching humpback whale and kept galloping, startling a pack of seals off an iceberg.
It seemed like only minutes before they zipped into a narrow bay. The water turned the consistency of shaved ice in blue sticky syrup. Arion came to a halt on a frozen turquoise slab.
A half a mile away stood Hubbard Glacier. Daria, who'd never seen glaciers before, couldn't quite process what she was looking at. Purple snowcapped mountains marched off in either direction, with clouds floating around their middles like fluffy belts. In a massive valley between two of the largest peaks, a ragged wall of ice rose out of the sea, filling the entire gorge. The glacier was blue and white with streaks of black, so that it looked like a hedge of dirty snow left behind on a sidewalk after a snowplow had gone by, only four million times as large.
As soon as Arion stopped, Daria felt the temperature drop. All that ice was sending off waves of cold, turning the bay into the world's largest refrigerator. The eeriest thing was a sound like thunder that rolled across the water.
"What is that?" Daria gazed at the clouds above the glacier. "A storm?"
"No," Hazel said. "Ice cracking and shifting. Millions of tons of ice."
"You mean that thing is breaking up?" Daria asked.
As if on cue, a sheet of ice silently calved off the side of the glacier and crashed into the sea, spraying water and frozen shrapnel several stories high. A millisecond later the sound hit them — a BOOM almost as jarring as Arion hitting the sound barrier.
"We can't get close to that thing!" Frank said.
"We have to," Percy said. "The giant is at the top."
Arion nickered.
"Jeez, Hazel," Percy said, "tell your horse to watch his language."
Hazel tried not to laugh. "What did he say?"
"With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top."
"Without the cursing removed?"
Frank looked incredulous. "I thought the horse couldn't fly!"
This time Arion whinnied so angrily, even Daria could guess he was cursing.
"Dude," Percy told the horse, "I've gotten suspended for saying less than that. Hazel, he promises you'll see what he can do as soon as you give the word."
"Urn, hold on, then, you guys," Hazel said nervously. "Arion, giddyup!"
Arion shot toward the glacier like a runaway rocket, barreling straight across the slush like he wanted to play chicken with the mountain of ice. The air grew colder. The crackling of the ice grew louder. As Arion closed the distance, the glacier loomed so large, Daria got vertigo just trying to take it all in. The side was riddled with crevices and caves, spiked with jagged ridges like ax blades. Pieces were constantly crumbling off — some no larger than snowballs, some the size of houses.
When they were about fifty yards from the base, a thunderclap rattled Daria's bones, and a curtain of ice that would have covered Camp Jupiter calved away and fell toward them.
"Look out!" Frank shouted, which seemed a little unnecessary to Daria.
Arion was way ahead of him. In a burst of speed, he zigzagged through the debris, leaping over chunks of ice and clambering up the face of the glacier.
Percy and Frank, but mostly Percy, both cussed like horses and held on desperately while Hazel wrapped her arms around Arion's neck. Somehow, they managed not to fall off as Arion scaled the cliffs, jumping from foothold to foothold with impossible speed and agility. It was like falling down a mountain in reverse.
Then it was over. Arion stood proudly at the top of a ridge of ice that loomed over the void. The sea was now three hundred feet below them.
Arion whinnied a challenge that echoed off the mountains. Percy didn't translate, but Daria was pretty sure Arion was calling out to any other horses that might be in the bay: Beat that, ya punks!
Then he turned and ran inland across the top of the glacier, leaping a chasm fifty feet across.
"There!" Percy pointed.
The horse stopped. Ahead of them stood a frozen Roman camp like a giant-sized ghastly replica of Camp Jupiter. The trenches bristled with ice spikes. The snow-brick ramparts glared blinding white. Hanging from the guard towers, banners of frozen blue cloth shimmered in the arctic sun.
There was no sign of life. The gates stood wide open. No sentries walked the walls. Still, Daria had an uneasy feeling in her gut. The scariest part was that Daria felt almost at home. It was as if the earth were trying to wake up and consume everything — as if the mountains on either side were begging her to free them.
Arion trotted skittishly.
"Frank," Percy said, "how about we go on foot from here?"
Frank sighed with relief. "Thought you'd never ask."
The three dismounted and took some tentative steps. The ice seemed stable, covered with a fine carpet of snow so that it wasn't too slippery.
Hazel urged Arion forward. Percy, Daria, and Frank walked on either side, swords and bow ready. They approached the gates without being challenged. Daria was trained to spot pits, snares, trip lines, and all sorts of other traps Roman legions had faced for eons in enemy territory, but she saw nothing — just the yawning icy gates and the frozen banners crackling in the wind.
She could see straight down the Via Praetoria. At the crossroads, in front of the snow-brick principia, a tall, dark-robed figure stood, bound in icy chains.
"Thanatos," Hazel murmured. She almost fell off Arion, but Frank caught her and propped her up.
"We've got you," he promised. "Nobody's taking you away."
Daria gripped her swords. First and foremost, she was loyal to the legion, she would put herself in harm's way a thousand times over to protect her family. She knew Gaea was evil, she was so willing to play them like chess pieces. But was her destiny to either kill her own mother or kill her friends? Were those really her only options?
Stay by my side, she had whispered so long ago. And your friends will be spared.
Was it selfish of Daria to want to be a part of the prophecy? To see Jason again? She shook her head. Thinking about that now would get her killed, she had to focus."No defenders? No giant? This has to be a trap."
"Obviously," Frank said. "But I don't think we have a choice."
Before anyone could say anything else, Hazel urged Arion through the gates. The layout was so familiar — cohort barracks, baths, armory. It was an exact replica of Camp Jupiter, except three times as big. Daria felt tiny and insignificant, as if they were moving through a model city constructed by the gods.
They stopped ten feet from the robed figure. Arion cantered back and forth, sensing their disquiet.
"Hello?" Hazel forced out the word. "Mr. Death?"
The hooded figure raised his head.
Instantly, the whole camp stirred to life. Figures in Roman armor emerged from the barracks, the principia, the armory, and the canteen, but they weren't human. Their bodies weren't much more than wisps of black vapor, but they managed to hold together sets of scale armor, greaves, and helmets. Frost-covered swords were strapped to their waists. Pita and dented shields floated in their smoky hands. The plumes on the centurions' helmets were frozen and ragged.
Most of the shades were on foot, but two soldiers burst out of the stables in a golden chariot pulled by ghostly black steeds.
When Arion saw the horses, he stamped the ground in outrage.
Frank gripped his bow. "Yep, here's the trap."
A long one, but I wanted to add some Frank/Daria bonding time.
I'm curious, how would you describe Daria in a sentence? I think it's interesting how everyone perceives her vs. how she views herself.
As always, thanks for reading!
-M