Jasmine's POV

"One on one," Percy challenged Luke. "What are you afraid of?"

Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to kill us hesitated, waiting for his order.

Before he could say anything, Agrius, the bear-man, burst onto the deck leading a flying horse. It was the first pure-black pegasus I'd ever seen, with wings like a giant raven. The pegasus bucked and whinnied. I could understand his thoughts. He was calling Agrius and Luke some names so bad Chiron would've washed his muzzle out with saddle soap. But, I mean, it's not like they didn't deserve it.

"Sir!" Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof. "Your steed is ready!"

Luke kept his eyes on Percy.

"I told you last summer, Percy," he said. "You can't bait me into a fight."

"And you keep avoiding one," he noticed. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"

Luke glanced at his men, and he saw Percy had trapped him. If he backed down now, he would look weak. If he fought Percy, he'd lose valuable time chasing after Clarisse. I was worried, though. I knew how good Luke was at sword-fighting. I may have whooped his ass many times before. Maybe it was because he let me. But there was no way he was going to let me now if I challenged him. And definitely not Percy.

"I'll kill you quickly," he decided, and raised his weapon. Backbiter was a foot longer than Percy's sword. Its blade glinted with an evil gray-and-gold light where the human steel had been melded with celestial bronze. I could almost feel the blade fighting against itself, like two opposing magnets bound together. I didn't know how the blade had been made, but I sensed a tragedy. Someone had died in the process. Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him a round leather-and-bronze shield.

He grinned at Percy wickedly.

"Luke," Annabeth said, "at least give him a shield."

"Sorry, Annabeth," he said. "You bring your own equipment to this party."

The shield was a problem. Fighting two-handed with just a sword gives you more power, which is why I personally used dual blades as my weapon of choice, but fighting one-handed with a shield gives you better defense and versatility. There were more moves, more options, and more ways to kill. For someone who's been as out of shape as Percy is, it's going to be difficult for him to get the upper hand.

I made eye contact with him. "Are you sure about this?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Ok."

I lowered my weapons and backed away, staying next to Will and Toothless just a few feet off to Annabeth and Grover's left.

Luke lunged and almost killed Percy on the first try. His sword went under his arm, slashing through his shirt and grazing his ribs.

Percy jumped back, then counterattacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed his blade away with his shield.

"My, Percy," Luke chided. "You're out of practice."

He went at him again with a swipe to the head. Percy parried, returned with a thrust. Luke sidestepped easily.

When he lunged again, Percy jumped backward into the swimming pool. Good. The water should help gain some extra strength. He spun underwater, creating a funnel cloud, and blasted out of the deep end, straight at Luke's face.

The force of the water knocked him down, spluttering and blinded him. But before Percy could strike, Luke rolled aside and was on his feet again.

Percy attacked and sliced off the edge of his shield, but that didn't even faze him. Luke dropped to a crouch and jabbed at Percy's legs. His jeans were ripped above the knee. He was hurt. I couldn't tell how badly from where I was standing. Luke hacked downward and Percy rolled behind a deck chair. He tried to stand, but his leg wouldn't take the weight.

"Perrrrrcy!" Grover bleated.

He rolled again as Luke's sword slashed the deck chair in half, metal pipes and all.

Percy clawed toward the swimming pool, but I knew he'd never make it. Luke knew it, too. He advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword was tinged with red.

"One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." He looked at Oreius, who was still holding Annabeth and Grover by the necks. "You can eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appetite."

"He-he! He-he!" The bear-man lifted my friends and bared his teeth.

"No!" I screamed.

That's when all hell broke loose. Unfortunately, not by me.

Whish!

A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius's mouth. With a surprised look on his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck.

"Brother!" Agrius wailed. He let the pegasus's reins go slack just long enough for the black steed to kick him in the head and fly away free over Miami Bay.

For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything except watch the bear twins' bodies dissolve into smoke.

Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.

"Ponies!" Tyson cried with delight.

I couldn't believe everything I saw. Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him. There were centaurs with black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses. Some wore brightly colored T-shirts with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER. Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns. One had his face painted like a Comanche warrior and was waving a large Styrofoam hand making a big Number 1. Another was bare-chested and painted entirely green. A third had googly-eye glasses with eyeballs bouncing around on Slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-can-and-straw attachments on either side.

They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and color that for a moment even Luke was stunned. It was hard to tell if they had come to celebrate or attack.

Apparently both. As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool. I laughed so hard. I've been wanting to do something like that to him for over a year now.

His warriors scattered. I couldn't blame them. Facing the hooves of a rearing stallion was scary enough, but when it's a centaur, armed with a bow and whooping it up in a soda-drinking hat, even the bravest warrior would retreat.

"Come get some!" yelled one of the party ponies.

They let loosed with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded against Luke's warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe. They tried to run, only to slip and fall.

Chiron galloped toward Annabeth and Grover, neatly plucked them off the deck, and deposited them on his back.

Percy tried to get up, but his wounded leg wouldn't let him.

Luke was crawling out of the pool.

"Attack, you fools!" he ordered his troops. Somewhere down below deck, a large alarm bell thrummed.

I knew any second we would be swamped by Luke's reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn.

Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.

"Withdraw, brethren!" Chiron said.

"You won't get away with this, horse man!" Luke shouted.

"Jasmine," Will called to me.

I turned and he handed me his bow and one of the custom-made boxing glove arrows. Maybe he asked one of the centaurs to give it to him or he picked it up off the ground. I didn't care which right now. He nodded toward Luke.

I smiled so wide and wrapped my arms around him. "I love you."

I took the items, aimed, and fired. Luke got smacked in the face again and the force was strong enough to knock him down hard in a deck chair.

"This is the best day ever," I claimed.

I gave Will his bow back. I was about to run to Percy's aid when I noticed a palomino centaur hoisted him onto his back. "Dude, get your big friend!"

"Tyson!" Percy yelled. "Come on!"

Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back.

"Dude!" the centaur groaned, almost bucking under Tyson's weight. "Do the words 'low-carb diet' mean anything to you?"

Will and I climbed onto Toothless and we shot into the air.

Luke's warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten stories above the ground. They plummeted toward the docks, and the centaurs hit the asphalt with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as they raced into the streets of downtown Miami.


I have no idea what the Miamians thought as they galloped by.

Toothless did his best to keep up with the centaurs as they picked up speed. In no time, we'd left the city behind. We raced through marshy fields of high grass and ponds and stunted trees.

Finally, we found ourselves in a trailer park at the edge of a lake. The trailers were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting. We were in a centaur camp.

"Dude!" said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. "Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!'"

The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. "That was awesome! Head slam!"

The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with crazy grins on their faces.

Chiron sighed. He set Annabeth and Grover down on a picnic blanket next to Percy and Toothless set me and Will down in the same place. "I really wish my cousins wouldn't slam their heads together. They don't have the brain cells to spare."

"Which is probably why they do that," Will said.

"Chiron," Percy said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. "You saved us."

He gave him a dry smile. "Well now, I couldn't very well let you die, especially since you've cleared my name."

"But how did you know where we were?" Annabeth asked.

"Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami."

"Gee, thanks," Grover mumbled.

"No, no," Chiron said. "I didn't mean . . . Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you, my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Percy's Iris-message and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans."

Obviously, Toothless muttered. Those centaurs really gave him a workout.

I looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to operate a paintball gun. I hoped they knew what they were getting into. Though with their lack of brain cells . . . probably not.

"So what now?" Percy asked Chiron. "We just let Luke sail away? He's got Kronos aboard that ship. Or parts of him, anyway."

Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat Percy's wounds. "I'm afraid, Percy, that today has been something of a draw. We didn't have the strength of numbers to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won."

"But we got the Fleece!" Annabeth said. "Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now."

Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. "You are all true heroes. And as soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs shall carry you."

"You're coming, too?" Percy asked.

"Oh yes, Percy. I'll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not appreciate Dean Martin's music. Besides, I must have some words with Mr. D. There's the rest of the summer to plan. So much training to do. And I want to see . . . I'm curious about the Fleece."

I didn't know exactly what he meant, but it made me worried about what Luke had said: I was going to let you take the Fleece . . . once I was done with it.

Had he just been lying? I'd learned with Kronos there was usually a plan within a plan. The titan lord wasn't called the Crooked One for nothing after all. He had ways of getting people to do what he wanted without them ever realizing his true intentions.

Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with his paintball gun. A blue projectile splattered against one of the centaurs, hurtling him backward into the lake. The centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave Tyson two thumbs up.

"Annabeth," Chiron said, "perhaps you, Jasmine, Will, and Grover would go supervise Tyson and my cousins before they, ah, teach each other too many bad habits?"

Annabeth met his eyes. Some kind of understanding passed between them.

"Sure, Chiron," Annabeth said. "Come on, guys."

"But I don't like paintball," Grover protested.

"Yes, you do." She hoisted Grover to his hooves and led him off toward the campfire.

"I'm going to stay," I told Will.

"I figured you would." He gave me a kiss on the cheek and followed Annabeth.

Chiron finished bandaging Percy's leg. "Percy, I had a talk with Annabeth on the way here. A talk about the prophecy."

Uh-oh, I thought.

"It wasn't her fault," Percy said. "I made her tell me."

Chiron's eyes flickered with irritation. I was sure he was going to chew Percy out, but then his look turned to weariness. "I suppose I could not expect to keep it secret forever."

"No, you couldn't," I agreed.

"So am I the one in the prophecy?" Percy asked.

Chiron tucked his bandages back into his pouch. "I wish I knew, Percy. You're not yet sixteen. For now we must simply train you as best we can, and leave the future to the Fates."

The Fates. I remembered Grover mentioning seeing them with Percy after Percy had dragged him into camp last summer.

"That's what it meant," Percy said.

Chiron and I both frowned.

"That's what what meant?" Chiron asked.

"Last summer," Percy said. "The omen from the Fates, when I saw them snip somebody's life string. I thought it meant I was going to die right away, but it's worse than that. It's got something to do with your prophecy. The death they foretold—it's going to happen when I'm sixteen."

Chiron's tail whisked nervously in the grass. "My boy, you can't be sure of that. We don't even know if the prophecy is about you."

"But there isn't any other half-blood child of the Big Three!"

"That we know of."

"And Kronos is rising. He's going to destroy Mount Olympus!"

"He will try," Chiron agreed. "And Western Civilization along with it, if we don't stop him. But we will stop him. You will not be alone in that fight."

"Definitely not," I agreed.

Percy knew we were trying to make him feel better, but he still seemed distressed. Annabeth had told him that it would come down to one hero. One decision that would save or destroy the West. The Fates had clearly been giving Percy some kind of warning about that. Something terrible was going to happen, either him or to somebody he was close to. I was afraid to find out.

Percy and I may have only known each other about a year now, but I was quite fond of him from our first meeting. I would really hate to lose him now.

"I'm just a kid, Chiron," Percy said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?"

Chiron managed a smile. "'What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."

He pulled an arrow from his quiver and turned the razor-sharp tip so it glinted in the firelight. "Celestial bronze, Percy. An immortal weapon. What would happen if you shot this at a human?"

"Nothing," Percy said. "It would pass right through."

"That's right," he said. "Humans don't exist on the same level as the immortals. They can't even be hurt by our weapons. But you, Percy—you are part god, part human. You live in both worlds. You can be harmed by both, and you can affect both. That's what makes heroes so special. You carry the hopes of humanity into the realm of the eternal. Monsters never die. They are reborn from the chaos and barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization, the very stuff that makes Kronos stronger. They must be defeated again and again, kept at bay. Heroes embody that struggle. You fight the battles humanity must win, every generation, in order to stay human. Do you understand?"

"I . . . I don't know."

"You must try, Percy. Because whether or not you are the child of the prophecy, Kronos thinks you might be. And after today, he will finally despair of turning you to his side. That is the only reason he hasn't killed you yet, you know. As soon as he's sure he can't use you, he will destroy you."

"You talk like you know him."

I raised an eyebrow at Percy. Even I thought he would know that much about Chiron from history. I know he'd always gotten his mythology mixed up, having a hard time keeping all the names and facts straight, but still.

Chiron pursed his lips. "I do know him."

Percy stared at him. "Is that why Mr. D blamed you when the tree was poisoned? Why you said some people don't trust you?"

"Indeed."

"But, Chiron . . . I mean, come on! Why would they think you'd ever betray the camp for Kronos?"

Chiron's eyes were deep and brown, full of thousands of years of sadness. "Percy, remember your training. Remember your study of mythology. What is my connection to the titan lord?"

He thought about it for a moment but shook his head. "You, uh, owe Kronos a favor or something? He spared your life?"

I chuckled. As if Kronos would spare anybody's life.

"Percy," Chiron said, his voice impossibly soft. "The titan Kronos is my father."


Happy New Year's, everyone! Though I highly doubt this year will be better than the last . . .

I managed to just finish another chapter, so let's start this new year with a new chapter! I personally liked this chapter and just had to let Jasmine have fun shooting Luke with a punching arrow, lol.

Please review, and please check out my Discord server! at discord . gg / bMFV9g6 (no spaces). Make sure you let me know who you are!