Fun fact, traveling across the US was actually worse than I thought it would be. I honestly didn't think that was possible, because my expectations had been pretty low from the beginning, but these monsters really did not give up.

Once again, I felt gratitude for the training Lupa had given me. Without her survival training, I would have died a week ago. Even though my senses and fighting skills were leagues above where I'd been before, half of what I was doing was evading the monsters. And really, stealth had never been something I was good at but at least with Lupa's training I was somewhat competent, and most of the time I could dodge a group.

This was not one of those times.

Of course, it was a group of Hellhounds and Empousae. They were the hardest to evade, their sense of smell was absurdly strong, and I guess I smelled like Roman now too? Apparently, acknowledging my Roman heritage increased my scent.

Lucky me, like always.

At this point, most monsters knew that I had the Curse of Achilles, so they really just tried to overwhelm me. It was surprisingly smart of them, and I had an inkling that Gaea had been the one to direct them to that conclusion. Some monsters had intelligence, but none of them would ever think to not go for the kill. It simply wasn't in their nature.

But that was beside the point right now, because I kind of had to find a way out of this. I knew I could fight them all, but that would leave me exhausted afterwards with the Curse, and I would be forced to sleep here in the middle of the forest instead of somewhere I had actually checked out. I couldn't risk leaving myself so vulnerable, not when I was so close to the coast.

New York was only a couple miles away, and if I got there I could see my mom, I could have somewhere safe to sleep.

I lowered my sword, taking a deep breath. I'd only done this once, and that was during the heat of battle, I hadn't even been thinking of it. But I had too, it was the only solution. Sure, I'd be tired after using my powers, but it wouldn't trigger the Curse, so I could ignore it to make it home. It just had to work.

Of course, something to take notes on for monsters is their nature, their goal. Like I had said before, they really just wanted to kill or eat demigods, and even knowing about the Curse, I'm sure it was hard to not just attack me. And apparently, lowering my sword made me look tasty enough that half the monsters couldn't control it.

Which is why my arm is inside a hellhounds mouth, and I'm getting thrown around like a ragdoll, and all my concentration was thrown out the window. Because yeah, they couldn't cut me, but they could still stretch my limbs, and I'm pretty sure my shoulder was dislocated.

I knew it was against what Lupa had taught me, but being so close to home, so close to seeing my mom again, my logic left and survival became my priority. In a flash, Riptide was in my uninjured hand and through the Hellhound, and I collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily. There was a moment of silence, before I looked up and suddenly I was fighting for my life.

I was on autopilot, my senses telling me where everyone was, my sword cutting through the crowd like butter, dodging the Empousae's arrows as I moved around the monsters, the wind picking up. Rationally, I knew I was lowering my chances by actually fighting, but all my mind could focus on was how close to my mom I was, and that these monsters were in the way.

They would not stop me from seeing my family.

My heart pounded in my head, and as I continued fighting I vaguely registered that once again, I was in the center of my own personal hurricane, pulsing with power as water whipped around and little shocks spurted out of, striking monsters at random.

But somehow, the monsters weren't dwindling. I was killing and killing, but as I jumped over an Empousae, I could see monsters in the distance, my power calling them to my location. In creating my hurricane, I was sending a beacon out to any monsters in the area.

That, was not good news. Not in the slightest, and I knew I'd have to do something drastic if I wanted to survive this.

But that meant Mt. Saint Helens, and I wasn't sure about using my power in that way, not again. It had been catastrophic, and I'd almost caused us to lose the Titan War. So many losses had happened because I had distracted the Gods, because I couldn't control my power…

Wait.

My Power.

I had a crazy idea, I wasn't sure if it would work, Hades I didn't even know if it was possible in mortals, but that didn't matter. I knew I couldn't channel my power into a bigger hurricane, or into the ground. All I would do is make it explode like I had Mt. Saint Helens, once I'd opened that floodgate I wouldn't be able to control how it'd affect what I tried to control.

So instead I'd just use the power, on its own. I'd seen gods do it, throwing their pure power around instead of manipulating the elements. So this time, instead of exploding a volcano, I'd concentrate my power in me, I would become the medium. I wasn't sure what it would do to my body, but I had to trust that my own power would help not harm me.

I had to get this right.

With a shout, I threw out my arms and used my hurricane to push the monsters back before drawing my power in, concentrating on my own body. I could feel it deep inside me, my connection to the sea that I had always barely pulled from, and I began to slowly pull, wrapping the energy around my self. As I pulled, my gut tightened in pain, the strain from having kept a hurricane up for so long already straining my body.

But I had to push through it, I hadn't even brought in the power, I'd simply wrangled the hurricane into my body. Now was for the hard part, and luckily for me the monsters wer regrouping, the new group having arrived and bringing more order into the group. Once again, they were simply there to overwhelm me.

Perfect.

I yanked on the connection I could feel to the sea, and for a moment nothing happened, before suddenly pain rocked my body and I fell to my knee, a burning pain not dissimilar to when I'd sat on my fathers throne running through my body. But like I had then, I worked through it, mentally taking a hold of the power that was rocking my body, and directing it from my gut into the rest of my body. The pain didn't stop, but I could see my body beginning to glow in a slightly sea green light, a slight pulsing that matched my heart beat.

But it wasn't enough.

Whatever I had done was just making me glow, a party trick at best, and I needed to kill this hoard of monsters, not make them want to invite me to their next birthday bash. I needed to push more.

So I did.

I searched through my body for the source of the power, it was much harder once I had begun to flood my body with it, but once I found it I recoiled mentally in shock, because somehow, it was closed. Not slightly shut like I had always kept it, but fully closed, and I couldn't for the life of me fathom why that was. I hadn't wanted it to be that way, but I knew I needed to open it again. I'd never felt this much power run through me in my life, but I knew that it wasn't enough to do what I had wanted, to manifest the power physically.

For that I needed much more, I needed to connect to the sea again. So I used my power to try and open the source to my power, taking it from my limbs and concentrating it again into my gut when the connection lay, and I realised two things.

One, my body couldn't take much more of this, I needed to get this over with soon.

And two, that while my body felt terrible, my mind had never felt more awake, and my senses more sensitive. Every blade of grass was visible, every shift in the monster's muscle registered. ADHD had always meant our demigod senses could go into overdrive to survive, but they had never gotten close to what I was experiencing now, and somehow I knew it was because of the influx of power I had subjected my body to. Something had changed, but I didn't have time to dwell on it, because I'd finally reopened my power.

And suddenly it was all I could do to keep it there, keep it inside me. It was running through me without direction, unlike when I'd had to force it around my body now it was thrumming through me to the beat of my heart. It was yearning to be out, and honestly some of it was getting out. Through the haze that had taken over my vision, I could see wisps of the same sea green glow running out of my body. I was literally leaking power.

But I needed to control it, to direct it into some kind of blast, into something I could use. So like earlier, I began to try and concentrate it in my body, to build it up until I couldn't hold it and let go. Except, something strange began to happen.

I felt like I was getting lighter. Which didn't make sense, if anything such a concentration of power should have been making me heavier. But even beyond that, the faint glow that had been above my skin was now just my skin. I was glowing, and it was getting brighter and brighter. And the power running through my body was only getting greater, and the burning sensation even stronger.

The only thing I could hope to do was keep pushing the power. At this point I couldn't stop it, and I wasn't even sure I could stop whatever was happening to my body. Once again, I had completely lost control of my powers and I had no idea what was going to happen.

Once again another one of my plans completely failed to work, what a surprise.

Slowly, I realised that I was becoming less and less aware of my body. Not like I wasn't thinking of it, but that it simply wasn't there. It was fuzzy, not in the way it was when it was numb, but just that the connection was cutting out.

And the glow was only getting more intense.

Finally looking away from my body, I realised that the monsters closest to me had actually disintegrated, and that the ones behind them looked like they were getting burned. Through sheer dumb luck, whatever was happening to my body was fatal to the monsters, I just had to make sure it wasn't fatal for me.

Easier said than done, especially when I had no idea what was even happening.

I tried to take a step forward, only to realise that what little sense of my limbs I had felt before was completely gone. I looked down, only to freeze, because instead of my legs below me, all I could see was pure energy.

I had burned myself away, and with that realization I began to freak out, the little control I'd maintained sliding away, before a massive boom shook the clearing, and a blinding light took my vision. Suddenly, I was back in my body feeling more tired than I had ever felt in my life, and with all the energy I had left I lifted my head only to drop it in shock.

What had once been a small clearing in a forest was now a massive crater, with no monsters to be seen. I had succeeded.

Smiling, I looked into the sky as my consciousness began to fade. I hadn't caused a death. For the first time, I had accessed the sea and through dumb luck, I had done just what I intended.

Nothing more, nothing less.