PERI'S POV
Now, I knew the earth hated me.
But it still came as a shock when the mountains themselves reared up and launched an assault on us. During the third attack, Hazel almost ate a boulder. She had made the mistake of looking over the rail, and the huge rock passed so close overhead it blew her curly hair out of her eyes.
"Look alive, Hazel!" I called, ringing the alarm bells. "We're under attack! Again."
"Hard to port!" Nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship.
Back at the helm, Leo yanked the wheel. The Argo II veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives.
CRACK!
The foremast collapsed—sail, spars, and Nico all crashing to the deck. The boulder tumbled off into the fog like it had important business elsewhere.
"Nico!" Hazel scrambled over to him as Leo brought the ship level.
"I'm fine," Nico muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs.
She helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow beside me. The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below us: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit was a mountain god—one of the numina montanum, Jason had called them. Or ourae, in Greek.
Whatever you called them, they were nasty.
Like the others we had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt. He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular, with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair, and a wild look in his eyes, like a crazy hermit. He bellowed something I didn't understand, but it obviously wasn't welcoming. With his bare hands, he pried another chunk of rock from his mountain and began shaping it into a ball.
The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again, other numina answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys.
"Stupid rock gods!" Leo yelled from the helm. "That's the third time I've had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?"
Nico frowned. "Masts are from trees."
"That's not the point!" Leo snatched up one of his controls, rigged from a Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. A Celestial Bronze cannon rose. I had just enough time to cover my ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtled away into the fog.
A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roars of mountain gods.
"Ha!" Leo yelled.
"Sweet!" I grinned at the chaos. "Nice shot."
Unfortunately, our victory was short lived. Leo's newest weapon had only annoyed the numina. Another boulder whistled through the air off to our starboard side.
Nico yelled, "Get us out of here!"
"On it!" I flexed my fingers, feeling a warm tingle in my extremities.
The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. The Argo II picked up speed, retreating northwest, as we'd been doing for the past two days.
I didn't relax until we were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below us, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside—rolling green hills and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. I could almost imagine I was sailing home to St. Mary's or even Camp Jupiter.
A wistful sigh escaped my lips.
How I longed to go back to Camp Jupiter or even travel to Camp Half-Blood. A part of me wished that we could've just stayed in Camp Jupiter forever, happy and oblivious. But a bigger part of me knew that it was pointless to wish for such things. If we didn't succeed, there would be no Camp Jupiter or Camp Half-Blood for anyone ever again. No demigods or mortals would be safe.
It was a warm summer morning, but I shivered.
Hazel and I stood on the quarterdeck as Nico picked mast splinters out of his arms and Leo punched buttons on the ship's console.
"Well, that was sucktastic," Leo's voice was gruff. "Should I wake the others?"
I was tempted to say yes, but the other crew members had taken the night shift and had earned their rest. They were exhausted from defending the ship. Every few hours, it seemed, some Roman monster had decided the Argo II looked like a tasty treat.
A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have believed that anyone could sleep through a numina attack, but now I imagined my friends were still snoring away belowdecks. Whenever I got a chance to crash, I slept like a coma patient.
"They need rest," I said finally.
Hazel nodded in agreement. "We'll have to figure out another way on our own."
"Huh." Leo scowled at his monitor. In his tattered work shirt and grease-splattered jeans, he looked like he'd just lost a wrestling match with a locomotive.
Ever since our friends Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus, Leo had been working almost nonstop. He'd been acting angrier and even more driven than usual. I was growing more and more worried about him each day. Whenever our eyes met, he'd give me a reassuring smile, but it didn't ever reach his eyes.
"Another way," Leo muttered thoughtfully. "Do you see one?"
On his monitor glowed a map of Italy. The Apennine Mountains ran down the middle of the boot-shaped country. A green dot for the Argo II blinked on the western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. Our path should have been simple. We needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find an old temple called the House of Hades.
To reach Epirus, all we had to do was go straight east—over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn't worked out that way. Each time we tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked.
For the past two days we'd skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no luck. The numina montanum were sons of Gaea, everyone's least favorite goddess. That made them very determined enemies. The Argo II couldn't fly high enough to avoid their attacks; and even with all its defenses, the ship couldn't make it across the range without being smashed to pieces.
"It's our fault," Hazel said glumly. "Nico's and mine. The numina can sense us."
She glanced at her half brother. Since we'd rescued him from the giants, he'd started to regain his strength, but he was still painfully thin. His black shirt and jeans hung off his skeletal frame. Long dark hair framed his sunken eyes. His olive complexion had turned a sickly greenish white, like the color of tree sap.
In human years, he was barely fourteen, just a year older than Hazel, but that didn't tell the whole story. Like Hazel, Nico di Angelo was a demigod from another era. He radiated a kind of old energy—a melancholy that came from knowing he didn't belong in the modern world. His gothic appearance didn't frighten me, but the look of utter despair in his eyes shook me to my very core. I did my best to avoid his gaze whenever possible.
Nico gripped the hilt of his Stygian Iron sword. "Earth spirits don't like children of the Underworld. That's true. We get under their skin—literally. But I think the numina could sense this ship anyway. We're carrying the Athena Parthenos. That thing is like a magical beacon."
I sniffed, inhaling the scent of the massive statue that took up most of the hold. We'd sacrificed so much saving it from the cavern under Rome; but we had no idea what to do with it. So far the only thing it seemed to be good for was alerting more monsters to our presence.
Leo traced his finger down the map of Italy. "So crossing the mountains is out. Thing is, they go a long way in either direction."
"We could go by sea," I suggested, but I knew it sounded halfhearted especially coming from me, Little Miss Can't Swim. "Sail around the southern tip of Italy."
"That's a long way," Nico said. "Plus, we don't have…" His voice cracked. "You know…our sea expert, Percy."
The name hung in the air like an impending storm.
I took a shaky breath to steady my nerves and gripped the ship's railing tightly. Percy and Annabeth were still alive. I knew that in my heart, and the children of Pluto had confirmed it a few times. We could still help them if we could get to the House of Hades.
"What about continuing north?" Hazel asked. "There has to be a break in the mountains, or something."
Leo fiddled with the bronze Archimedes sphere that he'd installed on the console—his newest and most dangerous toy. Every time Hazel looked at the thing, her golden irises widened with concern. She'd confided in me that she was worried that Leo would turn the wrong combination on the sphere and accidentally eject us all from the deck, or blow up the ship, or turn the Argo II into a giant toaster. At the time I found her fears to be silly and misguided; now, though, I was starting to think that one could never be too careful.
Fortunately, Leo seemed to know what he was doing with that Celestial Bronze basketball thing. The sphere grew a camera lens and projected a 3-D image of the Apennine Mountains above the console.
"I dunno." Leo examined the hologram. "I don't see any good passes to the north. But I like that idea better than backtracking south. I'm done with Rome."
No one argued with that. Rome had not been a good experience.
"Whatever we do," Nico said, "we have to hurry. Every day that Annabeth and Percy are in Tartarus…"
He didn't need to finish. We had to hope Percy and Annabeth could survive long enough to find the Tartarus side of the Doors of Death. Then, assuming the Argo II could reach the House of Hades, we might be able to open the Doors on the mortal side, save our friends, and seal the entrance, stopping Gaea's forces from being reincarnated in the mortal world over and over.
Yes…nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Nico scowled at the Italian countryside below. "Maybe we should wake the others. This decision affects us all."
"No," Hazel said firmly. "We can find a solution."
Leo and I exchanged a glance.
Here it comes. Another one of Hazel's power trips. Despite being the youngest demigod, more and more frequently she had insisted on playing leader. I'll admit, without Percy and Annabeth our crew was lacking in its newfound cohesion. We'd been arguing more than usual and were having trouble making decisions, but still— Hazel as the leader?! It was difficult enough to take her seriously when her spatha was almost half her size, but this was getting ridiculous.
"We need some creative thinking," Hazel said. "Another way to cross those mountains, or a way to hide ourselves from the numina."
Nico sighed. "If I was on my own, I could shadow-travel. But that won't work for an entire ship. And honestly, I'm not sure I have the strength to even transport myself anymore."
"I could maybe rig some kind of camouflage," Leo said, "like a smoke screen to hide us in the clouds." He didn't sound very enthusiastic.
Silence hung in the air as we all brainstormed. There's gotta be something that we can do. My eyes fell to the rolling farmland below. An involuntary shudder went through me as I recalled the last time I was on the ground, trapped underground. I still couldn't shake the voice of the earth goddess, taunting menacingly in my mind.
Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to conjure any Celestial Bronze or Imperial Gold weapons for the past two days. That fact somehow terrified me more than suffocating in Gaea's domain had. Guilt racked my brain because I haven't confessed this secret to anyone yet, not even Leo. I wanted to tell him, but I just didn't know how to start. Deep down, I just couldn't accept how powerless I felt.
Step right up everybody and see the wack ass Omega-Blood! Toss her in the ocean and watch her sink like a rock!
Goosebumps erupted on my exposed forearms, and I shook my head roughly at my thoughts. It wasn't true that I didn't have any powers, because I was still able to communicate with Festus and manipulate the Argo. Plus, I could still sense and smell magical metals even if I couldn't conjure them forth anymore. Maybe I was thinking about things the wrong way... maybe I hadn't lost my powers but instead they had changed or morphed somehow and I needed to rediscover them all over again.
"Arion?" Hazel gasped suddenly.
At the edge of the horizon, a flicker of movement caught my eye—something small and beige racing across the fields at incredible speed, leaving a vapor trail like a plane's.
"What?" Nico asked.
Leo let out a happy whoop as the dust cloud got closer. "It's her horse, man! You missed that whole part.
A smile tugged at the corner of my lips. "We haven't seen him since Kansas!"
Hazel laughed—the first time she'd laughed in days. It felt so good to see her smile again. I was excited to see her magical horse as well.
About a mile to the north, the small beige dot circled a hill and stopped at the summit. He was difficult to make out, but when the horse reared and whinnied, the sound carried all the way to the Argo II. I had no doubt—it was Arion.
"We have to meet him," she said. "He's here to help."
"Yeah, okay." Leo scratched his head. "But, uh, we talked about not landing the ship on the ground anymore, remember? You know, with Gaea wanting to destroy us and all."
"Just get me close, and I'll use the rope ladder." Hazel's eyes twinkled with something akin to hope. "I think Arion wants to tell me something."
I've never seen Hazel so happy.
As soon as she reached the ground, she ran to Arion and threw her arms around him. "I missed you!" She pressed her face into the horse's warm neck, which smelled of sea salt and apples. "Where have you been?"
Arion nickered. I wished I could speak Horse like Percy could, but I got the general idea. Arion sounded impatient, as if saying, No time for sentiment, girl! Come on!
"You want me to go with you?" Hazel guessed.
"Hazel!" Nico called down to her from the ship. "What's going on?"
"It's fine!" She crouched down and summoned a gold nugget from the earth.
I noticed she was getting better at controlling her power. Precious stones hardly ever popped up around her by accident anymore, and pulling gold from the ground seemed to come to her easily. A bitter part of me wondered if she had somehow absorbed my abilities, but I quickly dismissed the crazy idea.
She fed Arion the nugget…his favorite snack. Then she smiled up at us, who were watching her from the top of the ladder a hundred feet above. "Arion wants to take me somewhere."
The three of us exchanged a nervous glance.
"Uh…" Leo pointed north. "Please tell me he's not taking you into that?"
Hazel had been so focused on Arion, she hadn't noticed the disturbance. A mile away, on the crest of the next hill, a storm had gathered over some old stone ruins—maybe the remains of a Roman temple or a fortress. A funnel cloud snaked its way down toward the hill like an inky black finger.
Hazel was biting her lip so hard that I was worried she'd draw blood. She looked at Arion. "You want to go there?"
Arion whinnied, as if to say, Uh, duh!
I shook my head, eyes locked on the angry clouds in the distance. "There's something off about that storm, Hazel."
"I'll be okay!" she called up to us. "Stay put and wait for me."
"Wait for how long?" Nico asked. "What if you don't come back?"
"Don't worry, I will," she promised, despite the unsure look in her eyes.
She spurred Arion, and they shot across the countryside, heading straight for the growing tornado.