A Quick Plan
The stars and moon shone balefully over the relatively quiet, calm waves that separated the Adamas from the beach, the water appeared like the furry back of some giant beast, streaked with sideral light when its hairs moved with the neverending breathing of the ocean.
The rowboat moved quietly above the water, which almost looked like some black mirror until a wave broke with a low murmur of crashing water, the seafoam acting almost like a veil covering and uncovering the reflection of the moon and stars. Despite the storm that had more or less delivered the Adamas on the shores of Polyphemus' island, there were no clouds, and the wind was almost completely absent.
Only the mundane breeze typical of any place on the sea occasionally ruffled the hairs of the four people that had decided to try their luck, and the silence quickly grew uncomfortable on Annabeth's shoulders.
The daughter of Athena checked her dagger to make sure it'd move freely from its sheat, her grey eyes darting around as if waiting for an inescapable assault, only to return her attention to Hailey, who sat with her eyes pinned on the beach they would soon reach.
"So, what's the plan?" Annabeth asked both to break the silence and to mentally prepare for what was to come: in her mind, she and Bianca would have had to figure something out as they went, since they knew virtually nothing of Polyphemus' island, but the daughter of Hypno that was apparently the leader of their little expedition had long been part of Icarus' small group of 'officials'. She'd better have a plan.
It wasn't the older girl to answer the daughter of Athena, but the satyr, who rowed with a constancy that saw the rowboat quickly nearing the sandy beach: "Polyphemus sleeps at night in his cave, which he opens and closes with a giant rock."
The answer was... unsatisfactory: "And..?" Bianca edged forward on her seat, her hands nervously fidgeting with the still unfamiliar weight of the celestial bronze sword secured at her hip.
"We'll figure it out." Hailey shrugged without turning, "Either Charles uses some vines to dig through the rock while I do what I can to keep Polyphemus asleep, or we'll need to hide until dawn, and sneak away with the Golden Fleece as soon as it's unguarded."
"What if it's always under guard?" the daughter of Athena couldn't avoid pointing out that particular option, after all, if any demigod's mission could succeed only basing itself on wishful thinking, the past years at sea would have been much different.
The rowboat hit the sandy bottom with a subdued rasping sound, as if it too didn't wish to awaken the trouble that assuredly awaited the demigods and the satyr on the island. Hailey nimbly jumped overboard, her feet landing in the shallow sea with a splash as she moved towards the back of the boat by walking.
"What are you doing now?" Bianca asked with genuine curiosity, the strange behaviour enough to take her mind away from the heart-hammering anticipation that she felt.
"We need to take the boat on the beach," Charles was quick to reply as he copied the movements of the older girl, "but having it turned towards the Adamas will allow for a slightly faster departure, so..."
Annabeth and Bianca exchanged a glance at the thoughtful reasoning before they too jumped off the boat, walking uphill on the fine sand of the beach while they waited for the older half of their group to finish their preparations.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Bianca asked her friend as their eyes attempted to peer through the half-hearted gloom of the night.
Annabeth frowned at the question: "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You wanted to do something because the rest of the crew is..." Bianca hesitated, her head twisting towards the older half of their group which was still busy pushing the rowboat around.
"A bunch of glory-hounds."
"Well, yes," the last to join the Adamas returned her focus to the younger girl, "but Hailey and Charles wanted to do this on the down-low too, and they seem like they know what they're doing."
"I thought you were all for some real action!" Annabeth huffed, crossing her arms while she stared imperiously at the other demigod.
"I am." Bianca was quick to reply, "This kind of thing is... this adventure, the risk, the moving around quietly... it is so freeing!" a wide smile pictured itself on her face, "You have no idea how much I enjoyed each terrifying instant of the storm, even if I could do nothing about it, but, all that I'm saying is that..."
"Use your own words." Annabeth snarked softly, her annoyance at the hesitation of her friend warring with the clear trepidation she could see on her features.
"Yes, well, if your only reason to try and retrieve the Fleece was to spare time and bypass the whole campaign they looked like they were mounting," Bianca took a deep breath before going on, hesitating for an instant, only to find again her determination when her friends' eyes glinted under the gloomy moon, "then you shouldn't have fought so hard to be here with Hailey and Charles, which wanted the same thing."
The younger girl pursed her lips in distaste, uncrossing her arms only for her right to close on her dagger, clenching madly around its hilt, as if drawing strength from it. Her head turned almost like an owl's on her neck as she looked at Hailey and Charles, which were about to finish the preparations for their future departure, and then she turned her whole attention to Bianca, who stepped back when faced with the palpable, sheer... something that irradiated from the daughter of Athena.
"Cyclops are... evil." the certainty in her voice couldn't be denied, and the last girl to join the Adamas found herself simply nodding while she mimicked the movements of her friend by clutching the hilt of her still-sheathed sword, as if to reassure herself.
"They eat lost demigods, they copy their voices to make you leave your hiding place to join your friends." the grey eyes of the younger girl were almost hazed, as if she wasn't seeing the beach at night anymore, but something wholly different.
If nothing else, Bianca was quick on the uptake and realized that Annabeth had some awful memories about them, and this was the girl that managed to stare down anyone on the Adamas despite the abyssal difference in age and experience. So she took a step forward and placed what she hoped was a reassuring hand on the shoulder of the daughter of Athena.
When Bianca squeezed, not quite lightly, not so harshly as to cause pain, Annabeth blinked away the nightmare she had fallen into, her expression flickering for a moment before she turned a thankful smile to her friend: "It's... I know that they terrify me, but, I've been on the Adamas as long as anyone else, and..."
"You wanted to prove yourself."
"More like I want to prove to myself that I'm better than I was." the daughter of Athena shook her head minutely, "I mean, objectively, I've learned loads since the beginning, but, what does it matter, if I cannot face my fears?"
The scraping of feet on the sand alerted the younger half of the group that the satyr and the daughter of Hypno had finished their preparations, and as Bianca and Annabeth turned, their shoulders pushed lightly one against the other, quietly and jokingly promising one the support of the other.
"We're ready." Hailey delivered two pouches each to Bianca and Annabeth, "Small cubes of ambrosia in one, small vials of one of the re-adaptations of Greek Fire, it won't burn like the original, but it has a bit of a 'boom' when the vials are crushed."
Opening one pouch, Bianca looked the few clay vials that looked extremely frail, and gulped. The moment of emotional upheaval with her firend had come and gone, now, everything was back to business: "So," she swallowed her trepidation, trying to focus, "how do we proceed?"
"First, we find Polyphemus' abode, then, we'll figure it out." Charles set out at the head of their small group, his nose twitching madly as he followed the undeniable scent of the Golden Fleece.
The sand under their feet gave way to lush, green grass, and after a while, the slight uphill of the beach turned into a plain that led to soft, rolling hills that almost looked like velvety waves under the light of moon and stars. Even in the quiet of the night, with the scarce visibility that it brought, it was obvious that there was something magical at work.
Annabeth felt it on her skin, almost like a revitalizing tingle, Bianca held back a shiver when the grass under her feet returned to its previous, unbent state with a bounce after each step. While Charles followed the powerful scent of their objective, Hailey was focused, her eyes darting around freely while she kept ready for anything.
Following an instinct that none of the demigods could name, they moved in silence, the murmur of the asleep world around them was the only soundtrack to their mission, not even minutely disturbed by their passing.
From hill to a small stretch of woods, from a bucolic creek that gurgled sleepily in the night, they reached an area where the always-lush grass barely covered the rocky and unforgiving ground, and once the group found the unmistakable tracks of Polyphemus, they simply followed them.
Charles moved sure-footed at a barely restrained power-walk, the intensity of the Fleece's presence heavy on his senses as he led the group of demigods. After maybe five-hundred steps that led the group around a hill and in its moon-cast shadow, they saw it: against one hill whose side appeared to have been flattened by a judicious application of unrestrained violence, there was a titanic rock that easily matched a three-story building.
In a rough spherical shape, the rock was their last obstacle before Polyphemus himself, and it was more or less embedded into the side of the hill. In the slightly darker environment caused by the position of the moon behind the hill, the uneven 'archway' that more or less marked out the closed entrance to the cyclops' abode was almost camouflaged. Pressed rocks and dirt were held in place by the roots of a small outcropping of trees atop of the hill, and even on the more or less vertical wall, the grass had grown, just as lush and lively as the one the demigods had walked over up to that point.
"What now?" Bianca's eyes roamed the side of the hill as she quietly approached the vast rock stopping them from going forward.
"Well, in the Odissey, Polyphemus is the only one strong enough to move it." Annabeth commented without hesitation, her brow furrowed in concentration while she checked the dagger at her side.
"It is lucky then, that we're not Ulysses." Charles spoke idly as he moved about, his hands turned towards the plants as he inhaled deeply.
The snort of Hailey brought everyone's attention on her, who was shaking her head lightly with her hands on her hips: "It's an old joke: if the caveau's door cannot be forced, the wall is an easier target. Charles, how powerful are the trees that keep together the flattened side of the hill, given the presence of the Golden Fleece?"
"Extremely." the satyr's hand landed in one of the large pockets that he had on his short cargo pants before pulling out a Pan's flute, "You're thinking of burrowing a side entrance?"
"If you can do so without awakening Polyphemus." the daughter of Hypno added, "If I can get close enough to him while he's already asleep, then I'll be able to deepen it, it'll give us enough time to sneak away and sail as the moon sets."
Annabeth and Bianca could hardly work through their disbelief, the first, because her vague plan involved an ambush as soon as the cyclops moved his unwieldy door, and the latter because the solution to the danger presented by an eventually awake and enraged Polyphemus had just been sidestepped. The brief disappointment at the lack of a challenge like the ones he had heard narrated on the Adamas his her for a couple of seconds before she remembered the urgency of delivering the Fleece to Icarus.
Hailey smirked at the younger girls while Charles started to softly play his holy instrument: "This isn't our first rodeo, kids: thinking out of the box is the only thing that kept us alive against the man-eating giants, or Circe."
To the soft tune of the satyr's magic blowing through Pan's flute, the plants around the small group seemed to slowly stir, as if awakening from sleep. The murmur of the not far sea and the breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees changed minutely with the shifting sand and dirt that was moved by roots following the will of Charles.
It wasn't a quick, sudden appearance of an opening in the side of the hill, it wasn't a blazing wave of nature or whatever a Hippy would have described it as. Simply, the Fleece-enhanced flora followed the gentle coaxing of one that had been in the presence of Pan himself before he fully faded, and the touch of the lord of the Wild still hovered about his steps.
Charles would be the one to mobilize the other satyrs, to pummel awareness into the minds of mortals. How could any human not see the horror that was damaging the world, poisoning its waters, slowly erasing the biodiversity that made it such a wonderful and rich place? How could they not see that harming Nature was the same as harming themselves? The satyr weaving his determination into his tune lent his very will to the defenseless trees that stretched towards the sky atop of the hill, the One-Who-Found-Pan whispered his need to the grass, which shifted slightly to accommodate for the necessity of the one that played such a sweet, melancholic song.
Roots burrowed from atop of the hill, the overflowing life force that the Fleece granted them more than enough to allow them the power needed. Charles could feel the sheer trust that the ancient Olive Tree placed in him by following his tune, he could hear the delighted defiance of the Maritime Pine that bowed to the will of the One-Who-Found-Pan. The roots clawed their way through the flattened side of the hill, pushing and dodging the compressed mixture of rock and dirt which looked almost like a cliff, and the grass, less individualistic than each of the trees that Charles could feel, shifted just enough as to behave like a net, holding back the mass that the trees had parted. With each second, the roots burrowed, breaking through the rock with the quiet strength of the things that grow.
Invisible to the eyes of the demigods, Charles felt the roots trickle through the main wall of Polyphemus' abode like the beginning of a waterfall, and once the trees' presence had reached the base of the cyclops' hill, almost like the parting of a curtain, the roots pushed aside the stone that they had broken into smaller fragments, and the grass held tightly on the changed soil that sustained it.
With a decreasing volume that almost sounded like a sigh, Charles fell to the ground, his Pan's flute rolling over the grass while he panted for breath, a thick sheen of sweat covering completely his face as his breath came and went in a ragged rhythm that tripped on his clenched teeth.
"Charles!" the scared whisper of Hailey saw her to his side in a split second while the other two girls approached with worry clearly etched on their features, "What's wrong?"
The satyr had been completely absorbed by his own song until a moment before, but now he looked like he had just run for a month without stopping, and Annabeth fancied she could almost hear the frantic beating of his heart.
"T-t-t-too much..." a convulse cough was barely muted by Hailey's hand as she dragged the exhausted satyr from the small opening in the wall of Polyphemus' abode.
"Shh," the oldest demigod present coaxed the satyr, bringing a canteen to his lips and making sure he drank in small sips, "we have time, breathe, then explain."
It took a few minutes, but Charles eventually recovered enough to take deeper and slower breaths, enough to rise to a seated position, even if he looked like death warmed over: "The Fleece... the plants are more alive, but the cave is more solid too, I didn't even notice how much the tune took from me, this was the best I could do, don't count on me for the rest of the week."
Hailey's face turned towards the narrow opening in Polyphemus' wall and her face immediately twisted into a grimace: "I'll never be able to pass in there."
Where her eyes pointed, there was something that resembled a smooth crack in the grass-covered wall: she could maybe fit it sideways, but not enough to have freedom of movement, which was mandatory if she wanted to cross the thick wall. And that was not to mention the height of the opening, which would have forced the older demigod to crawl on one of the inner walls of the passage not unlike a lizard if she was to have any hope to pass.
The proper adventure that the last member of the Adamas had thought she'd miss because of the urgency of Icarus' situation didn't seem so far now: "Well," Bianca walked up to the opening, and confirmed that she would have barely to duck to move under it, "it won't be a problem for Annabeth and I."
The presence of the two much younger, and thus smaller, demigods, now looked much less like a coincidence, and more like a suspicious chain of events. "I dislike when the solution is blatantly provided by the circumstances." Hailey crossed her arms as he thought over the proposal she had just heard, distaste peeling back her lips just enough for a showing of teeth.
"Well, do you have a better idea?" Annabeth's voice didn't waver when she looked at the unofficial boss of their small group, even if her eyes were wide and her dominant hand clutched savagely on the dagger at her waist.
Hailey's grimace worsened: "Annabeth, you're very young, Bianca just joined, we have no idea about her powers..."
Bianca shrugged off her comment by placing a hand on the youngest demigod' shoulder: "I joined Icarus for the adventure, this sounds exactly like what I've signed up for, and Annabeth has been on the Adamas as long as everyone else, has she not? Besides, she's smart."
The daughter of Athena nodded sharply at her friend's support: "And Charles doesn't look like he can walk, never mind run if we need to."
"So, you not only want me to leave you alone to do something so blatantly dangerous, but you also relegate me to delivery-man?" Hailey's eyes flashed dangerously for an instant, before the soft snore of the satyr brought back to the forefront of her mind the entirety of the situation.
"Polyphemus is blind, we have electrical torches, and as long as we don't flash them into the sheep, they'll keep sleeping." Annabeth's logic came once more to tilt the situation in her favor and with a huff, the daughter of Hypno freed herself from her satchel, silently handing it over.
"I'll bring Charles back to the rowboat, then I'll come back." Hailey moved to place the satyr over her back, adjusting to the changed balance before turning towards the younger girls, "I'll flash a torch into the crack of the wall when I return, and I want you to come out if you think you can't make it before then, deal?"
That meant that Bianca and Annabeth had an hour, an hour and a half at most, to move through the opening that they barely fit in, make sure that they wouldn't wake the sheep or the cyclops, find the Fleece, bag it, and making it back. As if it was a run to your regular grocery store.
"Deal." Bianca nodded before Annabeth could protest, and started to drag her towards the crack in the wall that represented their only access to Polyphemus' abode, "Let's move before she changes her mind." she added in a low hiss that managed to get the daughter of Athena to move.
Bianca showed no hesitation in moving forward, and reassured by her friend's determination, Annabeth followed while she swallowed her fear, the darkness soon forcing her to lit a torch in order to see where she placed her feet: "How can you know how to move? It's pitch dark!"
Bianca shrugged while she kept moving: there was something reassuring in the steady presence of the earth above her, and following some instinct that she couldn't name, her feet always found a steady place were to land. Her heart sang in her chest, expectation and the thrill of something so wonderfully new filling her with an energy she could barely contain.
Leaving the baby-sitting in the Lotus, for there she knew her brother was safe with or without her, in order to randomly sail the world? That had been intriguing. Sailing from adventure to adventure, always seeing and doing something new? With the only responsibility towards herself first and foremost? No hollow duty to be followed because each of her comrades was just as capable, if not more, than herself? The challenge of each new adventure coupled with the attempt of becoming better than people that would grow to be her friends?
Bianca had no doubt in her mind that she'd have joined Icarus every day of the week and twice on Sunday. That choice was clear in her mind, without the faintest shade of doubt: he had opened the doors to an impossible world that apparently was her inheritance (and of her brother, but he was too young to be entrusted with the truth and the danger it brought).
The storm had been frightening, and back then she had shivered in doubt, even with Annabeth by her side. But looking back? She didn't regret it, at all. That impossible storm, the training with the daughter of Athena, who proved to be infinitely more mature and capable than her little brother, each of her days on the Adamas... that had been only the starter.
Now, by coincidence, she was leading her first friend into the cave of an infamous cyclops, with the intent of stealing from under his nose a priceless, ancient artifact that would not only heal Icarus, whatever he had to be so ill after the storm, but that could also 'bring back to life' -and Bianca was still baffled by that- another girl which had been turned into a tree years before.
Annabeth, who was constantly reinforcing her own determination by focusing on the good times she had had with Thalia and on all the stuff she had learned since her first day on the Adamas, followed Bianca with a quiet drive that was constantly hammered against by the old nightmare that cyclops represented in her psyche.
Soon however, the quiet murmur of the island at night faded in favour of a rolling, constant, and repetitive sound. It wasn't music, that was for sure: landslides crashing into the curve of a river couldn't be pleasurable to the ear.
"The sea?" Bianca frowned, "We shouldn't be so low."
"It's not the sea." Annabeth replied quietly as she left behind the narrow passage with a last wavering step: "That's him, snoring."
Now that they were fully into the pitch-black cave, the soring of the immense creature reverberated in their ribcages and made their ears almost hurt: only from the sound, the two could tell that the abode of the monster was vast beyond what they had imagined. Without waiting further, the daughter of Athena slipped an electric torch into her hand and pointed it towards the ceiling.
The hand of Bianca on her shoulder tightened minutely, and Annabeth perceived more then saw her nodding.
With a click that got completely lost in the thundering breath of the cyclops, a minuscule beam of light shone on a ceiling that might have been twenty meters above them. Their jaws almost fell on the ground.
If it was a consequence of Charles song or merely the prolonged exposure to the Golden Fleece neither Annabeth nor Bianca could know, but just under the rocky ceiling that was the top of the hill, roots as wide as minivans had burrowed through the rock, and many of them jutted almost as spikes towards the ground.
"I'm going to strangle that satyr." Annabeth's whisper barely reached the ears of Bianca, who nevertheless shook her head, her attention returning to their situation.
"It's a miracle he's still sleeping." Bianca readily agreed, but as she looked at the ceiling, a beginning of an idea took shape in her mind.
The rumble of Polyphemus' snooring made them both wince and turn towards the end of the cave, from where the sound came more strongly. Of course, given the massive lung capacity of the cyclops and the enclosed space, the snore echoed oddly against the walls of stone, and the sound didn't manage to fade before the one-eyed creature took another breath.
Methodically, Annabeth's flashlight revealed the ceiling and the walls of the cave side by side, always carefully inching forward and never shining upon the ground, as neither of the girls wanted to awaken the sheep, who could make enough of a mess when scared as to wake the much scarier Polyphemus.
Ultimately, she lowered the beam of light enough to shine upon a hairy back, which rose up and down with the breathing of their one-eyed enemy.
After having squeezed her eyes to discern in which direction the head should be, Annabeth went ahead and lowered their source of light once more, making it roll down the creature's spine and over the thankfully conservative wool shorts that covered the ass of the beast. Still, nothing golden reflected the light, and Bianca decided to move a bit to the side of the cavern to try and have a better point of view.
From what Bianca could tell, again following the strange instinct that had led her feet during the crossing of the underwhelming tunnel created by Charles, the cave didn't have anything resembling rooms: it was a single, mostly flat open space. Of course, saying open space didn't quite transmit how the two gilr s felt in being in a cave that measured more or less twenty meters to the ceiling and triple that length in-depth, not to speak of the thirty or so meters that separated one side of it from the other.
The rational part of Annabeth's mind that could enjoy architecture as a daughter of Athena simply decided that she wasn't dealing with the space-warping properties of a cyclops' cave, and so her grey eyes managed to remain focused on the task of finding the Fleece.
It was mammal anatomy that allowed her to shine her torchlight just above the still backs of the sleeping sheep that separated the two girls from the likely position of their target.
Bianca finished guiding Annabeth towards one side of the cave while she kept seeking, but without success: "What do you want to bet that he uses the Fleece as a pillow, or something like that?"
The daughter of Athena grimaced in the dark before edging her torchlight towards the back of the cyclops: it wasn't like his only eye was on the nape of his neck, and unless the anatomy of Polyphemus wasn't truly unique even among his misbegotten kind, it meant that it was safe enough to check there from a distance.
Surely enough, a glint of gold answered the searching beam of light of the daughter of Athena, who could almost see her own hope for a quick grab shrivel and die.
Once she confirmed that the faint gold she spotted with her light under the sweaty and unkempt mess of hair that reached the shoulders of their sleeping enemy, she pointed once more the light towards the ceiling, half covering it with her hand so that the girls could have a softer source of light to see each other in order to plan.
"We need to make him move." Bianca stated the obvious without an ounce of shame, and she stared at her younger friend with a smile on her face, as if to say 'I did my part, now it's up to you'.
Annabeth didn't consider for a single instant that the wiser option was likely to turn back and wait for effective reinforcements in the shape of a whole crew of determined and experienced demigods, so her eyes turned immediately towards their own satchels, and she made once more a quick inventory.
Soon enough, her mind parsed through the points she had made in order to achieve her objective without dying, and she turned towards Bianca: "I have a plan, but you won't like it."
AN
Not much to say about this chapter, it was more to work on some exposition of Bianca and Annabeth's characters and instincts, as well as to round out what little is known of Charles and Hailey's thought processes.
I'm aware that between this and the previous chapter, the plot has slowed down considerably: but every time I set out to retrieve the damned Fleece, I feel like the ones doing so deserve more exposition.
In any case, the next chapter should be ready soon, and with that we get started on a much faster cadence of 'events'. I want to leave behind this booooring arc as soon as possible, but the whys and hows of many characters have remained quiet until now, and I wanted to bloat them a little before turning back to Icarus.
So, the next chapter (the part that is already written) actually closes the cyclops' part of the story, and sets up the trigger for the next Arc, you'll see what I mean soon.