Forward

Our tale is one of heartbreak and loss. One you know how it begins and how it ends. My friends are faceless ghosts left to be tortured in the Fields of Punishment, forsaken—not for their own sins—but for the neglect of our parents. Our song isn't the one you want to hear; it's the one that needs to be told. Losers never write history. They fade to urban legends and night terrors. If the only way for us to be remembered is as monsters, then monsters we shall be. And in the night, you will hear us scream.

Luke Castellan saved my life. Not the way you might expect—and I did die several times later, but the Sisyphean feat of keeping me dead is for another story.

-dictations from the ramblings of Jack Flash

Histories of Luke Castellan:

Uncomfortable Beginnings

(or: Plans Never Go How They Should)

While watching the cop car pull up to the school, Luke chewed on his lip. He squeezed the hilt of his sword, suddenly unsure he should have brought any weapons. He'd tied his orange Camp Half-Blood sweatshirt around his waist to hide the blade and logo with the hopes that the color wouldn't attract as much attention if he put it lower on his body. Nothing said subtle like traffic cone orange.

Sometimes, he wondered if their camp director wanted them to get attacked by monsters.

"What, kid, getting cold feet?"

Luke was used to people being shorter than him, but his companion, Phil, was barely at chest height.

Luke looked like he belonged to this school. Phil looked like he should be thrown in jail if he got anywhere near a school. He had an untamed black beard, scraggily black hair, and dark eyes that constantly seemed to seek flaws in every person and institution for some internal mockery.

Another horrific crunch erupted from between Phil's lips, like an eighteen wheeler obliterated a Smart Car inside his mouth.

"Could you chew with your mouth closed?" Luke snapped, unable to handle the foreboding smash of iron again.

"Can you turn down the sun glare on your hair gel?" Phil asked, removing the metal rod from between his lips like a cigarette. "And maybe your panic? You're going to attract monsters for a twenty mile radius with how much you're sweating."

If Phil hadn't been such a skilled keeper, and annoyingly right about the sweat, then Luke would have smacked him. Phil was a satyr—horns, tails, and all—and excellent at sniffing out new demigod blood. Unlike many of his counterparts, Phil had learned to use human technology to his advantage to gain access to unexplained incidents in police reports, newspapers, and magazines.

"The cops aren't exactly inspiring confidence. You think this has something to do with Fai Lan?" Luke asked. He and Phil were waiting by the senior parking lot, by a side exit that Phil said this girl used to skip class. She was running late in her class-skipping, and Luke was wary that the cop car parked in the kiss-and-ride loop had something to do with it.

"Fēi Lín," Phil corrected again. "That's a fast way to get to a girl's heart—mispronouncing her name. And unlikely. She's not exactly known for getting caught, nowadays. Ah, you gotta love when a young, aspiring vagabond finds her way to proper subterfuge—there's our birdie, now."

On cue, someone exited the side doors. The girl was in the middle of taking off a gym shirt, revealing a too-tight, too-short black tank top that a teacher must have made her cover. Her red, pleather pants and black combat boots made him grin. Black bangs and side wisps bobbed around her face as she ran out, head tilting towards the cop car in the kiss-and-ride. She looked like an Asian version of that vampire slayer, Buffy.

Maybe the cops did have something to do with her.

"Remember not to stare at her face," Phil said, taking another bite off the iron rod and munching.

"Not going to be a problem," Luke said, though he hadn't meant to say it out loud. His face warmed. Luke had been around lots of Aphrodite's cabin members and intimately knew how attractive Selena Beauregard was. Especially with that knowledge, this girl was smoking.

"Just remember: she killed the last satyr that came after her. Do. Not. Stare. At. Her. Face," Phil emphasized every word.

She turned to examine the main entrance to the school, so all Luke could discern was a hair bun with… with hair sticks? Or stilettos? They glinted like they were sharp. She was only fifteen feet away now.

Luke had to keep calm. He'd lead plenty of people through Camp Half-Blood, getting them comfortable with the fact that the Greek gods were real. This wasn't even the first time he'd handled someone who had a criminal record. Most of his blood siblings had them. This was, however, the first time he would work with someone that could easily kill him, according to Phil's research.

It was also the first time he'd reached out to someone before Kronos had gotten into their dreams. Luke would prove that he was useful without his master's direction.

"Hey," Luke said in greeting. He stood up tall, shoved his hands in his pockets, and gave her a charming grin, trying to look as harmless as possible. "Fai Lin Davidson?" He decided to use her American last name, since there was no way he'd properly pronounce her other one.

"Dǒng Fēi Lín," Phil muttered under his breath.

"My name is Luke—"

Luke stumbled over his introduction. Fēi Lín glanced in his direction. Her eyes were icy, calculating, and panicked, but that wasn't what distracted him. When Phil had warned that she had scars, Luke assumed her scars would be like his, like the single, massive claw mark that stretched from his forehead down one cheek.

The skin on her face and part of her neck was shriveled, ribbed, and discolored. Her lips looked stretched too thin. One eyelid didn't look like it should be able to close all the way.

Phil elbowed him.

Fortunately, Fēi Lín didn't seem to notice Luke's pause. Her gaze darted back to the front entrance, where two officers escorted someone out.

Although her lack of attention saved him some embarrassment, Luke was annoyed that she ignored him. He, in fact, was the most popular boy at Camp Half-Blood. He wasn't used to being ignored.

"And I'm his rustic side-kick," Phil said with a wry smile. "Phil. As a heads up, I'll gore you if you mention Disney's Hercules."

Luke always enjoyed how ridiculous and pompous that movie made the gods look. Though Disney liked to skirt around the whole incest and abuse thing that was rampant in Greek mythology and it made the Titans look like mindless fiends.

She gaze shot back to them. They narrowed at Phil. "You monsters always pick the worst days to attack," she said, slipping the sharpened hair sticks from her bun. The bun stayed neatly in place, proving they weren't there for aesthetics. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, almost too soft to hear.

Phil took a rapid step backwards.

This was not how this was supposed to go. Luke put his hands up, but kept one close to Backbiter. "Not monsters. He's a satyr. I'm a demigod like you. We're here to help you—"

"If you're here to help me, get that boy away from those cops before they drive away."

Luke had to focus to hear her words. Each one seemed to grow softer and softer until she erupted into a fit of coughs.

"Oh," Phil said, relaxing. He crunched another chunk out of his iron bar. "You're sick. I guess a charm speaker can't charm anyone if she can't speak."

Her eyes narrowed further.

Before Luke could stop her, her palm struck Phil's face. The satyr staggered backwards. Iron spit out his mouth like a Pez dispenser. He barely caught himself on one of the cars, fortunately out of the cops' line of sight.

"Hot damn, she hits hard!" Phil said, clutching his face. Blood seeped between his fingers.

Luke clutched the hilt of Backbiter, ready for another strike.

She didn't attack. Instead, she pointed her finger back at the cops and their escort. "Help him, or it's an auto-no for whatever you want to talk about. Or are you worthless and I need to kill those cops on my own?" Her voice sounded like it should earn a month off school for threat of contaminating everything within a thirty-mile radius. Had he heard her on the phone, he would have thought the threat cute. With those sharpened hair stick in her hands and the ferocity of her gaze, Luke took a step backwards.

Luke didn't want to get involved with the cops. No one at Camp Half-Blood knew he had slipped away. If his face showed up in the news and Chiron found out, or worse, if they were able to connect him to his mother as a runaway…

Luke hated her wording even more: worthless. He'd felt worthless for years. And then he'd messed up his first mission for the false glory of something that had been done before. All the time he'd spent at Camp Half-Blood: worthless.

"You have five seconds to decide, or I'm coming after you as soon as I'm done with those cops," Fēi Lín said. Her panicked eyes darted back to the officers. They were almost to their car. Their escort didn't have handcuffs on. He was just some kid, maybe a junior, who looked dazed as he walked between the cops. "Four…"

Luke did not like being bossed around or being put onto a tight timeline. But, there were so few numbers for the Kronos cause; he needed this girl. Phil said she was incredibly powerful.

'Three—" she said.

"Cause a distraction," Luke commanded Phil. They needed more time to plan.

Phil snorted, pinching his bleeding nose. "Cause a distraction he says. I ain't going back to jail for this, you know that kid?" [footnote 1]

In a motion so quick and precise that Luke couldn't believe a sick person had done it, the girl grabbed Phil, spun him, and tossed him in the direction of the cops, out into the open. A little more power and she could have gone skeet shooting with a satyr.

"Help!" she tried to call out, but her voice broke. She tucked the hair sticks back into her bun.

Luke picked up on the charade immediately. He would find a way to make it up to Phil later, else he knew Phil would threaten to tell Mr. D about him.

"What makes you think it's okay to creep on our school property?" Luke shouted, and took a step towards Phil. He really hoped the school's assigned officer wouldn't come out to see what the fuss was about. Then they'd have three cops to deal with, and they were dedicated to the act now.

The officers noticed the commotion.

They motioned for their escort to stand by the car, then made their way towards Phil, Luke, and Fēi Lín.

"Hey! Break it up!" one as pale as the clouds shouted. He had a tiny, handmade paper flower attached to his breast pocket, like something a kid might give a dad. If the kid liked their dad and got to see him, Luke thought bitterly.

"I told this perv to get lost!" Fēi Lín tried to say. The words came out a hiss. She stomped towards Phil, though her steps were wavering. Luke couldn't tell from her disfigured face, but he thought she was sweating from fever.

If Luke had to guess, the officers were rightfully confused. Phil did look like a creep, but, this girl looked way more threatening than the downed satyr.

"What's going on here?" the other officer, this one with chocolaty skin, asked. This man looked like a heavy-weight boxer with dimples so deeply embedded that they didn't go away in serious mode. Luke was suddenly unsure if he was okay with Fēi Lín's comment about killing them.

The cop put his hands up in an everyone calm down maneuver. Meanwhile, his pale companion had settled one hand on his sidearm, at the ready.

The pale officer was closing in on Phil while the other carefully moved to make Luke and Fēi Lín back up. "What's going on?" he started to repeat.

"What the—"

Behind him, once the pale officer got close, Phil kicked off his boots, revealing two hooves. He proceeded to nail the officer in the head with a solid hoof print. [footnote 2]

The cop flopped over.

As Luke and Fēi Lín's officer went to glance back at his partner, Fēi Lín lunged forward. Within seconds, she had him in a headlock, pinching his neck between her forearm and bicep. Her arm trembled with the effort.

No turning back.

Luke rushed up to snatch away the officer's handcuffs, radio, and gun. The cop kicked Luke backwards with one solid hit to the diagraph.

Luke stumbled back a step, clutching his chest. This was nothing compared to fighting monsters or demigods, but he'd lost a few valuable seconds to gasping.

The cop fumbled for Fēi Lín's forearm. When that failed, he thrashed, trying to buck her off. His eyes and forehead vein were bulging when he elbowed backwards.

This guy had at least a hundred pounds on Fēi Lín, but she didn't flinch when he hit her. His elbow strike nailed her in the ribs. She barely gasped, though Luke didn't know if that was because of lack of breath from her sickness or because of pain tolerance.

Luke gritted his teeth. Was she really going to kill him?

The struggles became weaker as he collapsed to his knees, then his hands. His eyes rolled up and Fēi Lín gently set him onto the pavement.

"Jack!" she called hoarsely. She loosened her hold, though kept the headlock position. Her eyes frantically traced back to the cop car.

The boy by the car approached them slowly. His steps were uncertain, like he wasn't sure if he was really walking here or if he was about to fall off a virtual reality platform.

"Call for him," Fēi Lín said, her voice too soft to be heard at his distance, "Tell him we're real."

Phil didn't hesitate. "Hey! Jak-Jak! We're real and could use your unexplained help!"

"This is getting stupid," Luke said. He shoved the gun into his belt, chucked the radio further into the parking lot, and handcuffed the huge cop. Fēi Lín moved to give him access to the cop's wrists. She unwound a silk ribbon from around her waist and tied it firmly between the cop's teeth, tight enough that his cheeks and the back of his head bulged.

The boy, Jack, leveled with them. He was probably a junior, maybe seventeen or so. His brilliant, red hair was spiky, similar to Luke's blond, except Jack's was long enough to dip against his forehead. His eyes were watery and unfocused like a distant, forgotten dream had left him deeply disturbed. He was as tall as Luke, though unhealthily thin and gangly. The black nails and Coheed and Cambria band shirt gave Luke an annoying sense of nostalgia for one of his old friends.

Slowly, Jack's gaze focused on Fēi Lín with no recognition of the cops, Luke, or Phil. "You're sick," he said in concern. His voice trembled as much as his body did.

If Luke had to guess, these two wouldn't last long as friends once Jack found out that she was a demigod. Mortals tended to run from their brand of crazy. Or, they were dumb and thought it was cool to almost die all the time and be neglected by your godly parent. Luke didn't know what his deal was and didn't care at the moment. They needed to get Fēi Lín and get away from here.

Fēi Lín pointed to the cop Phil had kicked. By now, Phil had sat up and was dusting off his hoof, cursing about ungrateful children under his breath. The pale cop with the flower pin, on the other hand, hadn't moved. Blood trickled onto the ground from his head. Luke couldn't tell if it was from his ear or his mouth.

Luke's stomach clenched. Had they killed someone?

Tales from Mount Othrys is a collection of short stories from the losing side of the Second Titan War. It begins before the events of Lightning Thief and follows the lives of some old favorites and some original characters as they skid into madness and betrayal. I hope you enjoy as you accompany these characters through their journeys. Just be warned: some may be cute; some may be monsters. All of them bite.

Footnotes:

1 Oh gods, I accidentally made Grunkle Stan into a Satyr Stan.

2 Pax wants to know if satyrs have battle "horse" shoes for this occasion.