Reyna
Reyna thought plummeting through the air at warp speed would be like one of those rollercoasters her sister, Hylla, would write about via golden eagle back at her time as praetor back at Camp Jupiter. Boy was she wrong.
She flapped her arms helplessly as she tried to take in the vastness of the atmosphere, the wind fighting her face at every move of the muscle. The dynamic kinematics of her body twirling in rapid motion prevented her from locating Nico or Coach Hedge-she could only point out vague yet visible blurs that resembled humanistic figures. Why did Nico have to shadow travel them thousands of miles up into the stratosphere? She wasn't afraid of heights, but now, so far up in the air she could barely make out the ground she was plunging to, for the first time in a very long time she wished Jason was by her side.
"A daughter of Bellona has no business being thousands of feet up in the sky," he would remark, with an irresistibly stupid grin that made you hate him and want to kiss him at the same time.
"Romantic sky dates," Reyna said, taking his hands as he flew majestically below her, "I'll have to cross those off my bucket list."
She wrapped her arms around him and dug her face in his chest, not wanting to see anything but the purple tint of the customary Camp Jupiter shirt. She let him have complete control of the situation and could feel warmth humming from his torso like a space heater. She always knew he possessed an aura of power, typical for a son of Jupiter, but up in the sky he radiated a godly sense of strength as to say: This is my realm, back off. She peered into his eyes-stormy clouds of zesty electricity bouncing to and fro-and felt a type of security she hadn't felt since her youth growing up in Puerto Rico.
"Don't worry, I've got-," Jason started, before being rudely interrupted by the cooing of a flock of birds.
Reyna looked around once more: there was no Jason to save her and she was still thousands of feet up in the sky, plunging to an inevitable death. She pummeled through a gathering of birds who were probably not eager to encounter the falling praetor on their annual migration. One dove at her cheek and she felt a nasty cut scrape across her face. She could begin to make out the hard, solid ground underneath her and lamented, "Bellona, could I at least get a more honorable death?"
There was no Jason. No Bellona. No Scipio. If she did not act fast the Athena Parthenos would shatter. Her friends would die and Octavian would lead the Romans into a bloodthirsty war that would be the destruction of both camps.
"Think" Reyna chided to herself, driving her hand into her temple as to recircuit her brain which suddenly didn't want to work. The shadow travel had knocked out her sinuses and gave her a throbbing headache, but those were the least of her problems. She could now make out a blob that looked more burly and buff than your average blob and concluded it to be Coach Hedge. He waved his arms furiously like a child does when making snow angels after a winter storm, hoping that if he did it fast enough he would miraculously start flying.
"Reyna! Nico! Leo! Bufurt! Do something!" Hedge cried out. There was a panic in his voice that Reyna knew was unfamiliar to him, a shrill one only invoked when inches away from death.
Reyna sprung into action as if she were in one of the weekly War Games back at camp. She grasped her toga from behind that was flailing away in the air and tucked it into her boots and now placed herself in spread eagle position, as to give her the look and aerodynamics of a flying squirrel. She now inched forward towards the frantically falling coach, changing her center of gravity as she could feel herself gliding in the atmosphere. She grabbed him by the arm and quickly fastened his body to hers using the rope she kept hidden within her body armor.
"All Romans should keep rope," a Lare once scolded her about in a Senate meeting, many years ago.
Figures, she shrugged and now began to look for the son of Hades. She made out his ghastly silhouette above her, his essence seeming to fade in and out of existence. He moved eerily still and his complexion reeked of death. He was harnessed to the giant statue tumbling horizontally that was a couple of meters below Reyna. She wanted to reach for him and secure him with rope but she knew if she did she would only have a fraction of time to attend to the statue.
"Sacrifices," An old, booming female voice rang in her head. "You once sacrificed your father, now you must decide: the boy or the statue? No matter what you choose, you cannot save both and you will fail."
"Not now, earth mommy," Reyna called back, snapping out of the dreary trance of the primordial mother. She dove towards the statue, silently praying that she could both secure the Athena Parthenos and save her friend. She clung onto the statue and noticed the tarp dangling around the goddess Nike, perched in Athena's hand, and an idea, as brilliant as it was stupid, came to her in nanoseconds of time. She lunged for the tarp and freed it, then set her hands to work.
She was drenched in sweat instantly. She weaved the tarp around the goddess of victory with such dexterity Athena herself would be proud. She fought the wind that resisted her motion at every turn with a newly found strength that only came to demi-gods in life or death moments. They didn't teach intensive knot tying while plummeting in the sky to your death at Camp Jupiter, but if they did, Reyna would probably get a B+. A devilish grin possessed her face as she finished her knot and the tarp flew into the air with only a couple of hundred meters till horrible asphalt death.
Fire, she thought desperately. I need fire.
She patted her body for anything she could strike to make fire but could only salvage her Imperial Gold praetor badge that held her toga together. She tore it off her chest and held it up in the middle of the tarp that spread out in the air like a balloon.
"Oh Goddess Bellona, hear my humble prayers. Fire. Fire! Please?" Reyna held the badge up, offering it as tribute to an immortal being she wasn't sure was even picking up her side of the phone. She could feel the ground coming up, and braced herself for impact-the momentum of the fall would probably tear up her and her friends almost instantaneously.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to witness her last moments on earth. She had lived a painful life and was due a painful death. It was the way all heroes knew inevitably their fate would end, but yet all hoped for a much better fortune.
And when she knew she was dead, she wasn't. The crossed sword and torched tattoo on her forearm scorched her skin with a glowing blood red as she could feel a vigorous flame ignited in her hand, the velocity of her body moving with rapid deceleration. The shrieking and wailing of the Coach became audible again. He clutched the tunic of the wisdom goddess with a vice grip that turned his knuckles the palest shade of white.
"Reyna?" He yelled as he glanced above at me, the statue's velocity coming to a manageable speed. "How?"
"Like it?" Reyna asked, smiling once again. "The world's crappiest makeshift air balloon. Turns out hot air really does rise."
She wiggled her hand as to indicate where the source of the flame came from and marveled at the sheer luck of her circumstances. How the flame did not engulf her entire hand, she had no clue. Death had been so close it was as if Hades himself began taking possession of her soul, and she could hear his groan when the goddess answered her prayer.
At the thought of the death god, her eyes wandered wildly, trying to make out Nico. Her heart pounded ferociously, every pump of blood making her whole body shake. What good is it to save the statue but lose the only way to transport it? A wave of nausea hit her once again and she could feel a sickly expression overtaking her. All of a sudden, a dastardly gust of wind extinguished the flame in her hands as the statue rotated vertically and hit the ground with a small BOOM!
Reyna surveyed their surroundings: Ancient ruins randomly spaced in some plains. The weather was Mediterranean and the place seemed to have some type of relevance that Reyna couldn't place her tongue on. She couldn't pinpoint where exactly they had landed, yet all she could care about is that rotten Di Angelo kid.
"Hedge? Nico?" She called.
"Marco. Polo." said the voice of a certain angry faun from the ground. Reyna glanced below and saw that he had cut himself from the rope and now began to prance across the plains, picking up drachmas that had slipped away from our little sky-diving trip.
"The boy, Nico? Is he alright?" Reyna waited for a brief moment, her voice faltering with every syllable. Her olive skin felt like it was losing its color by the second.
"Just a couple of bruises. Nothing some quick nectar can't fix"
Reyna flushed all her negative thoughts as she sighed in relief and marked her mental scoreboard: Reyna 1, Gaia 0. She let go of the statue, hoping to hit the grass some thirty feet below her when she realized she was suspended in mid air. In the fluttering chaos of the free fall, her toga had gotten tied up against the victory goddess and now she hung by her shoulder armor. Another cool breeze of air pressed softly against her skin and she realized she was completely exposed.
"You've got to be kidding me," she chided, moving her arms to cover her exposed body. All she had on underneath her toga was a black bra and matching panties. Her face turned dangerously hot. She looked frantically for her spear, so she could cut herself down, but it lay on the ground some 30-35 feet beneath her. Her Breastplate, belt and canteen all lay somewhere out of sight. Despite her furious kicking and her vulgar Spanish swears, she remained dangling through the air like a disco.
Her memory rewound back to her days in San Jose: the elegant singing of Spanish, complemented with thunderous bongos and blazing horns of brass instruments that would fill the streets with rhythm. All the neighborhood kids would flock to the Calle San Jose with their palo (sticks) to participate in the ceremonies. Reyna would grab a loose piece of cloth and race Hylla out of the house, her mind fixated on one festivity in particular: the piñata.
Now in a cruel twist of fate, Reyna was the piñata and if Gaia grew arms and started smacking her, she didn't know how long she could bear before passing away from the sheer embarrassment.
"GODS OF OLYMPUS," She raged. "I'LL CURSE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU ONE BY ONE. JÚPITER. PUTA MADRE. HIJO DE PERRA-"
"Reyna, stop that!" The coach begged, somewhere below her. She stopped herself to locate him but could only see his furry behind as he crouched down for something out of her sight. She was relieved that the Coach had not spotted her half nude, suspended in mid air but she knew desperately that she needed his help.
"Hedge!" She yelped, throwing her praetor badge like a fastball with such accuracy and velocity that would impress a major league coach. It hit his oversized size head with a poof sound.
"Turn around," She pleaded. "But close your eyes-"
He turned around with an innate reflex faster than anything a human could do.
"Reyna?" He started, his voice giddy from the sight his eyes could barely comprehend. "I know the Romans had a big thing for nudity, but this? Such a fashion statement."
"Don't be stupid! My toga-" She tugged at it but it wouldn't budge. She could see the stirring of creatures—dryads and karpoi she guessed—from the landscape draped around them, possibly in awe of the forty foot statue that had dropped in the middle of their ecosystem. This was probably the most interesting thing to have happened to them in their entire lives and the dangling daughter of Bellona was a cherry on top.
She could feel the coach staring a little too hard at her which did numbers to her already traumatizing chronic anxiety. She hated when people gazed at her body, especially male gaze. The body wasn't the problem, puberty had done her well: her pelvis had widened to the point where her legs grazed each other when she walked. Her arms had become fuller, more intimidating. The constant breakouts were a tiresome battle, but ever since the fall out of the Titan War, she endured so much stress that not even acne cared to grow on her. The constant activities and preparation at camp gave her chiseled figure and she could feel her abdominal muscles glimmering in the sun. Plus she had slight curves growing, which always drew pervy looks at the bathhouse. She sheathed her body most of the time with her toga, not to be insecure of her shape but awfully carefully, as during her time dealing with crude pirates at Circe's Island, she knew the danger of letting people (men) constantly judge and treat you as a body with assets and not an actual person.
Coach Hedge put thumbs and index fingers together to make a rectangle, as if he was mimicking a camera shot.
"Smile!" He goaded.
Reyna did not smile. She rattled off a couple of curses that would've gotten a bar of soap in her mouth back in her hometown. The thought of anyone knowing that a praetor of Rome helplessly swayed back and forth in the air like a yo-yo made her clench her teeth. No one must ever know of this she swore to herself.
"Help? PLEASE!"
"On it!" The coach took Nico's Stygian Iron sword and squinted his eyes, as if he was trying to find the perfect angle to throw it at.
"COACH! DON'T YOU DARE!"
Coach Hedge stopped abruptly. He glanced at Reyna whose hands jittered back and forth, the universal symbol for Don't. The Coach looked back at the sword and then at Reyna. And repeated it once more, putting the final piece together in the puzzle of Please Don't Skewer Your Legion's Praetor.
"Right. How silly of me. Coming!" He said eagerly, jumping on the statue to begin his nimble climb upwards. She could see the strength coarse through his limbs and he willed himself up, failing to miss any steps or even momentarily catch his breath. She could never imagine any faun back at her camp being so shredded or even attempting to climb up anything that didn't lead to money at the top. She jotted down another mental note for Camp Jupiter amendments: Introduce faun rock climbing courses.
The coach got level with the goddess Nike in no time and swung the blade with his freehand yet, being so caught up with himself, that he forgot to grab Reyna. "Yeah Gleeson!" He began to chant prematurely. "Which satyr does it better than you?"
The disappointment she felt swiftly wavered as Reyna realized she was now in flight, her instincts willing her to action. Her body twirled and somersaulted gracefully on its own and she landed on her feet with a quiet thud. She glanced around, half-heartedly expecting to be absorbed in the applause of the audience and the judges to give her a perfect score. When the imaginary audience didn't she took a bow in discontent and located her spear which laid at the anterior of the statue. The coach fell to the ground nimbly behind and caught up to her, and if not for his superhuman satyr-like reflexes, he would've been impaled on spot.
"Watch it! Gleeson Hedge, good guy coming through. Would prefer to not be pierced to death, if possible."
"Don't sneak up on me like that," she jawed back. "Where is Nico?"
Coach Hedge hurried in front and led her to the side of the statue that hadn't been partially submerged into the Earth. Nico layed dangerously still in a tiny crater made from the impact of the fall. How plummeting to his death though the sky didn't instantly wake him up Reyna had no idea. The headache she'd gotten from the shadow travel seemed miniscule to what it took from Nico-his entire life form had been drawn from.
Nico's mouth was covered with nectar, as if Hedge had tried to force feed him and his stomach rejected it. She placed her hands on his wrist and felt the faintest of pulses yet his aura reeked of death, more than what was expected from your average son of Hades.
"The nectar. He puked it back," the coach groaned, pointing out the newly stained patch on his orange T-Shirt.
Reyna lurched for her canteen that was such a couple of feet from the groove Nico made in the ground. She noticed all the plants in the nearest perimeter began to die, almost certain that his presence had upset the habitat's equilibrium. She uncapped her canteen and wiped away Nico's vomit with his aviator jacket. If nectar couldn't do the job, what good could unicorn drought do, she pondered, yet poured a drizzle of the liquid into his mouth. Instantly, he croaked and crawled into the fetal position, still sleeping. His skin color slowly returned back to him.
"He looks so cute when he's asleep, doesn't he?" Coach Hedge noted, giving Reyna a nudge on the shoulder.
She was happy to see him finally at peace-never was there a time at Camp Jupiter where he didn't keep a stern, mysterious look on his face like the burden on the whole world was always on his shoulders. Then Reyna realized she was still half naked. "Okay new prerogative: find Reyna some new clothes."
The coach began to take off his shirt but Reyna quickly shot that idea down. She could tell they were very far from any Internet connection or rest-down stop. Romans had lived their entire lives training to be resourceful for times like these, yet none of her training prepared her to do anything in her lingerie. Plummeting to death? Yes. Hot Air Balloons? Some scientists covered it every now and then. How to survive in the middle of nowhere with your panties? She'd have to add that to her amendments.
"I don't suppose you have another option," Reyna asked.
The coach began rummaging through his camping supplies. He pulled out a random assortment of sports equipment, each more odd than the last. Shin guards, an arm brace, football shoulder pads and a speedo. Hades would have to freeze over before she ever wore a speedo kept rotting away in the coach's rucksack. She had a strange intuition that some kind of resource was near, yet, without Nico to shadow travel, there was no way Reyna would set out for shelter looking like this.
Her body seemed to captivate all the attention from the sun. Had the circumstances been different, she would've felt so empowering. She was truly coming to her own as a woman. Yet she wanted nothing more than in the world to be unseen right now.
Reyna took off her shoulder armor and sank to the ground, sighing heavily. She gave a quick look back at the goddess Nike, hoping she could salvage her ripped toga, yet it had disappeared in the wind. Reyna made another promise that she would choke out every single wind god who seemed to find satisfaction in her suffering. She felt the cut on her cheek sting, poured some unicorn drought in her mouth and then flung the canteen away angrily. Gaia couldn't kill her with monsters or impossible situations so now she insisted on slowly humiliating her to death.
Hedge came over to her, fiddling with a baseball hat that read Wilderness School. "I can go out and find you something manageable. With Nico out cold, we have time to relax."
Relax was a word no demi-god ever spoke of. She recalled a time where Jason had said something similar during a boat trip in the San Francisco Bay and consequently they were attacked by sea monsters. "What happens if you get lost? Or run into something you can't defeat? This is ancient territory, anything could be lurking-"
"Me?" The coach retorted, gleefully pointing to himself. "Reyna, I am the strongest satyr living. You should be more concerned with the poor monsters that'll get pummeled to death if they have the misfortune of getting in my way." He held out his club and waved it around, mimicking what he would do to the monsters.
Reyna didn't feel reassured but they didn't have any other options. The coach took a gander in every direction, making sure to sniff as much air as possible. When he faced the opposite of Reyna, his face twitched and he took off majestically into the ruins. As he continued on his path, Reyna caught an alarming smell-a pheromone that reminded her of too much of earth. A chant rose in her ears, flinging back and forth through her basilar membrane, of shrieks and cries in a language that sounded primordial.
Gaia, her mind raced. Sending Hedge off had been a trap. She was now all alone, at the mercy of the Earth mother.
She lunged to her feet but the earth began to swallow her whole. Weeds lashed onto her from every direction and pulled her towards the core. She tried to use her spear, but with her wrists entrapped, she was helpless. Reyna felt her body beginning to sink, at any moment the ground would cave in and she would die. She had tried to yell for help-for Coach Hedge, for Nico, for Bellona, for anyone-however weeds now filled her mouth and she could taste the dirty soil. She tried to summon her dogs, Aurum and Argentum, but the enchantment the earth sang interfered with her brain frequencies-she could only think about her impending death. Gaia had given them a small victory, yet now threatened to throw their entire mission in peril.
Chess not checkers, Hylla would always tell her.
Reyna threw her arms in the air with all her strength, trying to resist the pulling tension of weeds. She waved her hands to no avail as the earth devoured her whole and she felt her body move lifelessly through the ground.
