Chapter Six: We Battle the Demented Whale of Doom
Annabeth slept with her head in my lap as I stayed awake throughout the night, stroking her golden-blonde curls. I watched the sun rise and wondered if Apollo saw us from where he sat in the sun chariot. I waved just in case. Thalia had been up since, a habit learned by Hunters from waking up at the crack of dawn every day. Thalia polished her arrows, and looked at Annabeth and me in distaste before going below deck. I guess she wasn't as comfortable around me as I thought. After a couple more hours Annabeth started to stir, and as she sat up and stretched, I wondered what the gods made of last night. Not that I really cared anymore. I just hope that Athena doesn't decide to kill me in my sleep.
We were all pretty much silent, but it was a peaceful quiet. After a while I sensed a powerful presence in the ocean and slowed the speedboat to about twenty knots. "Do you see it?" Annabeth asked, as Thalia came above deck at the sudden change in speed.
"No, but I can feel it," I said. "Right now we're at 36°58'N, 73.5°W. Just another two minutes East and we should be right above the center of Atlantis."
A little while later, Rachel finally woke up. She twisted, cracking her back. "Is there any water on board?" she asked.
"Oh, uh," I thought about it. "I doubt it, gods drink nectar. But I'll check." I went below deck and tried to use my powers to feel where the freshwater was hidden, if there was any. Of course, as my luck went, there was none. I was on the stairs back up to the upper deck when I heard someone scream; it sounded like Annabeth. I ran the rest of the way up the narrow steps, knocking into the walls on either side as our boat was tossed about. Water splashed around my ankles, and I knew the boat was flooding.
When I returned above deck, I saw Thalia shooting a giant serpentine fish in the eye, but for some reason, the arrows were shattering into thousands of splinters on contact.
"What is it?" I yelled, uncapping Riptide.
"Ceto, mother of the Phorcydes!" answered Annabeth, trying to stab the monster's scaly tail. I recalled my lessons on the monster Ceto: she was the daughter of Pontus and Gaia, and was said to be the dangers of the sea, bizarre mutant creatures and unknown terrors combined. She and her husband Phorcys gave birth to a group of monsters called the Phorcydes, which consist of the Gorgons, Ladon the dragon, and the Graeae (the ladies that drive the Gray Sisters Taxi) to name a few. While I was remembering these facts, I swung Riptide in a downward arc, only to have it bounce back. That only seemed to make Ceto madder. She crashed into the starboard side of the boat with her tail so we had to hang on to the port side as it tipped, scattering debris through the air. One hit me in the face and made a slash underneath my eye. Ceto's scales were like an armor, to be able to deflect Riptide without leaving so much as a dent. And there must have been a screen on her eye that had caused Thalia's arrows to break. No wonder this thing was the guard to Atlantis—Atlantis, created by my dad, which used to be ruled by his son the Titan Atlas before the latter was condemned to hold the sky (A curse which I had to endure for a while about a year ago…let me tell you, it isn't fun.). I wonder how Thales got past this thing…and how he was breathing down there. I guess I would find out if he had done either soon enough.
I bore down at an angle, trying to find a chink in the fish's armor. "Hit her under the scales!" I shouted to Annabeth and Thalia. As a skilled Hunter, Thalia was able to get at least two into her target (which is a pretty impressive feat considering Ceto's thrashing), just as Annabeth and I stabbed under another two of the sea monster's head-sized body plates. Ceto shrieked and it was a sound like nails on a blackboard, a thousand times magnified. Then she dissolved into a pool of sand on the surface of the ocean. The intensity of Ceto's dust cloud was great enough to blow us off of the remainder of the boat. Freshly energized by the sea, I was the only one who wasn't breathing heavily as we bobbed in the water (well, they bobbed in their life vests while I floated vertical) and put away our weapons.
Rachel had been wedged in a corner of the boat throughout the fight, but now she spoke, her voice unsteady.
"Wow," she said. "You were really brave." She looked at me when she said this, though I was no braver than Thalia or Annabeth. Just kind of stupid sometimes…ADHD can make people do things like that.
"Not really," I said as I watched the speedboat sinking. I remembered Apollo's Haiku and groaned, wiping the dried blood off my cheek—though the cut should've needed stitches, it had healed after we'd been thrown into the water.
"What is it, Percy?" asked Annabeth. I smiled wryly.
"Nothing…it's just, do you remember what Apollo said about the boat?"
Her forehead crumpled as she comprehended this new issue. "Oh," she said. She looked up. "Well, hopefully the fact that you're a favorite of Apollo will save you." I was confused.
"What do you mean?" I said. She rolled her eyes.
"Oh, yes, I'm sure that Apollo just lets anyone borrow his sun vehicles," said Annabeth sarcastically. The sarcasm didn't hurt as much though as usual.
I considered this and had to admit to myself that maybe Apollo had paid a bit more attention to me than the others. But I dismissed the thought: we had a job to do. "Come on, we have to go down there sometime." The other three unclasped their vests and we began to swim downward.
I willed the currents to speed us deeper, creating a pocket of condensed air bubbles for my friends. Thalia stuck her head in and spoke:
"Do you see it?"
I shook my head. "Not yet." I breathed at an even rate as we sliced through the water. I had to remember that most people couldn't go as far down as I could at the risk of crumpling like one of Grover's tin cans. I did my best to equalize some of the pressure around them. "You guys feeling okay? I'm not the best judge of water pressure."
Annabeth held up the "okay" sign, her index finger and thumb curling together. Rachel nodded and Thalia followed suit. I continued down, creating a shield around them to protect them from the force of the surrounding salt-water. When I spotted the crystalline dome that could only be Atlantis I shot forward like a torpedo, leaving a cyclone of spiraling bubbles in my wake. Willing the others to be dragged along behind me, I heard Rachel and Annabeth screaming at the top of their lungs.
I stopped at the front entrance, a pristine set of doors which had been preserved over time by Poseidon's magic. Up close, I studied the door on which a mural of Poseidon was embossed. Hanging from a leather thong in the painting was a large sand dollar. My dad had given me a sand dollar for my birthday, saying that it would be worth something in the right situation. Is this what he had meant? I reached into my back pocket where I'd been stowing it and held it up against the door; a perfect match. I pressed the sand dollar in its socket and the door began to glow. The iridescent light cast multicolored shadows on anything within a ten-food radius. The door melted in a rainbow of candle wax, and made way for a cavernous foyer the size of Olympus's throne room.