Inevitable Return of the Great Jeff!
Disclaimer: Percy Jackson belongs to Rick Riordan
The forests of the dryads. The very place where Ouranos bled to death. It was also the location of every immortal feast. It would be a "touristy" location if not for the demons, harpies and of course, the centaurs. They tend to be a mood killer. What's more these were the forests that supplied Luke with his warriors. So they all had to die. Back to my Life!
"We also have a four star restaurant, but that was discrimination. Just because we eat all our meat raw he subtracted half a star. He then subtracted the other half when we ate him," continued the Dryad. "And you ladies are in luck!" he said, pointing to Thalia and Annabeth. "Adonis is here. It's Aphrodite's turn and she took him here."
"Uh, Alex, isn't Adonis dead?" I asked.
"Yeah, technically," said Alex. "But he made a deal with Aphrodite. Half the year he is alive, the other half he is dead and with Hades's wife, Persephone or something."
"Wait, the guy is fooling around with two gods's wives? I asked. Normally I would have applauded this kind of thing but at the moment it seemed unfair.
"Yep. Been going on for about two thousand years," said Alex. "I guess you hate him already?" he asked. "Oh No," he suddenly breathed. "There he is." Alex pointed towards a tall guy.
Annabeth just couldn't stop staring at the guy. I don't know why, but I suddenly felt insanely jealous of the guy. I wanted to rip his carefully gelled hair and beat him to death with it. Looks wise, this guy was like a cross between Johnny Depp and Brad Pit. He was wearing white pants with a sky blue shirt. It was easy to see I wasn't the only guy who wanted to rip his carefully manicured nails out of his fingers and stick them in his eyes. Thalia appeared to be the only girl who wasn't interested in him.
"Yes ladies and gentlemen, oh who am I kidding?" he said in his velvety, soft voice. "Only ladies. The gentlemen are obviously having vivid fantasies about causing bodily harm to my person. There is a down side to being the best looking person in these forests."
"Curse you for raising the bar for the rest of us!" yelled Alex. The dryad didn't even look slightly troubled. I guess he was used to this sort of thing. Or maybe it was the demon face. It's kinda hard to read and so easy to get lost in those soft red eyes, oh crap. Here I go again.
"Yes, Adonis generally has this kind of effect on males," said the dryad. "However, fighting is not permitted. If you do we will kill you. Now, we also have the obvious problem. You do not seem to be on the list."
"List? What List?" asked Alex.
"The list of accepted visitors," explained the dryad. "Due to some unnecessary roughness in the past we must now do background checks on people before they can be allowed entry." Unnecessary roughness? What kind of roughness would a demon consider unnecessary? "It was some half blood known as Luke. He sailed here in a ship. Awful business that. We lost several of our best tourist attractions."
Luke came here? Well, considering my luck, Luke will probably ambush us while we walk through the forests. "I don't get it," said Annabeth. "We are in the middle of America. How did he sail here?" Some fine logic there. Mighty fine logic.
The dryad pursed his lips, which afforded us a wonderful view of two nine inch long fangs. "Well, there is a river that runs through the forest. The river, if I remember correctly is actually the remains of Ouranos' blood. The water does taste lovely, however."
"Right," said Alex. "I'm known as Prometheus and I want in."
The dryad paled. Which is hard when your face is red. " My Lord, while I surely wish to allow you entrance, our company policy clearly states a three week waiting period is required." Wow. He just refused a very angry titan entrance. That's slightly more impressive that the Balrog thing with Gandalf. Or maybe the demon was simply very stupid. "You see my lord, I have been trying really hard to raise my performance rating to excellent and - "
Alex cut him off. Unfortunately, not literally. "Look here. You let us in there or I blow you up. Just tell your boss to go complain to me if he objects. And also tell him, he better pray to the god of his choice that he will no longer be quite so flammable." The dryad let us in.
"The forests of the dryads," said Alex, spreading his arms wide. "Home of evil dryads , sort-of-okay centaurs and annoying harpies. We will bring Ouranos back here, but first..." Alex suddenly ran towards Adonis and punched him in the face. "Right. Now, lets go"
Alex calmly led us through the demon filled forests. The forests, were eary at best. Except for the path we walked on everything was entirely overgrown. The leaves had an unnatural sheen. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe we had made nature loose that sheen. Maybe these forests were the only ones that were still natural. Natural? There was something wrong here. None of the plants had any dead leaves. And not a single leaf came across the path. Everything was perfectly controlled. Almost as if...
Unfortunately my thoughts were interrupted there. By a squirrel carrying carrying a severed human head. The head had flaming red hair and a golden earring. He also looked strangely familiar. "Uh, hello Jeff," I said Nervously.
"Hello Percy," answered Jeff. "As you can see I am astride a squirrel. The reason will dazzle you. See , the forests are neutral grounds so no god may use his powers to gaze upon the forests. So they employ spies to do the watching for them. This squirrel is Zeus's spy."
"So, basically you are using Zeus spy to talk to the person Zeus is spying on?" I asked. Thankfully Thalia and Annabeth hadn't noticed me talking to a severed head.
"No offence but it's the only way to get ahead," said Jeff. "Just kidding. I had planned for you to rip the squirrels tongue out so that he won't talk." The squirrel, fearing for his tounge, ran away and dropped Jeff on the path. Note: It probably was one of the squirrels of the Oracle of Delphi, who could talk. They could also see the future.
I took off my sock and used it to pick Jeff up. "So what do you want to talk about?"
"I'm here to give you a status report" said Jeff. "The Princess Andromeda is currently waiting for you at the river of time. . They have a virtually unbeatable army and Kronos is almost completely regenerated. They also don't know you are here. They think this is the only place they can be safe. You are to go in there , kill everyone of them and send Kronos back to Hades. He now had enough of a body for Hades's punishments to be ... creative. But don't worry. The dead will accompany you"
"Let me get this straight," I said. "You want me to crush a practically unbeatable army."
"Right," said Jeff.
"Deal with the dead you send along."
"Right," said Jeff.
"And destroy a titan who can kill me by merely breathing?"
"Right," said Jeff.
"All right. Me and Alex will go and do that," I said.
"You know Percy, you really haven't been very, perceptive of all this," said Jeff treating me to his sinister smile. "You haven't even began to think who the true betrayer is. You fight following others belief. But what do you believe?" Maybe Jeff had something there but I would never know. Because something shot a crossbow bold and it knocked Jeff off my shoulder. Luke. He had one sword around Annabeth's neck.
"Come on Percy, you didn't think it would be this easy did you?" asked Luke with his jaunty smile. Except it now looked evil. He was wearing the exact same clothes as Adonis.
"Oh, somebody can't think up his own style," I said.
"I hate that bastard!" yelled Luke. "He is unbearable! Whenever I see him I want to rip off his head and make him eat it!"
"Relax man. I hate him too," I said. Even though we were mortal enemies, we both hate Adonis. Which shows... something.
"Where was I?" wondered Luke aloud. "Oh right. Percy try anything and Annabeth loses her head. In the really bad way." Gah! How many "head" jokes am I going to have to take? "Now Percy," said Luke, and a weird lizard man pushed me between the shoulder blades. "Follow."
Luke's warriors weren't what you would call fun lovers. The jostled me and Thalia the whole time. They even subdued Alex but no one really tried to bother him. The Princess Andromeda stood before us in the twilight.
Luke led us unto his ship. The people still seemed to be in their weird hypnotized state. Some kids were playing in the pool while the adults sunbathed. Luke eyed them wearily. "Right everyone. It's curfew!" Everybody stood up and left. Night was falling on the ship. "So everyone is here. How wonderful," said Luke rubbing his hands together. He shot one of his "charming" smiled at Thalia. "Well Thalia, I trust Percy and Annabeth have been filling your head with all sorts of lies. While I may be a traitorous bastard I'm not the one who is kowtowing to the gods here. I'm not the one simply watching as they destroy the world. I'm the only one here who wants it to change. The one that wants to help. The west is rotten to the core. The gods are at its core. And the core is the part you throw away." Luke finished his speech.
Thalia didn't even answer. She was looking at Luke with a look beyond hatred. Alex filled the silence. "What do you want?" he asked. "You don't capture a titan and his merry band of half bloods just to admit you're a scheming bastard."
Luke smiled. "Percy is going to tell us how to free Lord Okeanos. You are going to use your power to finish Kronos's regeneration. You will take us to your tomb and bring him back. Thalia has the option of joining us or dying. Annabeth will be our handy hostage."
Alex smiled thinly. "You're planning has one fatal flaw," said Alex. "We are on water" Ah. I doubt Luke really forgot about it, but I'm not sure if he knew that I spent 1039 smoothed out underworld hours training. The ship started to move uncontrollably as I increased the speed of the waves. The guards and Luke struggled to regain their footing and for a second me, Annabeth and Thalia were safe. That was Alex needed. With three flaming blasts the guys who were holding swords to us were flame grilled. Alex then tried something else. Unfortunately Luke seemed to suspect something like this would happen. Also he didn't seem to acknowledge just how powerful Alex was. So all hell broke loose.
I don't really know what happened to Alex and Annabeth then. All I knew was me and Thalia were thrown to the other side of the boat. Luckily an inflatable boat was there to break Thalia's fall and a hypnotized person was there to break mine. Thalia stood up shakily. "That asshole!" she yelled. Ohhhh! She looked really angry now. "I can't believe he would do that!"
"Calm down," I said irritably. "We are on a cruise ship filled with monsters. We also have a titan to kill. So your old friend has switched sides. Big deal! My own father betrayed me, remember?" I know I sounded mean but I couldn't help it. Thalia looked at me. He eyes made her look hurt and angry at the same time.
"Percy don't act like you have anything to be sad about," she said looking me straight in the eye. "Luke was my friend. My best friend. We did everything together. Your so called father hasn't spent a single day with you. He only bothered claiming you so you could be his stupid weapon." Sure I was hurt by that, but I was used to that. I was even more used to hiding it.
"Come on. We have a Titan to kill." I said, walking towards Luke's stateroom. For some reason Thalia followed me without making a comment.
My dream seemed to be coming true. No, I don't means it's my dream to walk around a ship with Thalia, I'm talking about the dream I had a long time ago on the sea of monsters. I didn't need to ask for directions. Hades had sent his shades to help me. They guided me towards the drawing room. Sure , they were dead spirits but they were also pretty good conversationalists. "Lord Perseus" whispered one shade. "Several guards are in the next corridor. Should we go around them?"
"No problem," I said, drawing Riptide. "We will go right through them." The guards were more of those freaky lizard men. Thalia took silver chains and put them on her wrists. Of course. The shield. Too bad she wouldn't have the time to use it. I caused a wave to gently rock the Princess Andromeda. The next one caused the room to shake worse than comic book guy when he is dancing. The one lizard fell and impaled the lizard guy in front of him.
"You team killing loser!" yelled the other lizard as his friend bled to death. I didn't even bother to break my stride as I drove Riptide though the other lizard guy. The other lizard made the smart choice and ran.
"Here we are," I said, opening the doors to the ballroom. This time I was treated to a grand view of the forests of the dryads. The shades around me went nuts. "Beware, Traps. Trickery." they whispered. Kronos''s sarcophagus glowed with an almost unnatural light. I uncapped riptide, and tried to move. But I couldn't. Some force was holding me back. It gripped my heart and stopped me completely. Like a really bad asthma attack.
"Well, Seaweed Brain?" asked Thalia who was now standing right next to me. "Are we going to stop him or not?" I still couldn't move. "Fine. Leave it to me and Aegis." She tapped her wrists and the shield formed. The shield with medusa's head for an imprint. The shades fled before her shield. Thalia started to walk towards the sarcophagus.
"No!" I tried to warn her, but it was like one of those nightmares where your words get lost in your throat. Thalia pushed open.
"No! It can't be!" yelled Thalia. Kronos started laughing really loudly and evilly. Why do villains always do that? "No!" yelled Thalia again as golden light engulfed her.
I remember thinking that Thalia probably was doomed. But it didn't happen like that. What did happen was that Alex blasted a hole through the stateroom's wall and yanked Thaila out of the light. For the first time I could see what Thalia saw. And it was not pretty. Kronos had started to reform. Started. Not finished. He had both his arms and legs, sure. But he only had half his face and a large chunk was missing from his chest. He spoke in ancient Greek. "Well ,brother" he said addressing Alex. "It's been a long time"
"Not long enough," said Alex. "It was, what, 30 000 years?"
"Yes," answered Kronos. "Thirty thousand years chained to a rock and having your liver eaten. Yes, you must have been having a blast. You really should've sided with me."
"Yes. Chained to a rock as opposed to being chopped into a few hundred pieces and left to rot," said Alex. "There are things worth sacrificing for. I have lost way to much time, but at least I still have my power. The very thing you crave."
Kronos smiled as much as you could smile with only half your head left. "Tell me, brother if I'm so weak would I be able to do this?" Kronos raised one clawed hand and golden light shot flew gently from it. The light gently enclosed Alex. When the light disappeared Alex was laying on the floor. He wasn't moving. Luke chose that moment to come out of his hiding place. He kicked my legs out from under me and smiled coldly at Thalia.
"Now do you see what you are up against? You have no chance," he said with a new, cocky grin. Luke really should pay more attention to girls. Because he didn't seem to notice Annabeth sneaking towards Kronos's open casket. He did however place a really nice boot on my neck. Annabeth then did something I wouldn't have thought of. She threw her bronze knife at Kronos. And it was not pretty. To justify: he would now have to make due with one forth of a smile.
"You!" yelled Luke at Annabeth. "My spy informs me you think you know everything. Well, don't you know you were supposed to die?" Luke raised Backbiter to also snapped his fingers and two men came and grabbed Thalia. He also took his foot off my neck. "I should have done this when you sent me that badly written valentine!" said Luke as he stepped closer.
"You jerk! It took my two hours to write that!" answered Annabeth, looking hurt.
Luke looked really angry now. "Annabeth, you are dyslexic. The word sandy doesn't have a l in it - " Unfortunately Luke was stopped. I put him in an incredible amount of pain. See, Riptide and Timmy were out of reaching distance so I gave him a swift tug of the gonads.
"Percy you scuzbag! I'm going to - " The next tug wasn't exactly swift. It was in slow motion. Add another power to my list of superpowers: The only male who could see that and not flinch. He was somewhat in pain so I grabbed Riptide and bashed his head in with it. The two guards eyed me wearily. Fortunately they were morons. See, to fight me they let go of Thalia. Thalia then had an excellent opportunity to backstab them. She took it.
The shades led us out of the ship quickly and easily. They warned us if any guards were in the corridors and we avoided them easily. The only problem was Alex. He was knocked out, but not exactly light. We were soon outside at the river of time. Alex opened his eyes for a few seconds. "Water." he said. "Water!" I scooped up some water into my hand and then into his mouth. Alex stood up, like nothing had happened. He then took two vials and filled them up with water. "Come on. There isn't much time left." He then started leading us back into the forests. After a few minutes of ill fated conversation we arrived.
The tomb of Ouranos. It was a lot like the ancient Greek architecture. I get see Annabeth looking around as if searching for tips. There were three statues around the central coffin. One of Kronos, one of Zeus and one of Oranos. Alex looked around. "This place was built a lifetime ago. It was built by the giants to try and get Oranos to help them. Unfortunately, Ares and Poseidon discovered it and stopped them from using it. However, they did not destroy the resurrection device. Alex took the two vials and poured them into a small hole. The effect was, shocking. Me, Alex, Annabeth and Thalia were all thrown back into the trees.
I stood up shakily and stared at the figure that stood in the center of the monument. Oranos was in perfect condition , but then again he had a lot more time than Kronos to regenerate. All he need was some of his life blood. And the river off time was created by his life blood. He was an impressive figure. He was wearing blue-gray robes with a staff in one hand and a sword in the other. His eyes were pitch black and he had steel gray hair. I didn't know what else to do. I bowed before the first titan. Annabeth and Thalia were still knocked out. Alex then bowed before him too. They're eyes, firey red and pitch black, met. "Hello Father," said Alex in ancient Greek. Oranos placed his sword on Alex's neck.