XLII

Leo

(A/N: New Chapter. Much Enjoy. Such Review.)

Leo paced around the ship, slightly agitated. He was waiting for Festus' report on the astrolabe. He had spent nearly the entire night trying to connect it to Festus' navigation system, hoping that it would work out. He had made some interesting improvements to the system, though, including, but not limited to, extra-precise navigation, allowing the use of Apple Maps, and an all-new 'Party Mode', where Festus would attempt to locate the ten nearest ongoing parties relative to their current location, randomly select one, and blast a shower of confetti onto them. Sure, it was weird, but weird was what he did best.

Finally, the silence ended. Leo watched as the words appeared on-screen, slowly but surely. Oh, and on a side note, he had also done away with the morse code and instead added a graphical interface to him, therefore making it easier to read everything. If he needed a quick rundown of the system, Festus could do it. He'd also added some inflight entertainment by hacking into a specific American Airlines flight. He'd already finished watching the entire Harry Potter series while working.

Anyways, a map flashed up onto the screen, with bleeping dots representing cities. A constantly pulsing circle appeared onscreen, and what Leo saw was kind of shocking. He nearly fell down, due to the fact that he had once been there before. No, not Ogygia, but where Calypso was located.

He hurried down the steps to the dining room, where Alabaster was excusing himself after seeing Piper and Jason cuddle. "Guys!" he yelled, not really caring that his hair was extremely messy and his eyes were probably extremely bloodshot. "I found where the island is!"

Piper and Jason widened their eyes. "Dude." Jason said, completely forgetting that he'd been making out with Piper, like, a second ago. "What the heck happened to your face?"

"Overtime." Leo replied. His head was still spinning like a top. Any moment now, it was going to stop and topple over. A tiny portion of his mind realized that he had just used the word 'top' three times in quick succession in a sentence about tops.

Anyways, he shoved that away. "Anyways," he started, "I found out where Ogygia is."

"Great." Piper replied. "Where is it?"

"Okay, guys, I kind of think you know where." Leo's brain was going into overdrive, trying to make sense of it all. So many pieces were being put together now- it was bombarding his brain with barrels of beer. He noted to himself that it was a very bad analogy, then pushed the part of his mind that had constantly shifting thoughts into time-out for a second. "It's in Valletta, Malta."

Piper opened her mouth, shocked. "But isn't that-"

Alabaster now looked shocked as well. "Where she used to live!" he yelled. "Now it makes complete sense!"

"What does?" Leo asked.

"When I was doing some research on the, you know, anchors, I was led to Malta. There, I sensed a huge presence of magic there. I was curious as to what it might be, and it turned out to be Calypso's prison!" he exclaimed. "It makes so much sense! I even mapped out how the enchantment looked like!" he ran to his room, which was Percy's previous room, and came out holding a giant sketch. It looked like a giant fishbowl, with a tiny opening at the bottom. Leo walked over to see.

"So, this is the whole enchantment." he pointed at the fishbowl. "Now, this is a gigantic enchantment. To set it up, even Hecate would have had to take a month to finish it. And mind you," he added, "She is essentially the most powerful source of magic there is. Anyways, it's designed so intricately, with tons of 'if' and 'or' statements. It essentially stops Calypso from escaping under any circumstance, but it also stops men from leaving as well. Adding the functionality of allowing men to leave if alone was too much a strain on the stability of the spell, especially with all the concealment enchantments put on it."

"I assume the tiny hole is important here." Leo said.

"Yes." Alabaster said. "After setting up the giant barrier, it would take forever to rebuild it from scratch. And you can't just edit the spell a bit. You have to redo it. So the gods devised this strategy: that they would put a tiny hole in the spell, so that all they would have to do was rotate it, like a fishbowl."

"So, kind of like an intentional chink in the armor." Jason said.

"Yes. So, they usually keep it submerged underwater, but when a hero is on his own, the gods simply rotate it, which is a lot easier, by the way, put the hole directly in front of him, and then they go from there. So, basically, what I am trying to say here is that in order to get in, we'll either have to go underwater or we'll have to manually rotate the protections to lift it above the water."

Leo cursed.

Everyone looked at him. "Well, I kind of forgot to make the ship waterproof..." he said, cursing himself for forgetting to do that.

"Don't worry, I can do it." Alabaster said. Of course, he looked doubtful, but demigods usually greatly underestimated themselves. A lot of the time, even if you thought it wasn't possible, it was. In fact, you'd think they would have figured that out by now.

Alabaster stood up, sighing. "Leo, I'm sorry, but you can't come with us."

Leo blinked, thinking that this was some joke that Alabaster was pulling on him. But his expression remained deadly serious. "What? Why can't I go?" he asked, pouting.

"Because you need to get to Mount Everest." Alabaster replied.

Leo's happiness level came crashing down. "Hey, come on! I promised her I would go rescue her!" he yelled.

"First of all," Alabaster said, "This is not a rescue mission. We're there to destroy the island, remember. Second, in case you're thinking about it, I don't think that Jason would he able to survive the insane temperature drop there. It's freezing, and you're the one with the firepower."

While Alabaster had made a pretty good pun, Leo wasn't about to give in. He snarled, and sent lit his hand ablaze. "You want to go, bro?" He had to get to her. No matter what. What if she thought he'd abandoned her? What if she was hurt?

Alabaster, clearly not used to this, immediately raised a book of spells and quickly read out one. The runes on his pants glowed, and Leo was suddenly tied up by thick rope. He easily burned through it and charged.

"WAIT!" Jason's yell nearly pierced Leo's eardrums. He walked up to Leo, anger flaring in his eyes. "Leo, I swear on the effing River Styx that I will get Calypso back! No matter what the cost!"

Piper gasped. Leo was so shocked, he extinguished his fire. The runes on Alabaster's pants stopped glowing. Jason looked equally shocked. Because he might have just fulfilled the prophecy.

An oath to keep with a final breath.