Chapter 41

I'm Woken Up at Gunpoint

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had as much fun as that night in Coeus's palace.

Recent experiences probably played a part. The Nautes was state-of-the-art for a sailboat, but it didn't exactly scream luxury. There were only so many Eye-spy games you could play when everyone said blue, and the answer was either the sea or the sky.

The palace, meanwhile, was fully stocked. I raced the Charlies in the swimming pool since nobody else would get into the icy water. Later, Emmitt and I showed Bianca how to skate at the ice rink. Dinner was just as delicious as lunch had been, and our beds couldn't have been comfier.

Maybe the best part was how lively Bianca seemed. Discovering your dead brother was alive and summoning the dead to make your friends dead couldn't have been easy. Even that sentence gave me a headache. But she seemed her usual snarky, sarcastic self.

So I was a little surprised when, after the others had gone to sleep and I was just tucking into bed, she knocked on my door.

"Can I come in?" Wearing a loaned set of PJs, she was holding a half-finished cup of hot cocoa, but it didn't look like it was putting her in a good mood. "I want to talk."

"Sure." I stepped out of the way, letting her in. "Did you bring a drink for me?"

She didn't answer. She walked to my bed and sat down on the foot of it, drink resting on her lap. "You were right."

Those were the words I'd wanted to hear, but now that I actually heard them it felt hollow. And not just because I was starting to think she only had enough hot chocolate for one.

"I didn't want to believe it," she went on. "I thought it couldn't be true. I wasn't lying, you know that right? He really did fall. I thought… well, nobody could survive that."

I took a seat on the room's only other furniture, a wooden chair with my beat-up backpack leaning against the side of it. "I could've survived," I admitted. "If it was over water, I wouldn't have been hurt. I'm not saying Nico can do the same things I can, but he has his own powers. It's not impossible. Obviously. Maybe it was shadow travel?"

Bianca glared. "You said that couldn't be done first try!"

"Usually," I said, "but what if someone showed him how at the last second, guided him to make it all work out?"

I told her about my dreams, every detail this time. She listened quietly as I explained the cloaked man, Minos, and how the ghost seemed to be pulling Nico's strings even as he kissed up to him.

"The Cloaked Man again." Bianca's free hand gripped the bed sheet, twisting it up. "It's not enough that he tries to kill us, he went further and messed with my brother?"

I thought her priorities might be a little out of order, but seeing as we'd just gotten over an argument I wasn't about to start a new one.

"He has connections," I said. "He knows where our group is. Not many are in on that. And he went straight to Nera."

"Bastard," Bianca said, which seemed to sum it up pretty nicely.

It occurred to me, all of a sudden, how similar this was to when we met, her sitting on a bed while I sat across the room in a chair. Only now we were thousands of miles North chatting casually about people trying to kill us. It really went to show how much things had changed.

"Nera showed me Nico."

"Huh?"

Bianca stared down into her mug. "In the Competition, when she touched me, I saw Nico fall. It was awful. Somehow it felt more real than the first time, and this was when I thought he was dead so I just… snapped."

"I thought her visions didn't work on you?"

There was a pause, like Bianca was weighing up options in her head. Whatever the decision was, it only took a few seconds to reach.

"The first time it didn't," she said. "All I saw was a flash of white. But I don't think that had to do with her. I think the problem was me. Even now, when I try to remember back past a point, everything is blank. It's empty."

"Like amnesia?"

"Maybe?" She cracked a small smile that didn't make it to her eyes. "If I ever learned what amnesia felt like, it's one of those blanks now. Amnesia-ception?"

Not for the first time since the Feat started, I wished Daedalus was here with us. After all the years he'd been alive, along with the detailed knowledge of the human body it took to construct your own, this was just the type of obscure subject I knew he would have the answer for.

"What's the last thing you remember?" I asked.

"A hotel. Nico and I stayed there for a few weeks before we went to Westover. A lawyer dropped us off, but it wasn't Mrs. Schmeltzer. It was a different one. And before that…" Bianca grimaced. "That's as far as I can go. Anytime I try to think back further I get this splitting migraine, and nothing comes to me. Nico is the same."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I changed the topic.

"He'll be back. You know that, right? Nico got away before but he won't stay away."

"I know," Bianca said, drawing little circles with her finger on the side of her mug. "But was it really him that got away, or was it us? He was the one in control, we were the ones in danger. What will I do if he attacks again and I have to choose between him and you guys?"

To me, the question sounded like 'What'll I do if I have to choose him over you and Emmitt?'. I didn't hold it against her. If I could only pick one between saving my mom and saving my friends, I had a feeling who I would pick. Or, more likely, I'd get so caught up trying to choose both that I'd lose the chance to choose at all.

That wasn't what Bianca needed to hear though.

"The solution's easy," I said, making sure to keep my voice cheerful.

"Really?" She sounded skeptical. "Let's hear it."

"If he comes after me I'll beat him. Then I'll tie him up, haul him over, and drop him off at your feet so you can scold him. That's what big sisters do, isn't it? Nag their little brothers into doing the right thing."

Bianca blinked. Then she drained what was left in her cup and stood up. "Maybe," she said, looking a little more relaxed. "I'll practice my ear-pinching technique. Just in case."

She grinned, and I grinned back. "Sounds like a plan."

"Not even," she said. "Call it an appointment or I'm out."

She walked briskly out of my room giving the air little pinches, picturing an earlobe between her fingers.

It was around ten when we gathered at the palace's front gates, all bundled up and prepared for the trek. That might seem like a late start, but this was Alaska. Dawn had just barely hit.

Prometheus was going over the map one more time with Hector and Melissa. The Charlies had paired off with Emmitt and Bianca, showing them the best way to step on snow so that you didn't sink. I watched them from beside Coeus, still tightening a pair of mittens he had gifted me to replace my old gloves, each with an image of a bear on the back.

"I've been wondering," I said. "What's with all the bears?"

"What do you mean?" He asked in a tone that said he already knew. Because of course he did.

"You have a portrait of yourself as a bear. You do all your errands as a bear. Everyone on your staff is a bear. What's up with that?"

"Well," he said, "it's because they are cute."

My mitten finally tightened with a soft click, and I blinked. "That's it?"

The titan looked amused. "Do I need a better reason? There are plenty enough of them in my domain, and I adore their little button noses. Have you seen the underside of their paws? So much like a cat's, but with extra toes to admire. Just adorable."

"I thought it would be something more serious," I admitted. "Like they were your sacred animal, or maybe one brought you toilet paper when you ran out one time or something."

"Not everything needs to be deep," Coeus said. "Don't underestimate doing things because you want to. You may be surprised by how far being a bit selfish can get you. There's a reason immortals are always doing as they please."

He patted my shoulder and wandered down to the others.

"Selfish, huh?" I mumbled.

I was already fighting an entire war to get one person back. If that wasn't selfish, what was? I sighed, shifted a backpack now freshly stocked with food supplies and fresh clothes, and plodded down, stepping in Coeus's oversized footprints.

We kept Goodbyes brief, mostly because of Prometheus urging things on. When our group of five had left Coeus and his furry employees waving in the background, Prometheus let out an audible sigh.

"Finally," he said. "A bit of peace."

"Now's not the time to relax," Hector warned. "We have a hard hike ahead of us."

I might have taken him more seriously with his hands out of his pockets. He looked like a psycho trudging over snow, arctic wind blasting his hair, in shorts and flip flops. Yeah, you heard that right. Turns out dressing like an LA surfer was more than just his casual wear. Braving the sub-zero temperature with as much skin showing as wasn't, he still looked the least cold out of all of us.

It reminded me of a dream from weeks ago, one where I watched a guy in flip-flops escape a monster by diving into a pile of treasure.

"Hey, Hector," I said, "do you always dress like that?"

He didn't look back at me. "What does it matter to you?"

I frowned. "I was just curious, man."

He gave me a glance from the corner of his eyes. "Be curious more quietly."

Watching his broad back, I decided I didn't care if he was the guy from my dream or not. I knew what he was. A dick.

As we walked, clouds swirled overhead in beautiful fast-moving patterns. I wasn't usually a guy who appreciated clouds, too busy wondering if they were about to split open and vaporize me. But these were Alaskan clouds. We were out of Zeus's reach and I could stare up at the shapes all I wanted without worrying about spontaneously combusting via electrocution. It was so much fun I was disappointed when they finally passed by in favor of clear skies.

Disappointment that only lasted until I saw what took their place.

We could finally look at the upper portions of Denali. You could see the mountain from Anchorage, but up close was different, and not just because it hammered in how big it actually was.

Denali was built like an army. It didn't just tower above you but in front of you, too, so wide you could barely see past. Dozens of crests speared up below its peak, each probably ten times the size of the Empire State Building. It was as if two titanic arms had squeezed the entire Sierra Nevada mountain range into a single peak.

"Holy crap," I mumbled, staring up. "We have to go over that?"

"Not over it," Hector said. "Through it."

"Like a tunnel?"

Hector laughed. It was the first time I'd heard the sound, and the scratchiness reminded me of two ice cubes scraping together. "I wish it were a tunnel. Those are nice, clean and lit with smooth walls."

Bianca rolled her eyes. "If it isn't a tunnel, what is it?"

"A cave," Hector said and sped up, still chuckling.

"I don't like him," Emmitt said.

Bianca snorted. "What is there to? He's less pleasant than Michael, and Michael tried to kill us."

"Just give it a day," I said, "and we'll never have to see him again. You can do that, right?"

Climbing the incline beside me, Bianca bit her lip. "Orrrr we could kill him, and I'll get his spirit to guide us without talking."

I stared at her. "That was a joke, right?"

"Of course it was! I'm not that crazy." She took a few more steps. "Yet."

Before long we'd climbed enough to be trekking along the upper edge of a ravine. The valley floor to our left was already hundreds of feet down, and each step took us higher. Even the fluffy snow piled down there wouldn't be enough to cushion that sort of fall, so we all gave the left side a wide berth.

On and on, we huffed and puffed our way above the ravine. Hours passed with the only change being our elevation and the shortness of breath. You could feel the air thinning. My muscles burned from exertion even as cold bit my skin. My heart thumped in my ears like artillery.

It wasn't until the snow around us shook that I realized that wasn't my heart. And that artillery wasn't figurative.

"What in the world?" Bianca shouted as a second explosion rocked the mountain.

"Sounds like heavy weaponry," Prometheus said placidly.

"I got that!" Bianca said. "What I want to know is why it's here."

"You want to know?" Hector said. "Look for yourself."

He pointed to the lip of the ravine. We crept over and peered down. I expected to find a peaceful mountain scene, maybe some frolicking moose or a distant cousin of the Charlies foraging for frozen berries. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Human shapes scurried like ants across the snow. There were hundreds, moving in packs and only pausing to fire automatic rifles in staccato bursts. I squinted to see what they were aiming at, but could only make out blobs too big to be people.

Before I could ask anything, shadows fell over us. A hand grabbed my collar, dragging me away from the edge.

"Stay quiet," Hector, my abductor, hissed, holding me and Bianca against the snow. "Don't help them notice us."

The shapes swooped past, and any doubt that Hector was the guy from my dream disintegrated. They were clearly the monsters he'd been running from— three of them with the heads and front legs of eagles, torsos of lions, and feathery curved wings. The trio circled a few times, eyes observing the battle below, before tucking their wings and dive-bombing with identical screeches.

Hector let go of me. He took a deep breath, patting snow off his exposed calves. "Griffons. Those aren't monsters you want to tangle with unless you have to. You're lucky they were focused on the Arimaspoi."

"Arima-who-now? Sounds like a sauce for pizza."

Everyone ignored me, but I was used to that.

"Arimaspoi…" Prometheus gazed down at the human specks with new interest. "So it is true. They are still fighting their war."

"The one-eyed men," Emmitt said. "I never thought I would see them. They were always feuding with the Gryphons in the north, squabbling over treasure. One side would raid the other and steal their gold, then the other side would do it back. You're saying they're still fighting after two thousand years?"

Hector snorted. "Does it seem like they've taken up pacifism?"

I watched an artillery shell explode on a gryphon's face, firing it into the ground in a plume of displaced snow. "Not exactly. But it does seem like they've upgraded their equipment."

Bianca glanced between her bow and the discharging rifles. "No fair. Why do they get guns? You told me those don't work on monsters."

"They don't," I said.

"They why are they using them?"

Hector snorted. "Don't underestimate the Arimaspois' greed. Too stingy to buy celestial bronze, too worried about losing them to use the magic weapons they have. They'd rather lose a few more soldiers than even one trinket. And they don't care a whit who gets caught up in their endless fighting."

That was the longest speech I'd heard from the guy and second place wasn't even close. By the end, his fists were almost as tight as his voice as he stared down.

"They won't find us up here?" I asked.

"Nah," Hector said. "Their raiding parties never come this high up." He glanced at the sky. "Still, we should get moving. Unless you feel like waiting for more Gryphons to fly by."

I did not, and neither did the others. With a bit of rest under our belts and extra motivation to walk quickly, we made even better time than we had before stumbling onto the battlefield. Just as the sun was going down Hector stopped in front of a craggy cliff face so steep that a satyr would struggle to scale it.

"Tell fresh air your goodbyes," he said. "We've arrived."

I stared at the boulders and snow-packed cracks between them. It was kind of pretty, like an ultra-difficult climbing wall, but I couldn't spot anything special about it. "Arrived at what, exactly?"

Hector walked right up to the wall, resting his hand on the side of a sharp boulder bigger than the Gryphons from earlier. "The cave. What else?"

When he said cave I was picturing something like the labyrinth passages I'd explored when I was younger. Rocky, dark, and damp, but wide and easy to navigate. This was not that.

Now that Hector was standing in front of it I could at least see the entrance– a sliver half the width of a regular doorway, slightly shorter than Prometheus.

"No way," I said.

Hector looked back. "Told you you'd wish it were a tunnel." And he plunged into the dark, putting some force in to squeeze through.

The rest of us didn't need to scrape to fit. Inside Hector had a flashlight out and on, using the beam to see the path ahead of us. Thankfully it got wider, but not enough that we could leave single file.

"Watch your step," Hector warned. "It gets slippery."

He wasn't exaggerating. Water dripped from the ceiling, running down the slick walls. The muddy floor squelched under every step. With the only sight I could see in front being Hector's oversized back, and behind being only Bianca's outline in the dark, it was impossible to tell how far we walked. Trying to ignore the stench of mud, I couldn't help wishing for The Nautes back, laying around in a comfy cabin while the boat did all the traveling for me.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore.

"Hector," I said. "Aren't you cold?"

"You're asking this now?" he asked, not looking back. Not that he would've been able to see me even if he did.

"Sure," I said. "Why not? I'm curious."

After a slight pause, he said, "I don't get cold."

"Why?"

"Because it's in my blood."

From the dark behind me, over Emmitt's panting, Prometheus said, "You're a Hyperborean, aren't you?"

I thought the question was ridiculous at first. Hyperboreans were supposed to be twice Hector's admittedly big size, and barely able to string together a sentence. Sure that last part kind of applied, but that seemed more like a personal choice than a mental limitation.

Then I remembered what Prometheus had told me back in the Planning Room on Mount Orthrys. The original Hyperboreans had married a tribe of humans and had kids. Apparently, those kids came in different sizes depending on how original their mommy and daddy were. I just never pictured them getting down to actual human heights.

"I am," Hector admitted. "What of it?"

"I was just thinking of how difficult it must be," Prometheus said, "living so close to an endless war. Arimaspoi and Gryphons can't make good neighbors."

Hector was silent just long enough for me to wonder if he was going to answer at all.

"Don't talk about things you know nothing about," he finally said.

If Prometheus was offended, he didn't say anything. Hector nearly left us behind with a burst of speed until I sped up to match. For just a minute, his voice had been as gloomy as the dank cave.

Traveling tip: if you're going to be camping, avoid doing it in a cave. If the musty congested air and biting cold doesn't get to you, it'll be the way every time you turn over in your sleeping bag, something beneath you squelches like a Whoopi cushion.

We'd made it pretty deep into the cave. Hours of hiking at the pace we were moving would do that. We'd gotten far enough that the walls actually widened a bit, and little slivers of light leaked from crevices in the ceiling— not enough to watch your step without a flashlight, but just enough that you could hold a hand up and be reminded that you actually did have a body.

As we rolled out the sleeping bags I had asked if somebody should keep watch, but Hector waved me off.

"No point in it," he said. Gryphons can't fit in here and Arimaspoi patrols never come this way. They don't even know this cave exists. Anything else nasty that was in these mountains those two have already killed off."

So we all settled in at the same time, and after a numbingly slow hour of tossing and turning wishing for my bed in Coeus's palace back, I managed to fall asleep.

Maybe I had been snoring. That was my first thought for why I was being shaken roughly awake by two big hands, interrupting a really pleasant dream about pelting Justin with self-aiming water balloons.

"Five more minutes Prometheus," I mumbled.

The feeling of cold metal on my neck woke me all the way up, and the face I found myself looking up into couldn't have been further from the titan's.

It was a man with wild braided brown hair and a serious case of acne around his lips. His skin was pale and dirty. One whiff was all I needed to tell me showers were something he saw as optional, and the fingernails digging into my shoulder definitely weren't trimmed to doctor-recommended length. At the center of his face, corners crusted with dry goop, a single regular-sized eye smaller than a cyclops's sat between his nose and forehead.

Maybe I still was a little sleepy, because all I said was, "Oh. An Arimaspoi."

He jabbed me in the throat with the metal object, which I now recognized as a pistol, and I fought the urge to cough.

"Quiet, little demigod," he said. Somehow his teeth were yellower than the bears' we'd been hanging out with. I doubted he'd feel like letting me go if I told him that, though.

I couldn't exactly turn my head with a muzzle against my throat, but I scanned for the others. Turns out what I could see wasn't much.

Hector's flashlight was either broken or switched off. I could just barely see the fissures above us, but since it was the middle of the night they hardly qualified as light, more like less-dark darkness. The Arimaspoi's face, close enough to be breathing rancid breath up my nose, was the furthest I could make out details.

"You guys alright?" I called.

From the dark came Bianca's voice: "Just amazing. I had been thinking as I went to sleep how badly I wanted to wake up at gunpoint."

"Shut up!" The Arimaspoi holding pressed the gun down harder. "Chatting it up… do you think we won't shoot? I'm telling you, boy, we don't hesitate."

He didn't seem all that scary. If anything he reminded me of an unusually well-armed homeless man, ready to rob a liquor store so he wouldn't ever have to beg on the street corner again. Compared to literal zombies or a rampaging Leukrokotta, not even a gun was enough to make him intimidating.

But it was probably time to stop pushing my luck. Even if I was pretty sure I could get free, it would only take one mistake for something to happen to Emmitt of Prometheus. Plus, fighting in the dark would just be too confusing.

Except right then someone turned on the lights.

At first it was way too bright. I was still seeing red with my eyes shut. Slowly, as the glow faded to bearable levels, I used my captor's squinting to sneak Aelia into my palm.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

Over my homeless captor's shoulder, I could see another one-eyed man. He was standing in the center of the cave, a lot better dressed than the others in a bulletproof vest and gray tactical camo that was pretty useless considering the cherry bandana holding his long hair back. Not only were his clothes nicer, he didn't look like 'hygiene' was as horrible a word to him as 'torture', which couldn't be said about his underlings. Where their hair was oily and their lone eyes crusty, this guy looked like a Hollywood star playing a cyclops action hero.

The leader was holding the source of the sudden light out in front of him, greed glittering in his eyes. It was a sword, the blade shining the way Anfisa always did except a thousand times brighter. It wasn't until I spotted the end of the hilt peeking out of his fingers that I recognized it as the sword that had been at Hector's hip since I met him.

Speaking of our guide, Hector was sitting against the cave wall, glaring up. One Arimaspoi had his right arm, another was holding his left, and a third had a rifle to his temple. I was a little jealous. Why was he considered so much more of a threat?

"Give that back," Hector said.

"Why should I?" The leader flicked the blade around experimentally. "I see no reason to honor a thief's request. If anything, stealing it from you is justice."

"Maybe," Hector said. "If it was ever yours in the first place. But you wouldn't care about that would you, you greedy foul-smelling wretched piece of—"

"Temper," chided Mister Mercenary. He brought the sword around, brushing it down Hector's shirt. "I'd hate to see things get bloodier than they have to be."

Hector snorted. "Please. You'll kill us no matter what we do."

"Of course. We are professionals, you understand. But there's more than one way to skin a Hyperborean… and some make so very much more blood."

"Hey Hector," I interrupted, "I thought Arimaspoi weren't supposed to know about this place."

Hector seemed surprised I was talking. His eyes were on Mister Mercenary as he answered. "They weren't. I guess we should've kept watch."

"Dang it man. Say that earlier!"

The leader, meanwhile, had frozen. Only now did he thaw enough to stare at me incredulously.

"Kid," he said, "do you have no sense of self-preservation? You're killing me here. We're trying to keep things professional, and you want to stop for a chat? Take your friends' example and keep terrified and quiet."

He was right about my friends… 33% right, at least. Emmitt did look seriously scared. On the other hand, Prometheus was still sound asleep as he was held up by the jacket, which had to be a killer arm workout for the Arimaspoi holding him. The only reason Bianca wasn't speaking was because she was trying to hold her breath. Her own captor, shirtless with a bandolier and cargo pants, must've had even worse breath than mine did.

"I'm not good at staying quiet," I said. "Never have been. And the most terrifying thing about you guys is the smell. Like, seriously, take a day off playing with the Gryphons and grab a shower."

I couldn't tell who looked more shocked, the Arimaspoi or Hector.

"Do you not know what a gun is?" The leader asked, turning to face me. Even as he spoke the shock was starting to be replaced by an emotion I was very familiar with getting out of people: anger. "You're all but asking for us to teach you."

"Wait!" Hector roared. The eyes on the Arimaspi holding his arms went wide as they tried to hang on. The third jabbed his rifle into Hector's head, smacking it into the cave wall with a THUMP! but even that didn't make him settle down. "I'm the one your problem is with. These people are just visitors, they won't even be here long. Are you really going to get them mixed up in this?"

"How valiant." The leader didn't look away from me. "But that kid needs a lesson in how scary modern weapons can be, especially when they're used by guys like us." He glanced at Hector from the corner of his eye. "Don't take it too hard. We couldn't leave witnesses for this anyway."

"NO!" Hector tried to surge up but his guards were ready now. They held strong. Mister Mercenary gave his underling a nod. "Show him."

"Yes Boss," said my guard.

As he looked down at me, the professional lingo didn't fool me one bit. He was delighted to get the chance to burst my brains. Well good. That meant I didn't have to feel bad.

I grinned at him, eyes looking along the top of muzzle. "Real quick. Stomach, or head?"

He snorted. "You don't get to choose."

"Your loss."

I saw his finger tense, and I let myself drop.

Without my legs the only thing holding me up was his arm on my shoulder. As I sagged his first shot passed harmlessly over my shoulder. He never got the chance to take a second.

One click was all it took for Anfisa to take shape in my hand. With nowhere else to go, the sword fired through his chest. If he had a problem with that he should've picked head when he had the chance. If he had a problem with both options, he shouldn't have pointed a gun at me. Or woken me up. The second one was probably worse, now that I thought about it.

Mister Mercenary recovered pretty quickly from his underling disintegrating in front of him. "You incompetent idiots! Stop him!"

When nobody filled me with bullet holes he looked around.

Bianca was standing free, taking deep breaths as the Arimaspi that were holding her and Prometheus turned in circles, balls of shadows completely coating them from the necks up.

"I thought I was going to die!" she said. "I couldn't breathe at all. Next time you try to kidnap someone, brush your teeth first for Orthrys' sake!"

The one holding Emmitt aimed at me and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

"Your safety is on," Emmitt told him, not looking any less scared but speaking calmly. "You can tell by checking the indicator. Just slide that part forward…"

The Arimaspoi must've been desperate because he followed the instructions. Instead of prepping the pistol to fire, the magazine dropped out.

"Wow," Emmitt said, "you're kinda dumb, aren't you?"

Before the Arimaspoi could do anything more he joined his friends in shadow-induced blindness.

"So," I said, grin still fixed in place as I stared down the leader, "what was that lesson you were going to teach us?"

He took a step back. "Men, stop playing around and free yourselves!"

"They're a bit busy," Bianca said. Her bow formed in her hands. "We're about to play a round of 'Where's the Arrow Going to Come From?'"

When they heard her the blinded Arimaspoi all hit the deck, diving in different directions.

"Wrong!" Bianca said, and arrows pierced all three of them. They screamed, and I could've sworn I heard hissing and spotted something green before they dissolved.

"I tried to tell you." I took a step forward, and the leader took one away. "You aren't that scary." Another step for both of us. "This world has way crazier things than you. And believe me, I've seen a bunch of them."

I could tell he'd gotten an idea from how he stopped moving away. He even took a step forward, standing next to the last of his subordinates and Hector, who was watching Emmitt casually brush monster dust off of himself with wide eyes.

"No closer!" The leader declared. "We still have one of you. Another step and I'll kill him."

Bianca sighed. "Why are hostages so popular these days? First Graham Island, then Nico, now this. It's like they all attended the same classes at villain school."

"You just called your brother a villain," I pointed out.

She cocked her head. "No, I didn't. He's the hostage. Minos is the one holding him captive."

"Hostages don't try to kill the people saving them. Definitely not multiple times."

"This one does. He's too cute to be evil anyway."

"Pay attention to me!" Spittle sprayed from the leader's mouth, red veins creeping into the corners of his eye. "Maybe you'll learn to take me seriously after your friend loses an arm!"

He swung the sword like a guillotine for Hector's shoulder.

Halfway down it stopped dead. I'm not talking about a feint. I mean this sword went from full speed to stationary faster than my eyes could track. The leader pushed and pushed, but it wouldn't go any lower.

"What is this!" he shouted. "It won't move! Men, protect me!"

The three around Hector leapt up, blocking my way to their leader. With a nod from Bianca, I charged.

The two without guns drew combat knives while the one with a rifle raised it. Before he could pull the trigger an arrow sprouted from his head and he fell forward. Next time we were in a town, I'd make sure to buy Bianca whatever snacks she wanted.

The other two lunged at me. I ducked to the side and stabbed one in the hip. He went the way of his friends and formed a pile on the floor. The other one I sliced along the stomach, but I guess it was too shallow. Only the very tip of my sword caught him and he stumbled back to his leader.

"Boss!" he cried. "We can't stop them. What do we do?!"

His boss snarled. "Can't you do a single thing right? If you can't kill them, you should at least be willing to die for me! That's what subordinates are supposed to do— buy their leader time!"

In that moment two things happened. First, he pushed his subordinate forward making him stumble. I finished the guy off with a single half-hearted lunge.

The second thing was nearly too fast to follow. In the instant after the leader stopped speaking Hector's glowing sword whipped around like it had a mind of its own, striking the Arimaspoi leader right through the body.

As he broke down into dust, the leader stared at his own disappearing body in disbelief. "What a shitty day."

And then he was gone.

"Hey Hector," Bianca said, staring at the spot the leader had stood. "I think your sword is broken."

Hector didn't seem shocked by his flash-bang of a weapon going rogue on the guy that stole it. He did seem pretty shocked about everything else though.

"You- You actually managed to beat them? And you made it look so easy?"

"Glad to see you thought of us so highly," Bianca said.

"But you're kids!"

"Trust me," I said, "for a demigod, fourteen is old. We're like dogs that way." I thought about it for a second. "Actually, let me take that back. I don't want to compare us to dogs, it feels kind of insulting. Just think of us like… Frogs. Or, wait, is that even worse?"

"Percy?" Bianca said.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

"Okay."

Slowly, Hector was coming back to normal. Mostly. He was still looking at us a little strange, but he stood and gathered his sword, smacking it against his hip to knock off the Arimaspoi residue. Clipping it on his belt, the light from it cast his shadow against the stone wall, making his silhouette even more giant than usual.

Then he did something I really didn't expect. He bowed to us.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't careful. I thought we'd be safe here. If we'd set a watch, or I'd led us further, this would never have happened."

"Hey," I said, shifting slightly, "No harm done, right? Everybody's alright."

"Yeah!" Emmitt paused trying to squeeze his muddy sleeping bag dry. "I'm really good at getting hurt, so if I'm still fine then it couldn't have been bad."

"But you could've been," Hector looked up, face steely. "Someone could have died. We all could have. It only takes one mistake."

The way he said it, I had a feeling he wasn't just talking hypothetically. He looked haunted, staring at us like he was seeing ghosts in our place.

"Seriously." Out of everyone, I didn't expect Bianca to be the one to speak first. She strode right up to Hector, looking at him with her arms crossed. "You know, earlier, I didn't like you at all. When you were doing the whole sassy robot routine, I wanted to stick you with an arrow while you weren't looking. But right now… I like you even less."

"He's just apologizing," Emmitt said.

"No," Bianca said, "he's not. If he was I wouldn't be mad. But he's not even apologizing to us! He's trying to say sorry to someone that can't hear him anymore, and he's using us to do it. This is all about him."

Hector flinched. He looked silly cowering in front of a girl that barely reached his chest, but it still seemed like he was barely seeing her. That only made Bianca madder.

"Alright, Bianca." I shrunk Anfisa and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I think that's enough. We're all tired right now."

She ignored me completely. "A minute ago you tried to sacrifice yourself for us. That was almost sort of cool. If you want things to change, focus on being more like that, instead of moping around apologizing."

Each sentence hit Hector like an Arimaspoi bullet, making his torso jerk. By the end he was shell-shocked, staring at the ground. Emmitt and I shared a confused look as Bianca huffed and turned away, marching to her sleeping bag. A moment later Hector sunk down, laying out his own bag and sliding inside without losing his dazed expression.

I mouthed "I'll keep watch." to Emmitt, and he nodded, smiling thankfully.

The light from Hector's sword flickered and went out. I sat down, back against the stone wall, alone in the dark, and sighed. A few hours later when the time finally came to change off, I didn't care anymore about the mud underneath– that sleeping bag was as welcoming as the comfiest ever created.

(-)

This chapter was 99.5% finished this morning and I STILL barely got the finishing touches on before midnight. Goddamn Term Papers leaching away my time. I made it, though. Oh, and a note of clarification on a slightly confusing name thing.

Arimaspoi= A one-eyed man.

Arimaspi= Multiple Arimaspoi.

That plural is a little weird.