Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Hi, everybody! I hope y'all have had a good week. I, unfortunately, have not – I've been having issues with my health again that necessitate me to have a medical procedure on Monday. I don't forecast that as giving me troubles with updating next week, quite the opposite actually, but if I do, that's why.
Regardless, until next chapter,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 46: The Party Ponies Invade~
"One on one," I challenged Luke. "What are you afraid of?"
I knew I had to do this for two reasons: one, because I was the best swordsman of our group, and the only one who could most likely give him a run for his money. Two, even if I wasn't completely sure he wouldn't hurt me, he was less likely to hurt me than anyone except for maybe Annabeth. I had the advantage, whereas my friends didn't.
Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to kill us, or at least all of my friends, hesitated, waiting for his order.
Before he could say anything, Kim, the daughter of either Ares or Enyo, burst onto the deck leading a horse. It was the first pure black pegasus I'd ever seen, with wings like a giant raven. The pegasus mare bucked and whinnied. I could understand her neighs. She was calling Kim, Luke, and the rest of his people some names so bad Chiron would've washed out her mouth with saddle soap.
"Sir!" Kim called, dodging a pegasus hoof. "Your steed is ready!"
Luke kept his eyes on me. "You can't bait me into a fight, Percy," he said.
"Are you that eager to keep avoiding one?" I shot back. "Too scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"
Luke glanced at his men, and he saw I'd trapped him. If he backed down now, he would look weak. If he fought me, he'd lose valuable time chasing after Clarisse. For my part, the best thing I could probably hope to do was to distract him, giving my friends a chance to escape. I wasn't so naïve as to hope I could beat him with his years' worth of training. He was just too good at sword fighting. But, if anybody could figure out a way to escape, it would be Annabeth.
"I'll kill you quickly," Luke decided, raising his weapon. But, I knew he was lying about the killing part now. His voice cracked part way through, barely audible to anyone except people who knew how to look for it, like me. That gave me some hope. I was really preferring to not almost get murdered by him again.
Still, Backbiter was a foot longer than my own sword. Its blade glinted with an evil gold-and-grey light, human steel having been melded with celestial bronze. I could almost feel the blade fighting against itself, even from my distance, like two opposite magnets bound together. I didn't know for sure how it was made, but I sensed a tragedy. Someone had died in the process. Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him a round leather-and-bronze shield. He grinned at me wickedly, a farce only I could see.
"Luke," Annabeth said. She and the rest of my friends were still huddled together, but they were no longer behind me as Luke's goons moved around, giving me a berth to step into to fight. "At least give him a shield."
"Sorry, Annabeth," he said. "You bring your own equipment to this party."
...That kind of presented me with a problem. Fighting two-handed with a sword gives you more power, but fighting one-handed gives you better defense and variability, something which I might need even if this fight was going to be somewhat for show. There are more moves, more options, more ways to injure or knock out your opponent even if you don't plan on actually killing them. I thought back to Chiron, who'd told me to stay at camp no matter what with Callie and learn how to fight. Now I was going to pay for not having listened to him.
Luke lunged at me and almost severely injured me on the first try. His sword went under my arm, slashing through my shirt and grazing my ribs. Not hard enough to go directly into my heart, but easily enough to incapacitate me.
I jumped back and counterattacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed my blade away with his shield.
"My, Percy," he chided. "You're out of practice."
He came at me again with a swipe to the head. I parried, returned with a thrust. He sidestepped easily.
The cut on my ribs stung. My heart was racing. When Luke lunged again, I jumped back into the swimming pool and felt a surge of strength. I spun underwater, creating a funnel cloud with my powers, and blasted out of the deep end, straight at Luke's face.
The force of the water knocked him down, spluttering and blinded. But before I could strike, he rolled aside and was on his feet again.
I attacked and sliced off the edge of his shield, but that didn't faze him. He dropped to a crouch and jabbed at my legs. Suddenly, my thigh was on fire, with a pain so intense I collapsed. My jeans were ripped above the knee. I was hurt, I didn't know how badly. Luke hacked downward and I rolled behind a deck chair. I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn't take my weight.
"Percy!" Katie screamed.
I clawed to the swimming pool, trying hard not to black out, despite knowing I'd never make it. Luke knew it, too. He advanced slowly, grimacing in such a way it could be mistaken for a smile. The edge of his sword was tinged with red.
"One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." He looked at one of his goons, a snake-lady I recognized as a dracaena. She nodded, and then suddenly pulled Bianca by the hair, as she was the person at the rear of the huddled group and had stopped looking at the monsters to watch me with wide eyes. She let out a scream as she was pulled away, and so did the others, before the dracaena held a knife to her throat.
The dracaena's tongue flickered out. "You'll make a fine meal, little missss," she crooned. "Oncccce I've killed you, that isssss."
And of course it was Bianca, I couldn't help but think, because she was a daughter of Hades. A candidate for the Great Prophecy, like me. My gut couldn't help but clench, even in that small second, thinking once more of what Nico would do if his sister died on this quest. What he would become.
Whish!
All of the sudden, a red-feathered arrow sprouted from the dracaena's mouth. She didn't even have time to react as she crumpled into dust.
For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything. Kim let go of the reins of the pegasus, allowing her to fly up and away free over Miami Bay.
Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.
"Centaurs!" Bianca gasped.
My mind had trouble processing everything I saw. Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives – not his relatives in the usual sense, I reminded myself. They were all "centaurs," but Chiron and Dolops were not the descendants of Ixion and Nephele. There was a difference – were almost nothing like him. There were centaurs with black Arabian bodies similar to Dolops', others with gold palomino coats, others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses. Some wore brightly colored T-shirts with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER. Some were armed with bows, others with baseball bats, and still others with paintball guns. One had his face painted like a Comanche warrior and was waving a large orange styrofoam hand making a big number one. Another was bare-chested and painted entirely green. A third had googly-eye glasses with the eyeballs bouncing around on slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-and-straw attachments on either side.
They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and color that for a moment even Luke was stunned. I couldn't tell whether they had come to celebrate or attack.
Apparently both. As Luke raised his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the pool. I was too weak and too stunned to laugh at the absurdity of it, otherwise I would've.
Luke's warriors scattered. I couldn't blame them. Facing the hooves of a rearing stallion is scary enough, but when it's a centaur equipped with a bow and whooping it up in a soda-drinking hat, even the bravest warrior would retreat.
"Come get some!" yelled one of the party ponies.
They let loose with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded against Luke's warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe. They tried to run, only to slip and fall.
Chiron and two other centaurs galloped towards my friends. He picked up Alabaster and Silena, seemingly not even fazed by the fact that Alabaster was back on our side now, while the one with the black coat picked up Annabeth and Katie and the one with the light brown speckled with dark brown spots picked up Bianca. They all deposited them neatly on their backs.
I tried to get up, but my wounded leg still felt like it was on fire.
Luke was crawling out of the pool.
"Attack, you fools!" he ordered his troops. Somewhere down below the deck, an alarm bell thrummed.
I knew any second we would be swamped by Luke's reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn.
Chiron seemed to realize this, too. "Withdraw, brethren!" he shouted.
"You won't get away with this, horse man!" Luke screamed. He raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deck chair.
A palomino centaur hoisted me on his back. "Don't worry, little man!" he said. "I've got you!"
Luke's warriors organized themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had already galloped to the edge of the deck and were beginning to fearlessly jump the guardrail, as if it were a steeple chase and not ten stories above the ground. Mine was one of the last.
Just before my centaur was about to jump, there was a brief gap in the phalanx, enough that I could see Luke and he could see me. Our eyes locked. Although it took a lot of mental effort for me to do so, I raised two fingers and tapped them against my neck: the equivalent of "I love you" that we'd devised last summer, just without the words. I watched his eyes widen at the sight, his disbelief becoming more pronounced.
Then he – or rather, I, was gone.
The centaurs plummeted towards the docks. I almost thought we were going to die, but the centaurs hit the asphalt with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as we raced into the streets of downtown Miami.
I have no idea what the residents of Miami thought as we galloped by.
Streets and buildings began to blur as the centaurs picked up speed. It felt as if space itself was compacting – as if each centaur step took us miles and miles. In no time at all, we'd left the city behind. We raced through marshy fields of high grass and ponds and stunted trees.
Finally, we found ourselves at a trailar park at the edge of a lake. The trailers were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting. We were in a centaur camp.
"Dude!" said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. "Did you see that snake lady? She so wasn't prepared to die by an arrow to the mouth!"
The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. "That was awesome! Head slam!"
The two centaurs charged at each other with full force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with shit-eating grins on their faces.
Chiron sighed. He set down Alabaster and Silena on a picnic blanket next to me, and gestured to the centaurs carrying Annabeth and Katie and Bianca to do the same. "I really wish my cousins wouldn't slam their heads together. They don't have the brain cells to spare."
"Chiron," I said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. "You saved us."
"Yeah," Alabaster added. "Even me."
He gave us a dry smile. "Well now, I couldn't very well let you die, especially since you've cleared my name. And I knew you would come back to us eventually, Alabaster. Your mind may have strayed, but your heart has always been in the right place."
Alabaster's cheeks flushed at that, but he said nothing.
"But how did you know where we were?" Annabeth asked.
"Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami."
"Gee, thanks," Katie mumbled.
"No, no," Chiron said. "I didn't mean..." He trailed off as it finally dawned on him that Katie was being sarcastic, then smiled. "Oh, it is very good to see you again, Katie. But the point is, I was able to eavesdrop on your Iris Message and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for millennia. I asked her to alert me to any important communication in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as it is for humans."
I looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies seemed to be having the time of their lives regaling each other with what they'd done. They seemed so happy, unlike the rest of us. So oblivious to what was going on.
"So, what now?" Silena asked Chiron. "Do we just let Luke sail away? He's got Kronos aboard that ship. Pieces of him, anyways."
Chiron knelt by me, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat my wounds. "I'm afraid, Silena, that today has been something of a draw. We didn't have the strength of numbers to take that ship, as Alabaster knows." Here, the son of Hecate begrudgingly nodded. "Nor was Luke organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won."
"But we got the Fleece!" Bianca exclaimed. "Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now."
Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. "You are all true heroes, even if none of you had the permission to go on this quest." We all grinned at him sheepishly, none of us willing to apologize for that. "And as soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs will carry you."
Katie looked surprised. "You're coming too, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes, Katie," he agreed. "I'll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not appreciate Dean Martin's music. Besides, I must have some words with Mr. D. There's the rest of the summer to plan, so much training to do. And I want to see...I'm curious about the Fleece."
I didn't exactly know what he meant, but it made me worried about what Luke had said: "I was going to let you take the Fleece...once I was done with it."
Had he just been lying? I still couldn't figure out what he'd meant by that, outside of him not wanting to actually kill Thalia's tree like I'd assumed. Maybe there was a plan within a plan there, something going on that none of us except for Chiron could figure out. Kronos wasn't called the Crooked One for nothing, after all. He had ways of getting people to do what he wanted without them ever realizing his true intentions.
Chiron glanced over at the rest of our ragtag group. "Alabaster, Silena, Katie, Bianca, Annabeth," he said. "Would you mind giving Percy and I a moment?"
They all got to their feet, although Alabaster was slow about it. It was obvious he wanted to do nothing more than sleep. They all headed off towards the campfire, where those three centaurs were, leaving me with Chiron.
When they were out of earshot, Chiron turned back towards me. "Percy," he began. His expression was somber. "I've come to realize that you and I have not talked about something that we need to discuss."
At once, panic began to race through my heart. I mean, there was only one thing that I could think about that we "needed" to discuss, and that was my relationship with Luke. My history with him, from an outsider's perspective, from even the perspective of my friends who were in the know about, definitely made me volatile. Sure, I'd made an oath to never betray the gods, but that didn't mean my feelings for him had subsided. That didn't mean I wouldn't be weak around him, especially with what was to come, if Luke had realized from my gesture that I'd accepted his offer: to continue our relationship in secret. I wouldn't be able to kill him in the end, if it came down to it. I already knew that.
My lips went dry. I had to wet them. "What – what do you mean?"
"The Great Prophecy," he said morosely, his expression sad. "You know it's contents, don't you?"
...That.
...That was not what I'd been expecting.
"What?"
"Last summer, after Luke poisoned you, I had my suspicions that you had come to know what the Great Prophecy says, the true reason why children of the Big Three have been forbidden until now, with the presence of you and your half-sister and the di Angelos," he explained. "But I did not know it for certain until this summer. When you were down in the Underworld, the Lady Styx – " in the distance, thunder cracked " – told you the truth, didn't she, child? That is why you left the Heliades."
I blinked. "You know about that?"
He knew what I was referring to. "You might have been through much since your time there, but you still carry traces of its sent with you," he told me, smiling wistfully. "It's been many years since I have visited those islands, but I know what they were like. I additionally know that Demeter must've told you, if you stayed, you would have been free from the responsibilities of the Prophecy."
"She did," I acknowledged. "And yeah, I know." My palms were sweaty from my terror. I had to wipe them off on my already gross shorts, but it wasn't like that was the worst thing in the world. "I have to be the child of the Great Prophecy, Chiron. That's not a burden that I'm going to let Callie, Bianca, or Nico bear."
Chiron didn't argue with me on this, but he did say, "It is not a burden I wished for you to know about so soon either, Percy. You are young, Percy. Too young. You should have been able to hold onto your innocence for a bit longer."
I laughed wetly at that, wiping at my eyes as they blurred with tears. "Chiron, I haven't been innocent for a long time."
He frowned, and – shit. So he knew about that. Either because I'd just inadvertently told him or because Demeter possibly told him. I wouldn't put it past her when it came to my safety. "Perhaps not in the way you think. But there is an innocence in not knowing the fate you may bear, should the Fates decide that is your future."
"It is my future," I retorted hotly. "I'm not going to let anything happen otherwise. I'll save Olympus, even if it kills me."
Chiron opened his mouth, then closed it, seeming to think of something better to say. From his quiver, he pulled out an arrow and turned the razor-sharp tip so it glinted in the firelight. "Celestial bronze, Percy. An immortal weapon. What would happen if you shot this at a human?"
"Nothing," I said, confused. Where was he going with this? "It would pass right through."
"That's right," he responded. "Humans don't exist on the same level as immortals. They can't even be hurt by our weapons. But you, Percy – you are part god, part human. You live in both worlds. You can be harmed by both, you can affect both. But that does not mean you should let one take greater importance to you than the other, because you are of both equally. Do you understand?"
"I think so," I said. "You're saying that just because I'm the child of the Great Prophecy, I shouldn't stop myself from having fun? Being a kid?"
He bowed his head. "Precisely."
"I wasn't planning on that, Chiron." And I was being truthful with that. Just because I was possibly going to die before or on my eighteenth birthday didn't mean that I didn't want to live my life to the fullest, hence why I was planning on getting back together with Luke. But he didn't need to know about that, when he didn't know we'd even been together in the first place.
"Perhaps not," Chiron replied. "But I have seen what knowing their destiny does to heroes, Percy. You carry the hopes of humanity into the realm of the eternal, but knowing your death also comes with a price. Remember Achilles, and how the knowledge that he was to die young affected him."
A part of me wanted to rib that I didn't think it was his knowing he was going to die young that made him react so strongly to Briseïs being taken away from him, but I didn't.
Chiron, as much as it pained me to admit, had a point. I couldn't help but think back to seeing Ananke at the fruit stand, cutting the yarn of that beautiful blanket she'd been crocheting – the blanket of somebody's life.
Could it have been my own? Was that all the proof I needed to know that I was going to die because of this Prophecy, defeating Kronos or not.
My thoughts must've been etched into my face, because Chiron sighed. "I did not mean to frighten you, Percy," he apologized. "I meant nothing bad. I just..." He trailed off, looking over to my friends. Katie, Silena, and Bianca were in the process of being shown how to use paintball guns by the centaurs, and against Bianca's will at that. Alabaster and Annabeth were watching from a healthy distance, free of the splash zone. "Perhaps it is time for us to go."
Word Count: 3,825
Next Chapter Title: The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well
