Chapter Title: My Thoughts After Finding Out That Colton Reynolds Is The Monster King
Where to even start with this.. since.. my thoughts are an absolute mess, let's be real. But, the main thing on my mind is just.. him.
Colton Reynolds.
The guy who makes even Percy Jackson look like an ant in comparison — he legitimately makes him look like an ant, I am not even overreacting on this.
Look, Juno's comments about him when he first got here were a good bit cryptic to say the least, and like Luke and Michael, I hadn't seen him ever before, so compared to Percy, I honestly had zero clue as to what to expect from him. Though — I still find it hard to believe that even with amnesia, he just picked up a Civil War era Whitworth rifle and then proceeded to kill two Gorgons instantly with a single bullet fired from it as if he had done it before.
Either way, after the War Games — from when he caught that sword from Mars and screamed while clutching his head to when he left for the quest for Argonaut with Lavinia and Michael, something just seemed.. different about him. I couldn't quite place my own finger on it, but it seemed to me as observant and smart as he had been, he seemed to be even more of that now — even when the Senate had voted to give Percy and his group a boat on their quest and nothing for Colton, Lavinia, and Michael, he didn't even show even one hint of negative emotion. He just looked as if this was merely a minor setback to him, and his eyes seemed to show hints of something much more lurking within him now, flickering from brown to blood red sometimes which you could miss in the blink of an eye.
Even though my dogs picked up no trace of him lying when I spoke to him and Percy afterwards, I seemed to get the impression that he still was hiding something. His response to my offer of praetorship seemed to suggest that, as even his eyes seemed to glance back and forth at times as if shy or something — I had zero idea why back then.
As he left for the quest — I have every reason to believe that even if Colton Reynolds was hiding something, the son of Mars wasn't worth the cryptic wording that Juno had used for him. At least.. that's how I felt.. until Polybotes came with his army and just when it seemed that Lavinia and I were about to die, Colton Reynolds revealed exactly why Juno had said those cryptic words — and flipped my world completely upside down in the process. Of all the secrets I had expected him to be hiding, him being the Monster King — who hadn't been seen in about 60 years from what I was told, who had sacked Rome itself twice during the reign of the Roman Emperors, whose previous bearers had committed countless atrocities against Rome in the past to the point that some of them you could not even speak of — was definitely not one of them.
I'll admit, fear and terror is definitely what I felt upon seeing Colton in his Monster King form for the first time. Paralyzing fear — for he arguably gave Typhon a run for his money as the scariest thing in the mythological world despite being smaller than the father of monsters. I half expected him to join forces with Polybotes' forces and completely devastate New Rome. But, just like Colton had said about his loyalties being to New Rome to an extent, he.. didn't.
Instead, he and his army — I personally don't how to feel about an army of monsters actually helping us instead of harming us — just went straight for the opposition and helped literally rout it. That fire person in Greek armor — Charis, I believe — healing my leg was nice, but the way Colton just finished Polybotes off as the Monster King..
I thought him just mowing through Octavian and most of the second cohort was probably a terrifying sight to be on the receiving end of, but this.. words.. simply fail me. I don't think any of my years here at Camp Jupiter could have prepared me for such a gruesome scene. Colton, in his brief time here, had come off as a guy who frequented between calmness and anger, but it was evident as he caved in Polybotes' skull with one of New Rome's statues that something darker worked inside of him too. And then the fact that had a girlfriend too — Kayla — was interesting, as in that a girl was lucky enough to have this.. complicated, brutal, psychopathic to his enemies.. person as her boyfriend.. gods only know what kind of person she is to have won his heart.
And then there was what had transpired on the quest from what Lavinia had told me while the fight was still going on. Like a true Roman, he didn't leave Lavinia for dead in the Trojan Sea Monster and instead went in after her despite the pleas of Michael and Charis. He literally cussed out Gaea to her face so to speak, and I'm surprised she didn't murder him on the spot for that — for you don't exactly insult the earth mother and live to tell the tale most of the time. Usually, you're dead within the next hour from what I've heard.
But for Colton to have gone and done that and live, I had to admit.. this man was amusing in a way. And I think that is why I chose him as the new praetor. He's a complex case between a ticking time bomb of rage, an absolute genius, and an insane person who gets away with stuff they probably should not be able to get away with at all. He was all of those things at the same time, and I had to wonder — how exactly was he able to keep himself intact like that?
Still, even with him casually naming off Percy's.. rather impressive feats at the celebration, I had the feeling that Colton's exploits had to be just as impressive if not more insane and superhuman. All those scars on his body seemed to speak of fights far tougher and more intense than anything Percy had done. Plus, those scars conveniently made him look more impressive than Octavian ever did — and since that man with his unscrupulous ways I did not want anywhere near praetorship, it made sense to give it to someone like Colton.
Because seriously — there was more to his story, it seemed, than anything I had been told so far. Much more.
Maybe I'll find out tomorrow, maybe I won't. Whatever the case may be, the new Monster King was an unusual case that threw every expectation I had about it out the window, and I'll admit — I was interested to see how he adapted to being praetor.