Chapter 5: I Get Freaky with Tentacles
The trip out into the ocean on the ship could not have stood in greater contrast to his trip with Annabeth and his friends twenty years prior. Instead of the cold biting at his cheeks a radiant sun overhead bathed the deck in warmth which, coupled with a healthy sea breeze, took Percy's mind off of the monster they were heading off to face. He had spent so long in the ice that the feeling of the sun shining on his face felt as close as he thought he could possibly get to ecstasy.
Unfortunately, his lounging on the deck was interrupted by one of the sailors throwing him a pair of binoculars and asking him to climb the crows nest. With a groan he leapt to his feet and headed over to the largest of the three masts. A rope ladder that looked prime to fall apart at any moment greeted him as he arrived at the base. As he started his ascent he couldn't help but think of Thalia, who had always been terrified of heights despite being a daughter of Zeus. He suddenly realised that Thalia would be the same age she had when he had disappeared twenty years ago, one of the perks of being a Hunter of Artemis. Fueled by a stronger desire to kill the sea monster and get back stateside he propelled himself up the ladder, and before he knew it he found himself leaning against the wooden railing that adorned the crows nest.
It was far quieter up here than it had been down on the deck. There was no clamouring of sailors rushing around or the crack of the hull against the ocean. Just a peaceful silence occasionally broken by a sudden gust of wind. It was the third straight day that Percy had been assigned to the crows nest, probably due to the fact that after spending the first day sunbathing on the deck the sailors had gotten tired of his laziness and wanted him to do something at least somewhat useful. He had asked Chronos the previous night how far they were from the sea monster but all he had gotten in response was a shrug. He had received a similar response from the captain, first mate, and every other sailor he had broached the question to onboard the ship. The captain's reasoning for this was that the sea monster moved, and quickly. They couldn't just figure out where the monster was, they had to figure out where it was heading as well.
Personally Percy hadn't minded the delay too much. Getting his head around the fact that he had been gone for twenty years wasn't something that he could just get over in the space of a conversation. The first mate had tried to help him, going through meditation and breathing exercises to try and push back the nausea that seemed to overcome him everytime he dwelled on the subject for too long, but Percy had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't going to feel any better about it until he actually found out the extent of the what had changed in his life. Maybe that's why he was so excited to see Thalia, at least that was someone he knew he would be able to see who wouldn't have changed a bit, just like him. Well, other than the gods of course.
Speaking of gods, Percy had been surprised that he hadn't been reached out to by any of them, especially his father. That was until Chronos explained that they were not in the realm of the Olympians, but rather an entirely different set of gods altogether: the Norse gods. Percy had been aware that there were Norse gods, Annabeths cousin Magnus was an egg-jar or something that meant he was some sort of undead warrior who could only die if he was killed outside of the hotel he lived in. He seemed a nice enough kid, once you got past the whole undead part. He would also technically not have aged, and that gave Percy another degree of comfort at heading back to the states.
Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, and now the Annunaki, Percy wondered just how many different pantheons of gods there were out there. If the Annunaki were conquerors from another world, maybe he could get the other pantheons to back him up. There was no reason for him to face off against Enlil and his army alone if he didn't have to. Plus, with no more Big Three Pact, maybe there would be some seriously powerful demigods back at camp to help him in the fight. The thought of having a sibling at camp gave him a little burst of excitement. For all the anguish of losing twenty years of his life, maybe there were some upsides to balance out all the negatives,
As Percy dwelled on the thought the ship suddenly careened to one side, snapping him out of his stupor and causing him to take stock of what was happening down on the deck. Sailors at the bow of the ship had lodged the harpoon into something in the water and it was now dragging the ship along after it. The ship was big, with three masts and a crew of almost 50 men, but whatever was pulling the ship along must have been much bigger. Percy gripped the railing so hard his knuckles turned white as the ship was thrown to and fro across the waves. How the sailors had managed to find and shoot the monster without Percy noticing, which was kind of the job description, astounded even him, but he figured it best not to worry too much about that right now.
A tentacle shot up from beneath the waves and wrapped itself around the front of the boat, trying to rip the harpoon off of the ship, but before it could manage to, some members of the crew managed to stab it with enough spears to give it the resemblance of a porcupine. It receded back beneath the waves only for two more to shoot out and begin harassing the boat from all sides.
Deciding that sitting idle in the crows nest wasn't helping anyone Percy let go of the railing and launched himself over the side and towards the water. Just before hitting the surface and wave rose up and caught him, promptly depositing him on the deck in the midst of the tentacle onslaught. Percy glanced around for any sign of Chronos but the primordial was missing, which Percy couldn't help but feel like he should have expected. Reaching into his pocket Percy fished Riptide out and took a deep breath, feeling a familiar tug in his gut as the ocean responded to his call.
His concentration was broken, however, by a sailor yelling at him from nearby, "Ay lad what the bloody hell are you planning on doing with a pen? Write the bastard a letter asking him to politely do one?"
Percy turned to the sailor and just smiled, "I have been told I'm quite charming, maybe it'll work."
The sailor squinted at him as though he had just lost his mind and with that Percy uncapped Riptide for the first time in twenty years and sprinted across the boat towards the tentacles. He had just enough time to see the sailors jaw drop as he leapt over the side of the ship and into the water below.
There was a brief moment of silence, just a split second after Percy hit the water, where there was peace. Percy felt the comfort of being in his fathers domain wash over him, and as he opened his eyes the ocean stretched before him, all at his whim, an instrument for him to wield as he saw fit. That was before he caught sight of the monster before him, and as quickly as it had come, his confidence evaporated.
At least three times the size of the ship a giant squid struggled against the pull of the harpoon, as its many tentacles whirled through the water, each one arguably large enough to crush the ship by itself. And now, in the water, Percy finally heard the screeches. The monster was giving off an ungodly scream as it writhed against the harpoon, and the force of the noise dug into his ears like daggers. Percy considered heading back up to the surface and telling them to turn back, but then he remembered Sally Jackson didn't raise a bitch and so after taking a moment to steady himself he propelled himself through the water toward the nearest tentacle and took a swing at it.
Sunlight from the surface glinted off of Riptide as it tore through the flesh and muscle of the tentacle, causing blood as black as ink to pour into the ocean. The force of the swing had almost cleaved the tentacle in two, and the monster clearly felt it. The screams from before were nothing compared to the ungodly screech that ricocheted across the ocean. Even the bottom of the ship seemed to cave under the force of the noise.
As Percy attempted to recover from the vicious assault to his eardrums a second tentacle shot out of his periphery and sent him flying towards the ship. He was thrown out of the water and slammed into the side of the ship, sending wooden planks flying across the deck and leaving him disorientated as he slowly came to grips with what happened. He tentatively opened his eyes to see the captain standing over him with a look of horror on his face.
"What is that thing lad?" he asked.
Percy blinked away the black spots dancing in his vision and replied, "A squid, a big one. I cut it, but it's screaming and I can barely concentrate down there."
The captain's face took on a pensive look as he pondered what he had been told. "I'm fairly sure it's the Kraken. Norse mythology has its fill of ugly beasts but the Kraken hasn't stirred in centuries. I have no idea how to kill it, but you said you could cut it?"
Percy nodded, finally realising that he was sitting in a man-sized hole in the deck, a testament to the force behind the Krakens' hit. "I drew blood, and it seemed to hurt him. Also seemed to piss him off."
"I hear you have a penchant for that though Perseus," a familiar voice came from behind him and Percy turned to see Chronos surveying the situation around him with a grimace, "We certainly seemed to have found ourselves in quite a spot of bother."
"And where have you been?" Percy enquired.
Chronos dismissed his question with a wave of his hand and continued talking, "The Kraken, by jove I haven't seen it in person in millenia. A magnificent beast, but better observed asleep I must say."
Chronos seemed to be lost in memories as the carnage continued around them. Whatever damage Percy had done to the tentacle the Kraken was now returning tenfold upon the ship. Its tentacles smashed the hull from all sides, and one was trying to rip down one of the masts, with only the determined efforts of some sailors keeping it from being successful. But it was a race against time, the sailors were tiring and the Kraken was only getting started. Percy tried to repel the urge to slap the primordial of time but decided that that probably was not the most efficient course of action for dealing with the beast.
"Are you going to help?" Percy asked him.
Chronos looked at him and winked, "Sally Jackson didn't raise no bitch, figure it out yourself." And with that he turned back and went below deck, leaving Percy with the terrifying realisation that Chronos might be able to read his mind.
"Only when I'm possessing you." Chronos said, and Percy whirled back around to where Chronos had been but he wasn't there. "Oh I'm not there, actually I'm here with you."
"Where is here?" Percy asked with a growing sense of trepidation, causing the captain to frown at him.
"You're at sea, fighting a Kraken, we might die." The captain said, looking at Percy with concern.
Percy waved him away, "I'm pretty sure I'm talking to voices in my head, don't sweat it."
If the captain wasn't concerned before, he certainly was now, but Percy simply leapt to his feet and kept talking, "What do you mean possess?"
Chronos' voice replied, ringing through his head as easily as a thought would, "I'm a primordial, not a god. I am the essence of my domain. I inhibit no body of my own, I am the idea, the construct of time itself. As a result, I can choose to possess mortal bodies and speak to them, act for them, control them."
Percy's face darkened as he realised what that meant, "So that body you were in… it was someone else's?"
"A fisherman from the village. He was about to die from a heart attack, and you know what they teach you in primordial school 'Can't let a good body go to waste'."
"So you can control me?" Percy asked, looking at his hands as though they were suddenly going to begin strangling him.
"Not exactly. Mortals with weak minds can be controlled, but demigods are harder and you, well by the gods you're by far the hardest mind I've ever entered. The fact you can differentiate my thoughts from your own speaks volumes."
"So are my eyes glowing silver right now?"
"I personally find it quite the fashion statement."
Percy took a deep breath and tried to collect his thoughts, "So why possess me now, what's the point?"
"You're strong, but the Kraken isn't your average calamari. I have no desire for the demigod I practically brought back from the dead to be killed in his first outing. I do, however, want to see you let loose, and you can't do that if there is a chance you die, so that's why I'm here."
"And how am I supposed to let loose?"
"Don't worry about dying, if you're about to die I'll step in and keep you alive. Think of me as your guardian angel."
Percy picked up Riptide from where it had lodged into a mast and paused for a moment. "So I can't die?"
"As long as I'm possessing you: no. But possessing takes a great deal of energy on my part. I'm old, and my energy reservoirs are not quite what they used to be, so do make this quick."
Percy had spent his whole life fighting to stay alive, always keeping a cap on exactly what he was capable of. He thought back to the last time he had truly let loose. He had triggered a volcanic eruption, shattered a mountain, and unleashed the most powerful enemy the gods had faced. "Promise you won't backseat drive?" Percy asked.
Laughter rippled through his thoughts, "I'm just here to watch."
Percy grinned and looked around the deck before finding what he wanted. Alongside a weapons rack a six-foot trident gleamed in the sun, even as the Kraken's tentacles sent shadows and sprays of ocean water across the deck. He tested the weight before gripping it tightly and then launching it at the nearest tentacle. The three pongs did not, as he had hoped, embed in the flesh of the tentacle. Instead, the force of the throw tore a hole clean through it.
Percy sighed but nonetheless steadied himself on the boat, giving himself a second to prepare. Then with a wink at the captain, he sprinted to the side and threw himself back into the fray. Gripping Riptide in both hands, he slammed into the nearest tentacle, driving the sword as deep into the scales as he could force it, causing the tentacle to split apart at the point of impact and actually rip the end of it off, sending Percy careening into the water. If the Kraken's screams had been loud before, now they were deafening, and Percy struggled to maintain consciousness under the water. He opened his eyes just in time to see a tentacle flying towards him, and wasn't able to process the fact that he had been hit by it until he felt a crack in his back when he collided into the bottom of the ship.
A jolt of pain filled his eyes with black dots, and before he could blink them away the screaming resumed. Percy realised he was sinking into the depths but couldn't concentrate long enough to do anything about it. How was he supposed to fight something when he couldn't hear himself think? He heard a voice that he thought might be Chronos in his head but it didn't matter, the roar of the Kraken was splitting his eardrums and he vaguely perceived that he had been hit by another tentacle, this one sending him further towards the ocean floor. As the screaming of the Kraken grew more and more distant Percy was able to open his eyes long enough to see the ocean floor racing towards him. He had just enough time to let out a scream of his own before he smashed against the bottom and everything went black.
The blackness was nice though, it was quiet, the screaming of the Kraken was finally gone. It was warm too, the cold depths of the ocean had been replaced by a blanket-like warmth that was enveloping him, pulling him forward. He wasn't sure where he was going, but there was a light in the distance, and a woman singing. He wondered if he was dead, and this was his soul slowly drifting towards Los Angeles. There was a sense of relief in that, in knowing it was over, that the threat of the end of the world was no longer on his shoulders. Sure, he had failed at the first hurdle, but better to fail at the first than the last right?
That thought brought him some comfort and he slowly faded out of consciousness, that is until he felt something grab him and pull him back away from the light. The warmth and the singing were slowly replaced by the cold and with a sudden lurch, his eyes shot open.
At first, everything seemed dark, but as his eyes began to adjust he realised he was still at the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of a crater. The Krakens screaming could be faintly heard in the distance but Percy was more concerned with focusing in on the voice that was talking in his head.
"-that you were the demigod that took down Kronos? I wanted that demigod, not the one that got splattered on the bottom of the ocean floor. Aren't you supposed to be the son of Poseidon?"
Percy opened his mouth to speak but before doing so looked down at his arms. They had been twisted and broken at awkward angles but were now repairing themselves of their own accord.
"Thank the gods I had the foresight to possess you, else this would've been the end of our little adventure. You were supposed to be stronger when you came out of the ice, not weaker!"
Percy didn't respond, instead, he pushed his dislocated shoulder back into place and slowly rose to his feet. It had taken him a minute to get up and running, but now he felt like a fire had been lit in his chest and the water swirled around him almost in anticipation. It sensed what Percy had just realised: Chronos had kept him alive, but it was his own body that was repairing itself. He felt water harden around his arms and then spread across his body, crisscrossing in a pattern that left no chinks or gaps, and then it froze.
"Oh…" Chronos voice whispered, "I didn't know you could do that."
Percy's ice armour glowed gently and Percy couldn't keep the grin off of his face. Whatever Chronos had done to keep him alive had done a lot more than that, it had finally let Percy harness that power he had felt lurking under the surface since he'd been brought back. Water swirled around him faster in anticipation as he braced himself. As he shot himself up towards the surface the earth itself shook, with the small crater he had made on his initial impact doubling in size at the force of his liftoff. The water, instead of resisting him propelled him rapidly towards the Kraken.
The screaming that had kept Percy from doing anything before was muted through the ice helmet and Percy pulled back his fist as the figure of the Kraken appeared above him. With an almighty crunch, Percy slammed into the squid and sent both of them flying out of the water. The ship, having been tangled in the tentacles of the monster, almost capsized as the beast was launched skyward. The sun gleamed off of his ice armour and Percy couldn't stop the laugh that slipped out as he and the Kraken slowly fell back towards the surface.
Percy didn't miss a beat as he crashed back into the water, immediately propelling himself towards the Kraken, with the ice around his right arm expanding and sharpening until he was armed with an icy point instead of a hand. He drove it into the squid's head as it crashed and drove it deep under the water, away from the damaged ship and its stunned crew. The monster howls of pain vibrated the water around him but Percy just pushed his arm deeper into its head, watching the eyes of the monster slowly darken as the life drained out of it. As the monster crashed against the ocean floor Percy realised that the screaming had stopped, and the ocean was quiet once again. The squid began to dissolve into golden dust that floated away in the ocean currents, leaving behind only a small silver coin.
Percys willed the ice around his arm to disappear and felt the familiar tug in his gut that he felt when commanding the water. His ice armour fell away and as it did he reached down to pick up the coin. Upon closer inspection, it was not a coin, but rather a pendant, and as Percy picked it up it began to glow and then shot towards his ankle. Percy jerked backward but the pendant attached itself to his ankle, burning itself into his skin. He yelled out in pain but as soon as it had begun the pain was gone. Where the pendant had once been there was now a tattoo of the Kraken against his ankle.
"A gift," Chronos voice returned, "And a reminder of what you are now capable of."
"What's the gift?" Percy asked.
"You'll have to wait and see. No fun in spoiling all the surprises. Now, I believe we have a ship to return to?"
Percy rubbed his ankle with a frown, but decided if Chronos wasn't worried about it, neither should he. Instead, he looked upwards and willed the water to propel him back towards the surface and the ship. As he got back onto the ship the crew was shaken but alive, but the ship was on the verge of sinking. Percy took a deep breath and focused on the ship, willing it to heed his instruction. As easy as though it were an extension of his own body, the ship began to slowly pull itself back together, with the masts righting themselves and the hull straightening from where the Kraken tentacles had crushed in. Mere minutes later it was as though the fight hadn't even happened.
"Ay lad, I didn't know sons of Poseidon could do that," The captain said walking up to him.
"I'm no ordinary son of Poseidon," Percy responded.
"You're right about that," Chronos said, this time as the fisherman, emerging from the bottom of the ship. "That was an impressive feat, no ordinary demigod has that kind of power. It seems I was right to trust in you."
Percy smiled "Had to keep you on your toes in the beginning, no fun if there's not a bit of a scare."
Chronos raised an eyebrow, "If I had known to unlock your new powers all I had to do was kill you I would've offed you far sooner."
"Glad I have such a protective ancestor!"
"I try my best."
"So what now?" Percy asked.
"You go to Boston, where I have let Magnus Chase know of your arrival. He will arrange for your transportation back to New York."
"And what about you?"
"I have primordial things to do, you wouldn't get it."
"Is it Tik Tok?" the captain asked.
Percy and Chronos looked at the captain in confusion.
"Tik Tok!" The captain insisted "Get it because he is the primordial of time. Tik tok tik tok. He's on Tik Tok because of the clock."
'Whats Tik Tok?" Percy asked.
The captain rolled his eyes and walked away, "Forget it!" he called back.
Chronos turned to Percy, "You have a long road ahead of you, and it's more dangerous than any path that's been trodden before. You'll need more than just luck, but I'll wish you good luck anyway."
Percy reached out his hand, "Thank you Chronos, for everything."
Chronos smiled and shook his hand. "Make proud Perseus, you have the potential to." And with that, the silver eyes of the fisherman faded, and the body collapsed onto the deck.
"Oh," Percy said, "I'm probably going to have to deal with this."