What Do I Say To Death?

Chapter 12: What do I say to Death?

24 October 2000

The weather was strangely quiet, and there weren't visible dangers ready to swallow us, so I was granted a reprieve from having to hold the helm with obsessive caution. Duty or pleasure? I asked myself, and after a brief consideration, I chose the first.

I walked back inside the ship and walked into a room we had repurposed for Annabeth's 'punishment'.

I nodded to Emily, the daughter of Ares who was reading a book in a corner of the room: "I'll take this watch." I said while sitting on another chair and looking at the ten years old that hadn't stopped the mechanical movements of her detention. In the roughly square room, besides a couple of chairs and a small table, there were two bathtubs, placed one over the other. The upper one had holes on its bottom, so that when water was poured into it, it trailed down into the bottom tub. Annabeth was busy with a bucket, taking water from the tub at her feet and pouring it in the upper one.

All in all, it was a good exercise for tights, back and arms, and the water sloshed just enough that she had to be careful to not spill it around. At the same time, it was a mindnumbing task of terrifying implications: it was clear that her actions were not helping in any way our mission, that she was wasting her time, and also the time of whatever demigods had to keep watch to ensure she was attending her duties.

"Intelligence is useful, but not when it gives you tunnel vision." I started, noticing that Annabeth started grinding her teeth.I really disliked the idea of playing responsible adult in any kind of situation, it was a pointless hassle, but the demigoddess was 10 years old, I couldn't honestly expect her to figure out the magnitude of her fuck up on her own.

When she kept attending to her task in stubborn silence, I went on, knowing that in the sheer boredom imposed by her punishment, every one of my words would at least be listened to as a distraction, if nothing else: "Wisdom is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment."

As she bristled I withheld an exasperated sigh: "You have brains, nobody doubts it, you've been birthed with those. But, and I say it without any ill will, you're 10 years old. As such, whatever choice you make in the real world tends to be a dumb one."

When she whipped her head towards me with an outraged expression, I simply pointed at the tubs, causing her to return to work with a snarl: "Chiron doesn't allow demigods under 12 to undertake quests. You ignored the experience and evaluation of an immortal who has been dealing with demigods going on almost suicide missions since at least 8th century Before Christ, which is the date of the earliest proof of Greek civilization."

I dismissed whatever she was mumbling under her breath and carried on: "Instead of sticking close with your brothers and sisters, with your friends, with Luke, you chose to join a group of people you don't know. And you also did it as a clandestine, stealing resources that you can't pay back with any kind of work, thusly damaging the chances of success of the mission."

"I can help! I figured out..." she stopped protesting with a startled jump when my palm slammed flat against the table, cutting her off with a loud bang: "Trust and discipline are of fundamental importance on a ship, especially when we don't know how long we'll be at sea. Since you came on board in secret, and hid yourself for all the duration of the trip, there is no trust."

"So I can't assign you any kind of task, or leave you unsupervised." my voice remained calm and level for the whole exchange, and I saw that the logically structured speech was being followed: "Gallivanting around an island you had no information of and not reporting your finding of a Titan to the crew clearly displayed a lack of whatever respect for hierarchy you should have. And it stated again that you don't trust anyone in this ship."

She flinched minutely at my words, she was smart enough that even at her young age, she could follow my reasoning, even if she still believed she acted in the best interests of everybody: "And to cap it all, during your personal crusade against my evil-ness, you freed Prometheus, and make no mistake: you dragged on us the displeasure of the King of the gods, which is the least important consequence, all for information that I already had."

She dropped her bucket and tried to stare me down: "You don't know! Prometheus told only me and..."

"And the satyr will sooner or later smell the distinctive magic of the Golden Fleece, leading us to Polyphemus' cave, where he will ambush us." I completed for her, causing her jaw to drop slightly and her voice to abandon her.

I rose from my seated position and walked toward the ten years old girl, who looked... lost, for lack of a better expression: "If you unwillingly stomp a venomous snake you get bitten, intentions are relevant, but they rarely affect the consequences of your actions."

I squeezed her shoulder and left the room after having watched carefully her shifting expression. I wasn't going to drop on her the resurrection of Kronos, that had likely been anticipated because of her stunt, she was a ten years old girl with a superiority complex, her punishment would highlight her uselessness on the trip while our chat would drive home the point that she wasn't all-knowing. Telling a ten years old girl that he's useless isn't really conducive to any form of improvement, but showing a ten years old demigoddess capable of sneaking on my ship that she had to rely on others looked like a better alternative. It wasn't like I could execute or beat a child for wanting to help her friend-turned-tree, and I couldn't just drop her off or bring her back to camp.

A few minutes later, I joined David in the workshop where he could build the machines necessary to the ship on the fly, and reached his body, slumped on a chair in front of a desk where thick, black chains were resting.

"What do you make of them?" I asked, eyeing them warily.

The son of Hephaestus turned to look at me, revealing deep bags under his eyes and a tired expression: "I'd need a proper forge to find their melting point, I couldn't cut away a single shard to figure out the material under a microscope, I don't..." He stopped, taking a deep breath and centering himself, before poking with a screwdriver at the pieces of dark stone we had to break off from the giant boulder where Prometheus was bound: "Can we use it as it is? Yes. Do I know what this shit is? No."

I nodded, thinking about how we could use chains just strong enough to bind the last Titan I met: "Go to sleep, you'll need it."

31 November 2000

The reckon team was composed of four members, optimizing the strength of numbers with the speed that a small group could use to cross a wide area. Accompanying me there was Charles, our resident satyr, Hailey, daughter of Hermes and our best sneak, and finally Sofia, who acted as our ranged fighter and healer both. The island was... strange, there was no other way to describe it. We all knew that in the Sea of Monsters matters like common sense and logic didn't work properly, not when facing the unnaturalness of mythology. While the island where we had found Prometheus had a temperate climate, we were now finding our way through some kind of marsh-swamp hybrid.

We had reached the island with the dawn, crossing a heavy fog that had clung to us like some creepy type of spiderweb, I wouldn't have wished to make land, but an occasion to replenish our reserves on 'dry' land couldn't be ignored, while Charles had felt 'something' in the inland. I couldn't exactly refuse him, besides, while finding the Golden Fleece had been my excuse for the expedition, another was that I could ill-tolerate the atmosphere at the Camp, and adventure called for everyone, not only myself.

The wetland was an area of land where water covered the ground for long periods of time. Unlike the swamps sections of the island, which were dominated by trees, the marsh was dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants. We were treading through some kind of herbaceous plant that reached up to our chest, and we were flanking the swamp proper. I wasn't an expert on biodiversity, but I would have thought that at least some animals should have lived in the area. For the last hour, we had met none: "Chars, are we going into the scary looking swamp?" Sofia asked with a frown. The sun may have been high in the sky, but the damp mist surrounding us hadn't lifted, making her a bit jumpy.

The satyr nodded silently, keeping his eyes peeled onwards until we crossed the first mangrove trees: "Careful now, the snakes may look like roots." he warned us in a bland tone before walking forward. The swamp was dominated by cypress, hardwood, and mangrove trees. The area was neither totally land nor totally water, and forced us to look carefully before each step, and our focus cut into our usually cheerfully chatty demeanor, leaving us in an eerie silence. From time to time we met bare flats of mud and sand that were thinly covered by seawater. My eyes picked up crabs, conchs, and other shellfish, while my ears spotted a fluttering of wings from time to time, signaling that at least some birds had followed their nature, eager to eat easy prey. An occasional gleam underwater dragged my eyes over scales that belonged to either small fishes or snakes. But that caused my hairs to stand up straight on my arms: every animal looked almost... careful, almost scared to move clumsily and cause some kind of noise. Now that I think about it the animals are running away from us. "Let's keep it quiet, Charles take point, Sofia, behind me, Hailey, can you move among the branches?" While I whispered my orders I untied the sword from my waist, eyeing approvingly when everybody followed my commands.

We moved cautiously, and soon enough we came into the swamp equivalent of a large clearing, and the mist was only a thin veil over the surface of the water, like some kind of shapeshifting lid pulled over a secret. We spread among the roots and the lower branches of the trees, mindful of our steps. In the silence, Charles' warning came too late: "We're attacked!"

In a flash of gray-green scales and an unholy mix of hissing and growling, a giant snake-like monster was on us, teeth as long as my arm slick of a black like substance, with proportionate heads and slitted eyes of a poisonous yellow: all in all, a promise of a horrible death. I jumped back among the roots just above the water and ran around a tree, spying the beast from the relative safety of behind a trunk.

A soon as I took an actual look to the whole monster trashing in the clearing my blood ran cold: the resemblance to Ladon was there, if only for the multiple heads, even if these had a more serpentine-like shape than the clearly draconic ones of the Warden of the Golden Apple Tree. Where Ladon maws hosted an impressive row of teeth, its heads had square jaws and horns, our current enemy instead sported heads that followed a more triangular shape, and rows of needle-like fangs. The fucking hydra! I cursed under my breath, before warning the others: "Deadly venom! Don't let yourself be bitten, and don't cut off the heads, they'll just grow back twice as many!"

I heard the dismayed answers of my team while I called upon the Mist, shrouding myself in it and tossing myself back into the clearing. The Hydra, also called the Lernean Hydra, in Greek legend was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, a gigantic water-snake-like monster with nine heads. The monster's haunt was the marshes of Lerna, near Árgos, from which he periodically emerged to harry the people and livestock of Lerna. Anyone who attempted to behead the Hydra found that as soon as one head was cut off, two more heads would emerge from the fresh wound. Heracles defeated it having someone cauterizing the necks after he severed the heads. My mind quickly thought about how to replicate the hero's quest.

Balancing myself on unstable roots wasn't easy, and I was too low on the surface of the water to keep track of my team, even if I could see the effect of their attacks: Chars was likely the one responsible for the ensnaring branches that distracted or tried to stop the monster, while arrows occasionally managed to embed themselves into an eye here and there, Hailey was doing her best to simply avoiding being bit off in half. She was nimble enough for it, even if her knife and sword were less than useful in arming the monster.

In a reckless act that I executed only because my brain was operating too slowly for me to survive following its directions, I jumped, landing on the slightly slimy back of the giant nine-headed beast. As three of the heads turned towards me hissing in outrage at the weight they felt, I stabbed my sword in what I hoped was the spine of the beast, the celestial bronze blade sinking with some resistance through the scales. While one of the three heads reeled back in pain, the other two lunged forward me, fangs snapping at the empty space I left behind after I rolled off its side. Just as my feet landed precariously on the roots over the muddy water, the Hydra's body twitched, bludgeoning me through the clearing and against a tree.

I wheezed, cursing mentally as the air left my lungs. I couldn't stop to evaluate my situation, as the two heads had no problem in following my impromptu flight and were already closing in on me. I finished sliding down on the trunk with my back, and as soon as I had some kind of leverage I tossed myself aside, rolling on the uneven net of knotted roots, likely Charles was doing his best to create some kind of surface for us to stand on, showing that his experience as a Seeker was enough to allow him to keep his head: "Sofia!" I managed to shout, "Send a warning to the others, then prepare the incendiary arrows!"

Trusting her to recognize my order and pull back from the fight until she was ready to complete it, I let myself fall into the fight once more into myself, picking the options offered by my instinct as an expert guitarist could choose a string over another while improvising. Teachings about sword and shield slowly slid off me, leaving me with only my gut as a guide.

Instead of worsening my performance, I became much ...more. Faster, stronger, less predictable. Like when I had fought seriously against Thalia, I went all out after months of carefully managing my strength, my power. I had left behind staff, spear, shield, ax, and sword, everything was just another way to push forward in an unrelenting, battering attack, or retreating with the swiftness of a leaving wave.

Distractedly, I kept a track of my surroundings and of my team, but it was of secondary importance. It's lucky that I left Adamas while geared up for war. I admitted to myself. The shaft of my spear had broke as soon as I tried to use it to redirect the impact of one bite, the round shield on my back had managed to lessen some of the impacts I hadn't managed to avoid, but from his lumpy feeling, I could tell that he was hammered in in several places, the sword I had managed to land some actual injuries with hadn't been dulled by the venom, but I couldn't risk getting a single drop of it on my skin: it acted only on organic matter, but I remembered that Hercules had been killed by it, and while I had actually outlasted the fucker in holding up the sky, I really didn't want to test myself against the cause of his death.

While all those considerations rolled together in a maelstrom in the back of my head, I somersaulted over the Hydra's sweeping tail and behind one of its heads, like a waver rolling over a rock, and slashed with the sword, having care of keeping the swing going so that the venom wouldn't land on me. The tip of the blade cut about twenty centimeters into the neck of the beast, apparently severing just enough muscles that the head dipped down, but not enough to trigger the regrowth of another couple of the heads.

"I'm ready Icarus!" Sofia's voice seemed to come from another world as I kept the momentum of my swing in order to slam the flat of the blade against the teeth of another head that was trying to bite me. I jumped back, running down the twitching neck of the almost severed head in a feat of balance that I didn't think myself capable of: "Hailey run towards the ship and tell them we're facing the Hydra, they need to stay out of the fight, only long-range support!" I shouted jumping down one side and landing again on roots that buckled under my weight but didn't snap. I jumped, rolled, and changed my direction no less than 4 times in the following three seconds, gaining some measure of breathing room from the rampaging monster while the eight heads still capable of a complete range of movement hovered confused over the not that couldn't get back up.

"Sofia! When I cut off one head, I want you to immediately rain fire on it, Charles, I need ground as steady as you can make it!" And I launched myself back into the fray, knowing that my movements recalled the sea, the rhythm mimicking the up and down of the waves, alternating times in which I kept attacking to periods during which I stood on the defensive, behaving like waves during the storm that tried to sink the Adamas.

I made sure my shield was secured on my back and covered the otherwise exposed back of my neck, and as I charged, the muddy water answered to my call almost as the currents did back in the Camp's bay. My right hand slid upwards on the broken shaft of the spear I recovered while running, and I threw it like a javelin, hoping that it would land into an eye of the beast. While the improvised weapon flew, brown water exploded like a geyser between me and the Hydra, making it so that it couldn't see me while I manipulated the Mist. As I spun my illusions, the tentative hold I had on the waters of the swamp died, but what I had managed had been enough.

The eight heads still capable of moving lunged forward, two of each targeting a different generic greek soldier I shaped out of thin air. In the moments while my instincts receded I could take a proper look at the beast: of its eight heads, two had arrows' shafts sprouting from both of their eyes, while another two had a single working eye. Even before I had given my orders, Sofia had been far from foolish enough to strike the thick scales of the beast. In the moments I had thusly gained, I fished out a lighter from my pocket and with it, I lit up the venom that coated my sword, grinning when a sickly looking green fire that spat an oily looking dark-green smoke climbed on the blade. In the stories a simple torch had been used to cauterize the beheading, but how could a torch have the time to act on a beast that has no intention of staying still? My intuitive jump had been a shot in the dark, but for once I was happy that it had actually worked.

I held my breath as I closed in on one of the heads that still had both of its eyes, and wrapped another layer of Mist around me, making sure to cover smell and sound along with sight. With quick steps as quiet as I could make them, I moved in a pattern that kept me out from the battle going on between the confused heads and my illusions. My target lunged for a fake soldier that fell on its knee when I made it do so, and my sword fell in a lighting fast slash. As the blade cut through the monster, the exposed parts of its insides caught fire like they were running on petrol.

Instead of retreating and planning a new attack, I pushed forward, taking another step and letting my instinct surface: a second sweep took down the closest head, that had lunged with its twin towards its target. As the illusions withered and disappeared, I jumped back, my sword being plunged into the water and putting out the fire so that I could take a deep breath without risking breathing the poisonous fumes.

One head unable to rise, two more are gone. I counted, there were still six to be removed and cauterized, and with that thought in mind, I dug into myself and brought forward that unrelenting fury that only a storm out at sea could properly embody, turning my arms into whirlpools ready to redirect whatever came into their range, my legs gained the strength of a deep current, and I wielded the strength of the tides.

I moved on the left of the confused monster, closing in to one of the heads that sill had both eyes working, twisting my torso as I let the momentum make my left hand slid down the handle of the sword, allowing me that tiny increase in range sufficient to rip through an eye otherwise out of my reach. I slid a shield off my back and held on my left arm and slammed it against another head, and low boom resonated in the swamp as the beast recoiled in rage, and another head slammed against my shield immediately later, causing me to lose my footing as I was once more flung into the muddy waters amongst the mangroves' roots. The water moved following my will, allowing me to move as I couldn't have done otherwise, nimble and quick, I found again my footing as I emerged from beneath the water, like some strange mixture of The Thing and a Moss-covered patch of ground.

Once more I took a deep breath and took a step back from the churning power inside me and looked at the situation with a clear head, once more reaching to the Mist and hiding myself from view as other greek soldiers appeared out of nowhere walking on the waters towards the Hydra, who was eyeing them suspiciously, sniffing the air or tasting it with its tongues looking for me.

Again, I crept forward avoiding the area where the heads were pointlessly trying to eat my illusions, that moved with impossible speed just out of the beast's way. Once more, I attacked when a head lunged: "Now Sofia!" the invisibility over me broke as the intent behind my shout opposed the will to hide intrinsic of the Mist's manipulation. As the arrow landed on the wound and set it on fire, I rammed my bent shield against a blind head, forcing it back and slashed with the sword in my hand as another head decided that I was a priority. I raised the sword over my head and hit with the flat of the blade the incoming head, immediately severing it an instant after: "Again!" I called for Sofia and laughed in joy as a second flaming arrow landed on the target.

One head unable to rise, four gone and five to go. I counted with glee, jumping back and repeating my assault, empowered by the sea. I was far from being able of exercise the kind of absurd shit Percy Jackson had shown by the end of the books, but a simple reinforcement of my body's capabilities was something I was able to do. It had to be a conscious effort on my part, unlike Thalia's way of doing it. I repeated the previous sequence of attack and defense, again and again, taking out one head at a time and waiting for Sofia to cauterize it before passing to the next. My arms soon felt like lead and every breath came out as a ragged rasp, the illusions I usually had no problems crafting out of Mist soon became difficult details that escaped my thoughts, fraying themselves and falling apart as soon as I stopped dedicating all of my focus to it.

That meant that as I had to face the last two heads, I was pretty much out of juice.

I stood on the roots, waiting for it to come closer, and appreciating Charles effects on the branches like never before, as they swayed over its last eye and allowed me to stay out of sight. There were only two heads left, only one of which still had eyes. Luckily enough it was the head with limited mobility, but sadly the Hydra had apparently figured out how to manage a shared field of sight.

My head dipped slightly, as I felt exhaustion kicking in with a vengeance, and I started to see the world as from the bottom of a well. I blinked blearily through the dusty feeling that was trying to force my eyes closed, distractedly deciding to take stock of my situation. An uncomfortable pressure made itself known in mu side, and as I lowered my unfocused eyes, I saw that a branch had buried itself in my back and was proudly sprouting out from my belly.

"ADAMAS!" With that war cry, demigods, swarmed the clearing, arrows pelting the still working eyes of the monster and jars of terracotta exploding against its skin, unleashing greek fire like confetti.

With that last image not making sense in my mind, I lost my last grasp on consciousness.