𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

chapter twenty-one. ☄︎. *. ⋆

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I DON'T KNOW WHO came up with the stereotype that dreams are supposed to be peaceful, but apparently us demigods never got the hint. Ours are always coded, bad omens, prophecies, et cetera. I can't recall the last time I've had a peaceful dream. However, this one that I'd had while I was passed out in the backseat of a Chariot of Damnation wasn't particularly nasty—at least, not at first glance.

It started on a nice tropical cliff. There were.. well, at first, I wasn't sure if I was seeing correctly, but there were sheep littered around the island, nibbling at the perfectly-green grass. I peered to my left and found a steep drop-off; at the bottom, white waves crashed against the shore.

When I turned over my shoulder, I was face-to-face with a Cyclops the size of a skyscraper, and his big, glassy eye was looking right at me. Now, I was normally sure these dreams were (relatively) safe and I couldn't be harmed in them, but this one gave me the creeps. The way the Cyclops looked at me, it was like he could actually see me.

But then he blinked, and I realized he was looking past me, out on the field behind me. He was holding incredibly still for such a large creature. I crept to the side to see if I could catch a glimpse of what he was stalking. At first, I couldn't see anything beyond the bright green of the healthy grass or the trees and their leaves glittering in the wind, but then I saw it. The Cyclops had his eye glued to a gold item hanging from a tree branch at the top of the hill. It shimmered when the sun reflected off of it.

     I recognized this shimmering sweater immediately: The Golden Fleece. But why, I wondered, was my subconscious showing this to me?

Then, my question went answered. I heard a faint huffing and puffing coming from the other side of the hill. The Cyclops and I both leaned in; he was eager to see who or what was coming, but I was nervous. This couldn't have been good if it was coming to me in a dream.

Then, once the heavy breathing got closer and its owner reached the top of the hill, I couldn't help the gasp that came from my lips—it was my good friend Grover; horns, hooves, fuzzy butt and all. He was inspecting the Golden Fleece that was hanging down from the tree—staring into it so intensely that he didn't even notice the Cyclops stand and move closer to get a better angle for what I assumed to be capturing him.

I tried to call out to Grover, but my voice clearly didn't carry across dreams. Then, just as the Cyclops reached out a hand to grab him, Grover turned and, shaking, jabbed a sharp piece of bark into his hand. The Cyclops yelled in pain. Grover ran for the wind, but something told me he didn't get very far.

   When I awoke, the first thing I thought was That wasn't such a bad dream. The second thing I thought was Styx, those robot bulls look like they're demolishing our campers.

And they were.

When my eyes focused, I could clearly see the metallic monsters battling our warriors, who were decked out in full battle armor. Clarisse was directing them, but there weren't many fighters. I recognized Sherman Yang, a boy about thirteen or fourteen that had arrived at camp only a week prior, and maybe seven more Ares campers that were too busy fleeing for me to make out their faces. They were way out-numbered.

I recognized Percy's hands on my shoulders, keeping me stable, and I looked around, startled. He gripped my arms tighter when I tried to pry away. "Hey," he said in a mellow voice, "hey, listen; do you know what's going on?"

I stammered, squeezing my eyes shut and wetting my lips. "Y—yeah, Thalia's tree." I looked to the top of Half-Blood Hill to see it had yet to have been fixed. "It's poisoned," I explained to Percy, who had drawn his sword. "The.. the monsters can cross camp boundaries now. We're in trouble."

"I can see that," he said grimly. He looked at me with a hard-set expression. "Stay here. You shouldn't be fighting."

When he ran off, I armed my bow. "Bullshit, I shouldn't be fighting," I muttered, then followed in his footsteps.

     As I ran up to the metal bulls, I recalled something about what they were—Hephaestus himself had made them, if I remembered correctly. They'd prove difficult to take down with such a limited number of fighters. We only had about ten campers defending the border, and Clarisse was driving them out by barking commands.

     She tried to form them into a phalanx—line them up, shields facing outwards and spears in the air—but all that did was provide a straight shot for one of the bulls to run them down. It trampled the entire phalanx, and the campers stumbled to the ground. Annabeth tried to lure one of them away and turn invisible, but before she could even put her hat on, the bull had let out a roar and thrown her to the side with its horns. She hit the ground with a harsh thud that I could hear even from yards away. I waited, but Annabeth didn't get back up again.

     My fingertips tingled. I could feel sparks popping off of them. Nobody messed with Annabeth and got away with it, okay? Especially not a couple of puny cows.

     I charged. Unfortunately, a small detail I had forgotten about Hephaestus's creations was that their iron skin averaged out at about a thousand degrees, so hot that I almost burnt to a crisp when I entered their general vicinity. I stumbled back, lifting my arm to shield my face of the heat.

     "What do we do?" I asked Percy, nocking an arrow. "We don't exactly have sunscreen handy!"

     He was trying to swipe at one of the bulls with his sword, but he gave me a sideways glance. "You stay out of this! Go wait with Tyson!"

     He ducked as the bull he was fighting tried to stab at him with his horn. I looked over my shoulder to see Percy's friend from before, whom I assumed to be Tyson, charging at us, looking furious. He shouted something about "BAD COW!" then pummeled a bull's face in with his bare fist. I turned to Percy to see him as shocked as I was.

     "Dude," I said to him, "who is this guy?"

     Percy shrugged, his jaw hanging open as Tyson swung back his arm and slammed down another sucker punch onto the last remaining bull. There was no possible way Tyson's bare skin should have been able to withstand such heat, but he seemed fine. The bull creaked and groaned like an old machine, then fell to the ground with a thud.

     Tyson came over to us. He didn't even look tired. I peered at his face.

     "Hey," I muttered, leaning in to get a better look. "Hey, Aquaman, were you going to tell us you brought a Cyclops to camp, or what?"

But when I looked to him, Percy was squinting into Tyson's face as hard as I was. His eyes widened and he took a step back. His shirt was almost soaked through with sweat, and when he shook his head I could feel droplets of perspiration spray off of his forehead. "I had no idea."

"It makes sense," I admitted, after gagging and swiping Percy's sweat off my cheek. "How he withstood the heat of the bulls, his strength... He's a baby, obviously, but still. He's strong." I looked at Percy, tilting my head to the side. "You didn't know?"

He shrugged helplessly. "No clue," he told me, then looked around like a thought had just struck him. "Where's Chiron? We should talk ab—"

I frowned, then shook my head and sighed, rubbing my temples. "Chiron.. Oh, just come on, Aquaman. He can do all the explaining himself. And take your Cyclops friend; I can't babysit him and try to heal Annabeth at the same time." I scoffed. "Gods, of course the moment you get back, everything goes haywire. We should look into banning you."