Light painted the back of her eyes, casting a warm glow, a gentle caress against cheeks with the dawn light and sweet chirping of birds as they sing their greetings to the sun as the golden chariot raised across the sky.

Of course, it wasn't a chariot, nor was the light gentle and kind. Kassandra's face scrunched as she groans, shuffling herself out of the swinging hammock. It seemed Clarisse decided against shifts and had simply chosen to just go to bed herself, likely trusting the crew to take care of everything in her absence or wake her if anything of importance was to occur.

(And it seemed like it her friend had felt bad for sending her to sleep in a hammock and had figured that was a good enough reason to ditch the semi-comfortable looking bed that she had glimpsed from the captains quarters.)

Raising her hands up high above her head, she stretches her back with a muffled groan and a pop, twisting herself through the movements and waking her limbs. With a glance at the slumbering daughter of the war god, she decides it's probably best to let her rest and silences herself with a quick inhale, holding the sound of her steps to herself as she climbs back to the upper deck.

Morning chill hit her with a blast, bursting against flushed tawny skin that had been cast with a darkened golden brush from hours spent under the suns burning rays, but she could not feel cold as she stretched out once more, rising on the balls of her feet to reach as high as she could.

Her plain black running shorts had risen on her hips when she slept, her orange camp shirt shifting until it was crooked on her frame. Kassandra scowled into the early morning, turning her glare to the zombie soldiers that tried to approach her.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Apollo would pass through the sky in the morning riding his golden chariot of the sun burning and aflame and would play the worst music possible at a frequency that only his children could hear just so that they would wake and see him drive by. Kassandra has never heard this music of course, but some of her cabin mates have, the outcome varying on occasion at times to who would be woken. That didn't stop her from being jolted awake at the phantom feeling of something attempting to disturb her peaceful sleep.

If it was the case of her father waking her, she wouldn't even find herself surprised that he would wake her for seemingly no reason when she was on a very important quest.

Fixing the state of her clothes, she wandered over the side of the ship and peered down into the water. They were moving through a river still, the ironclad not all that far from the bank. She cracked her back before she leans forward, resting her arms against the dew-covered metal. She wondered how far they had travelled since she went to bed.

"Lady Kassandra--" a soldier begins.

She winces. "Oh, please don't call me that. I'm not an Ares kid."

"Something has been spotted near the stern of the vessel," he continues on uncaring of her words.

Jerking further awake, she jogs over to the stern, quickly scaling the top of the cabin to get a better look as she crouched on the roof.

"Go wake Clarisse and bring back my bow and arrow immediately," she orders, scanning her surroundings with a careful, keen eye.

She doesn't turn to see if they've acknowledged her words. She focuses on a cluster of trees that dip closer into the water, roots growing from the earth at the back under the surface of the murky river beneath.

Whatever it was, it was there, it seemed. Three or four of them, for sure. A flash and her vision blurs around the edges as she watches it move.

"What is it?" Clarisse demands, spear in hand.

The zombie comes up behind her, holding out her bow and arrow. Kassandra grabs them eagerly, nocking an arrow and raising it to aim.

"Hellhounds. I think they've been following for a while," she mentions, lining up her sights. A flash of black weaves through the tree trunks and bushes. She looses the arrow, tracking its movement through the air until she sees it sink through the jugular.

Clarisse lets out an appreciative hum. "Nice."

Kassandra grins, letting the next two arrows fly free in quick succession. Her hand hovers, waiting over her quiver.

"You think that's it?" Clarisse asks.

"It should be, I think. I'll stay up here and act a scout for now."

"You'll get bored," Clarisse says, not arguing or disagreeing with her plan -- because it was a good plan -- as she makes her way back toward the captain's quarters. She had food stashed in her quarters, enough to share it seemed. Kassandra attributed it to the fact that she was certain she would come along. "I'll bring you food and your flute so that you can pass the time."

She grins. "I'll play some theme music. It'll be fun."

Clarisse scoffs as she disappears beneath her.

Alone, she settles back against a railing and lets herself get comfortable. Hopefully, her battle reflexes would warn her if she had something coming up behind her; before she was so literally and miserably stabbed in the back.

Legs stretched out before her, she crosses her ankles while she keeps a firm hand on her bow.

"Here," Clarisse says, coming up beside her and dropping down with the same amount of grace that Kassandra had.

She takes the flute first, fingers wrapping around the cool metal with a pleased little grin. She rolls it in her hand, weighing it between her fingers. The next thing offered is a box of open pop tarts. Rolling her eyes, she reaches in to take a singular package.

"A nutritious breakfast," she teases.

"Shut up. I don't need to explain myself to you."

"You don't. I know how you love sugary foods."

"Don't act like you don't take advantage of it just as much. You're on two sports teams and do all the regular training stuff, you eat like crap just as much as I do."

Kassandra shrugs. "Not saying that I don't, but if I get hungry in the middle of nearly dying, I'm blaming your pop tarts."

She tears open the package and breaks off a piece to pop into her mouth.

Clarisse rolls her eyes, resting her weight back onto her hands.

The morning was calm, peaceful, as they chugged along. There were no other monster encounters as they travelled by water and the ironclad was large enough that the girls didn't have to spend all their time in each other's faces.

"Hey Clarisse," Kassandra calls out around noon, catching the attention of the girl that had locked her stoic gaze onto the horizon and was beginning to look more and more like a sea captain that was missing something out far in the distance as if the answers she sought were too far out of reach. "How come you didn't bring any of your siblings?"

The girl's eyes flashed with fires smouldering behind the brown, anger vibrating through her papery thin control, unwittingly trying to burst out through her skin and set the boat aflame coating them in her rage -- but then it was gone in an instant, replaced with a more neutral sneer, a blank glaze in her eyes.

"I don't need any help from those losers. I let them stay back at camp to work guard duty," she snips.

The lie chimes through the air, ringing clear in her ears. At times, the curse of Apollo was a bit of a blessing, the ability to catch the bits of deception, to instinctively hear when something was not the truth, was a useful tool to keep in her arsenal for whatever the case (especially against the Stoll brothers and their supernatural sense of trickery and manipulation that could leave even the brightest of demigods feeling unaware or befuddled) (that, of course, doesn't make up for the inability to lie and all the difficulty that she has stemmed from that).

She doesn't approach it right away, nodding along believingly. "Were the attacks that bad?" she asks instead. "I only know what Chiron told me but it wasn't that much."

Her expression scrunched into one of displeasure. "It's all gone to shit. There are monsters almost constantly at the border and there aren't always enough of us in shape to work a fully functioning rotation. It was terrible before people started coming in for the summer," she tells her, her rage palpable as she spews the words. "Your siblings are worn thin trying to heal everyone. Last I saw Fletcher and Will, they were sleeping whatever chance they had. They looked terrible."

Her heart contorts, clenching with sadness and fear for her siblings. "Austin, Gracie and Victoria should be there by now or on the way, and Michael and Christa stay year-round so he should be helping them."

"Michael helps out, I guess, but you know that little sister of yours isn't all that good at anything to be of much help yet."

"Christa's is, like, 7, Clarisse, and she only found out last year. She's doing her best to help out, I'm sure."

"But you don't have all that much faith in them anyway."

Kassandra winces. "Lee, Will, Michael, and maybe Gracie are the best healers we have in at the moment. The others are fine, perfectly acceptable, and definitely better than I am, but it doesn't mean I won't worry," she says honestly, unrepentant as she criticizes their skills. "They'll be getting the practice, though, so that's good."

"No practice for you though," Clarisse comments. "You could have used it."

"Laugh it up. That just means you have no one to help you when you eventually get yourself hurt."

"I'm not getting hurt at all on this Quest," the daughter of Ares proudly announces, flexing her arms as she stands taller.

"Wow, you'll be the first demigod not to get hurt on a quest," she says dryly, hand dropping back in a tired, empty gesture.

Clarisse's lips twitch as she tries to hold tight to her scowl. It wasn't a normal nor daily occurrence for Clarisse to laugh as much as she had with Kassandra when usually she was only this relaxed when she was being boisterous and excitable with her siblings -- often during meals, it seemed -- roughhousing and beating on one another as a form of love language that she would never have the courage to actually point out to the Ares kids in fear of earning a couple of not so loving bruises for the implications of her words.

Hiding her own smile by tilting her face towards the sky, she lets her eyes fall shut to avoid seeing the blaze of the sun as it heats her skin in a way that she was loathed to admit was pleasant.

For the sight of the sun no longer brought her joy or comfort. It was the heat, the waves of radiation that came from burning gasses that made up the surface of the sun -- the science -- that made her feel warm and comfortable.

Kassandra was a girl of many talents, a girl thrown together from many bits and pieces and mixed into a slightly deflated attempt at not human but not god. She was a half being that possessed more than she had ever dared and less than she actually needed, and had taken those pieces and made herself into the bones of a legend to come, a figure of myth and fame waiting to happen; and a lot of that was attributed to the daddy issues. The issues being that he sucks and she hates him and that she wants to make something of herself that is so wonderful that he will have no choice but to acknowledge what he was missing.

"I can't say anything about you," Clarisse mentions. "Not when you insist on using that tiny little dagger."

She jumps, whirling to fix a playful scowl on the other girl. "You're the one that told me to use a dagger!"

"Now that I think about it, throwing knives would suit you just as well."

"I feel like we have this conversation every time you want to pick on me," her playful complaint holds a hint of honestly, but she doesn't dwell on it. "It's just inconvenient to run around with a bunch of knives to throw around and then have to retrieve them all just so I'm not left defenceless."

Clarisse sighs. "Which is why I put up with you and your bow and arrow."

"Shove off!" she laughs, shaking her head. She leans back, casting a quick glance over their surroundings. "You won't be dissing my bow and when I swoop in like a hero and save you."

"You wish!"

Desolveving into giggles, she pulls back the string on the bow and lets it go with a snap, listening to the comforting twang that cast an echo around her. She hums with it, twanging the bow once more before she sets it down and switches for her flute.

She plays a few notes, fingers fluttering over the keys as she does a few warm-up scales.

"You feel up to telling me the truth about why your siblings didn't want to come now?"

Clarisse's expression snaps up in an instant, closing off into that mean, scrunched up look she carries when she's at camp and dealing with particularly difficult people. Kassandra's gaze feels knowing, and it's like she already knows the answer but just wants confirmation, as she continues to search the other girl.

"What are you already talking about?" she snaps. "I already told you--"

"Don't lie to me, pleas. I never lie to you."

"That's because you can't."

"Does the reason really matter?" she counters. " I don't lie to you regardless."

A pregnant pause fills the distance between them, pushing them further and further apart with the tension until Clarisse finally sighs, conceding as she says: "They didn't want to come with me. They didn't think I would succeed and if I did, they didn't want to share the glory."

Kassandra nods. "Don't' worry. I want no glory and I'm not going to let you go on alone. It might be nice to get myself a spoil of war, though. Maybe I should start keeping a collection of my spoils after this."

The tension between them falls apart as Clarisse chuckles. "Do you even have any spoils?"

Blushing, she turns her face away. "I have a few pieces from missions but I don't actually go out actively looking for fights, you know."

"Wrong mindset to have on a quest."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. This might be a good time to tell me about this cyclops now."

Later, as she's playing a rendition of Syrinx by Debussy stood atop her perch -- eyes falling shut and the sun beginning to set as the sky shifts with yellows, oranges, and pinks, the music swelling in her chest and building until she feels as though she might actually be floating, free of anything but the dips and pulls of notes, of muscle memory and natural swaying to the music -- Kassandra is broken free from her trance by the sounds of fighting as it pounds in her ears.

Almost knocked off balance, she lowers her flutes and whirls around, searching imploringly for the source as she gives a quick shout for Clarisse.

Trees shake, and the top of one disappears as it falls, crashing with a boom. Steam rises up through the canopies, a hissing sound that makes her skin crawl.

"Something big," she announces, swiftly switching for her bow and arrow, nocking it in preparation.

"How big?" she demands, all business.

She finds herself grinning despite herself. "Not sure. It knocked down a tree. Something is burning or steaming," she supplies. "It's making some sort of hissing noise, like burning, but also like a, uh, sort of like a sn-snake."

"Try to get a better look before we make any assumptions."

Nodding, she strains her gaze, balancing herself on the lower bar of the railing as she rises as high as she could. Then, in a flash of movement that has her zeroing in on so quickly that her vision blurs at the edges, she spots the head.

"Hydra. How you wanna take it?"

Clarisse is a flurry of movement from then, stomping around the deck as a captain giving orders. "Wait till we round the bend before we do anything," she calls back for Kassandra's sake.

Steadying her bow in hand, she holds it with her sights set, waiting for her target.

"What's that noise?"

Kassandra blinks. "There's half-bloods."

"There! Prepare the thirty-two-pounder!" Clarisse shouts.

She jumps, lowering her bow and arrow as she climbs from the railing and moves closer to where Clarisse stood on the deck. "There are half-bloods. We can't just shoot them!"

The gravelly voice of one of the zombies said, "They're too close, m'lady!"

"Damn the heroes! They'll have to dodge!" the girl said. "Full steam ahead!"

"Aye, m'lady."

Kassandra groaned, shooting a glare at her friend before she shouts: "Incoming! Watch out!"

"Fire at will, Captain!" Clarisse orders.

There was an earth-shattering boom as the cannon is fired, the sound echoing across the empty space of the river ringing in her ears badly enough that she brings her hands up to cover them. Her eyes burned with the flash of light that rose in a column. Then the Hydra exploded in a however of green guts and slime before it hit the ground and turned to dust.

Clarisse stood proudly next to the smoking cannon, her scowl firmly in place as they rounded the last of the bend fully.

Kassandra blinks. "Is that Annabeth and Percy?"

"Losers," she sneered. "But I suppose I have to rescue you. Come aboard."

☼ ☼ ☼

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Percy and Annabeth finally make an entrance :)) Alsoooo,,,, i have taken it upon myself to incorporate a few headcanons that i saw on Pinterest and found neat just because i can :) :) :) :)

unedited

written: 2021-01-22

posted: 2021-02-20