Son of the Moon

15

-Percy-

As the camera stalked after Luke and the other person he heard a couple of guys coming down the hall causing Beckendorf to quickly move the camera to a hidden position.

"You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?" one of them asked excitedly.

The other laughed at the question, "Yeah, it's awesome.".

"I hear they got two more coming," the first voice, which was oddly familiar, said still excited "They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man-no contest!", after the two left the screen their voiced faded down the corridor.

"That was Chris Rodriguez!" Clarisse whispered in shock "From Cabin Eleven.".

Thinking back he sort of recalled Chris from the summer before. Chris was one of those undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian dad or mom never claimed him. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn't seen Chris at camp since he got back. "What's another half-blood doing here?" Will asked in disgust.

We kept the camera going down the corridor, they didn't need maps to figure out where they were going because even through a camera they could steel feel the pulse of evil in the air.

"Percy." Bianca pointed to the screen "Look."

She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade-a mall full of shops- but that's not what had caught Bianca's attention.

A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen Laistrygonian giants, two hellhounds, and a few Scythian Dracaena.

The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in his throat when he realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As they watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.

Amanda turned away from the screen, her face ashen. "Come on," Nico told her, likely trying to sound braver than he actually felt, "The sooner we find Luke the better.".

At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must lead somewhere important. Beckendorf got the Camera to the top of the door and had it feed a smaller camera on a tentacle through the crack in the door so they could see and hear inside. "-the prophecy ourselves. The fools won't know which way to turn." Luke stated just as they gained access.

Before he could react to their sudden immersion in the conversation the other voice spoke causing him to look up and gasp "You really think the old horseman is gone for good?" the being he knew to be Agrius asked Luke.

Luke laughed "They can't trust him. Not with the skeletons in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw."

Feeling his anger rise he used the moment to observe the room Luke was in and saw it to be a state room both beautiful and horrible.

The beautiful part: Huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out over the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food-pizza boxes, bottles of soda, and a stack of roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.

The horrible part: On a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a ten-foot-long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket gave off a cold aura that was felt even through the camera.

Luke himself was a surprise too, he'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

He still had the scar under his eye-a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

They continued to watch as Luke admitted to the poisoning of Thalia's tree before he turned to Beckendorf and said "Can you set that camera to automatically record and transmit data as well as move around on its own?".

"Yeah, it'll just take a little bit to set up from here." Beckendorf answered without hesitation.

"Then do so, I need to make a call." He said before leaving the son of Hephaestus to his work. Quickly walking to the end of the deck he made an Iris Message to his Grandfather and told him what they had seen. Grandfather Zeus quickly agreed to do his best to stop Luke and the ship of monsters but said that he couldn't make any promises on that front. It did though mean that Tantalus would be send back to the fields of punishment immediately.

After the call to his grandfather he got behind the wheel of the ship and began using his powers over the water to push their ship faster so that it sped across the waves. Through the night they sailed onward, never stopping their journey, although Clarisse insisted on getting to fight every sea monster they came across much to his amusement.

Finally, as dawn split the horizon, he saw it in the distance, facing north lay an island marked with cliffs a hundred feet high, marred with caves that gaped like sickening mouths over the looming drop, waiting to steal any traveler foolish enough to cross them. Half a mile south of the sickening cliffs a storm brewed in a broiling mass of ocean that frothed and bubbled like a potion in a cauldron as the mass of sea roared its presence to the world.

"Is that a hurricane?" Will asked when he saw the roaring mass, fear etching his voice.

"No," he stated tonelessly as he stared at the sight before him "that is Charybdis and her sister-beast Scylla.".

"Are you insane?!" Beckendorf exclaimed in shock "Why are we going through this gate? Why not the…".

"Clashing rocks?" he asked causing Beckendorf to nod "I don't think the ship is fast enough to get through there in time. But with these beasties we have a chance to fight.". Turning to Clarisse he called out "Get everyone below decks and stand guard, I'll inform you when it is safe to return to the top deck.".

"Percy!" Bianca cried out "You can't fight that thing on your own!"

Turning to his girlfriend he gave a sly grin "Who said anything about fighting?" he asked before willing his powers into being. Around the ship the sound of crackling ice could be heard as, slowly, like icy fingers the ice clawed its way up into the air and a spike dome of ice formed around their ship while his friends, no, his family looked in awe at what he wrought around them. "Let's see that monster try and eat her way through ever-freezing ice.".

"You heard the man!" Clarisse yelled brandishing her spear "Move it!".

The others quickly rushed down to the lower decks but stayed in sight as he sailed the ship and willed the dome of ice to move with him. As he sailed closer to the gates he felt the ship begin to shake and vibrate and even the ice began to crack before refreezing before he poured more power into the dome. After a moment he heard a sharp series of cracks followed by a scream and the splash of blood as part of the dome was stained red and dripped blood for a moment before the cracks refroze. This continued with seven more cracks which were always followed by the screech of pain and the drip of blood, on the eight crack however the blood was joined by a trickle of gold dust and he unfroze the dome and called out "Come on out! Scylla's dead!".

"What?!" came the shocked shouts of those below deck as they rushed up, "How?!".

"She isn't, wasn't, too smart," he deadpanned gesturing with his thumb to the puddles of blood on the deck "she kept trying to bite through the ice spikes and stabbed her own heads on them.".

"Wow," Amanda deadpanned "that's pathetic.".

"You have no idea," he said as he turned his ship, "now come on. We have a fleece to find.".