Chapter 21: Unexpected Troubles

Chapter 20

Julie

After we escaped from the monsters and got the boat underway, and the boys - being boys - sat around and did nothing. I got the boat up and moving, sails raised and oars slapping against the water, and whatever else boats do. Honestly, I don’t really understand it myself, but it did what it needed to do to move. The trip there was, surprisingly, uneventful and I closed my eyes for a second.

I figure I must have passed out or something, because the next thing I knew the entire ship shuddered as it hit the beach of the new island. My eyes snapped open in time to see Max, who was also dozing, fly off the deck and land on his back on the beach.

“Owwwwww...” he complained, coughing as the air started rushing back into his lungs. Duke started pulling himself up off the deck. I was able to grab the railing as I woke, so I was not too hurt. Duke and I went to the edge of the deck and looked down at Max, who was slowly climbing to his feet. Duke turned to me.

“Grab some gear for us, I’ll go check on Max. When you get it toss it down and then well explore.” I nodded and got to work.

After about 10 minutes I had put together three packs for us with some basic, if disgusting, necessities. I mean, I enjoy eating fish as much as the next girl, but not raw, with the bones, covered in lard. I climbed down the ladder, tossed the boys their bags, and inspected the boat. I took a look and saw, it was hopeless. The bottom of the boat was torn open, shattered wood all through the bottom of the boat which had some dune buggies. Lucky us, of the 10 that were in there, 3 worked.

Max was stretching now, Duke having determined that nothing was broken, and walked over to me.

“Any way you could do...whatever it is that you do with the boat, to get it seaworthy again in case we need to hot foot it out of here?” He picked up a pack and strapped it on.

“Too much damage,” I said shaking my head. “Give me a few minutes to see if I can get one of the life-boats to be a possible escape for us.” Max nodded and took the second pack to Duke. I rested my and on the boat and tried to give it orders, but whatever let it work with me was gone, and the wreck was just allot of dead wood. I shook my head, picked up my bag, and went over to the boys.

“No good?” Duke asked.

“Nothing, whatever it was is gone, its just a boat now.” I responded as I adjusted the straps. “Where are we exactly?” I started to pay attention to our surroundings. “Well, from what I saw when I looked around, this was some sort of staging sight. Over that ridge there are a lot of fire pits and abandoned tents, old bronze weapon racks. Across from that is a gutted city.” Duke explained. Before I could say anything Max started walking to the top of the ridge and we followed him. When we reached the top we were treated first to the sight of giant city walls that were breached in multiple places, the gates of the city open wide. Skeletons in two styles of ancient Greek bronze armor was lying around. Some of those skeletons were in pieces, armor that must have come from those bodies was lying in pieces over the battlefield too.

As Max and I stood and stared in shock at the literal carnage the wreckage and bodies implied, Duke walked toward two piles of bones that were not too far from us. When we noticed we jogged over to him.

“What are you doing?” Max asked.

“My father is the God of War. The losers of every battle have to serve him as the price of their failure. Since this was a battle, one side had to lose, so I am going to pray to my father to let me talk to one of em and see what happens. Hopefully, that will give us some information.” Duke said as he reached the space between the two. He walked over to one pile, drew a sword from that pile and a skull and walked back to us. He then stabbed the sword, point down, into the ground and placed the skull on it, and repeated with a skull and sword on the other side. Once both were in place, he sat down between the two swords, slightly in front of them, closed his eyes, and quietly prayed to himself. After a few minutes Max got bored and started walking around, careful to keep close to us. I just looked toward the city.

I saw it before the others did.

From the ruined gates of the city a cloud of dust was being pushed by the breeze. The cloud was quickly followed by the missing gate, which made loud booming noises as it bounced along the ground and splashed into the ocean. Following the door was more wreckage of buildings and bodies. From behind me I heard a wailing voice.

“Run child of my lord Ares, the beast that brought the end of Troy is here, those damn fools didn’t know what they were releasing!” I heard Max gasp next to me. The dust was blown away in a burst of wind, and frost started to gather on the inside of the gate, to the left of the gate a red spot started becoming red and the stonework looked to be melting, and to the right the stone was melting.

“What the hell are you babbling about man? Talk sense!” Duke was yelling at whatever was talking.

The dust started up again, rising from the city and the gate like smoke from the fire. Part of it moved like something was waving at it, trying to clear its sight.

“The Hydra sir, the Trojan Hydra!”

Chapter 22