The Beast of the Sea~Chapter 2

The storm began to pick up for just a moment as I watched lightning bolts flash across the sky. His dark blue eyes seemed to spark with electricity as he looked at me with an angered expression. He also had short brown hair that seemed to be standing up slightly from the edges of his hat, most likely from the static electricity from the bolts of lightning.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled back at him as I managed to pull my pocket knife from my pocket and it extended to full length. I swatted his spear away from me and rolled backward onto my feet. “I don’t even think I’ve met you before in my entire life. I haven’t done anything!”

“That’s just it, you haven’t done anything and now look at me!” he shouted, but I didn’t understand what exactly the problem was. As far as I could see, he looked completely fine. I mean he was about my height, maybe a bit younger than me but I wasn’t sure.

“Ya, I’m looking at you but I don’t see anything wrong with you,” I told him as I held my sword up, not really sure what he was going to do next. He seemed unusually angry at me and I had no idea why. He even said that I hadn’t done anything so what hadn’t I done.

“I became a child after picking up your slack,” he said and charged at me with his spear. I took a step back and locked my sword with his spear. The hairs on my arm stood up as I felt a small surge of electricity run through my body. I instantly broke the connection between us and he came at me once again with his spear.

For a long time, there was a repeated motion of him coming at me with his spear and I would knock it to the side or dodge it entirely. I felt myself grow a bit tired as I hadn’t exactly been practicing my swordsmanship over the past several months. However he stopped coming at me, pointing his spear toward me and gave me a smirk. As if I was watching in slow motion, I saw a bolt of lightning shoot from the tip of the spear in my direction. Using mostly instinct, I moved my sword into a defensive position and the earth itself rose up to defend me. When the lightning collided with the earth, there was a small explosion as the rock wall broke into rubble and I fell backward onto the sidewalk. He once again had his spear pointed at my chest, but was smart enough this time to kick my sword from my hand.

“Ok, now that I have your attention, here is what is going to happen,” he said in a very bossy tone that was really starting to annoy me. “We are going to go back to Camp Half-Blood, you’re going to get a prophecy from the Oracle, and then we are going to find a way to return me to normal.”

“Why don’t you go get a prophecy yourself?” I asked him, slightly annoyed that a guy younger than me was giving me orders.

“I did get a prophecy from the Oracle, but the prophecy wasn’t meant for me and now I’m in the body of a child!” he yelled, clearly getting annoyed, but not at me this time, more at himself. Then something seemed to click in my brain.

“Wait…Wait?” I yelled as the mention of him being in the body of a child final started to sink in.

“You heard me. Camp has been searching for the other three Spheres of Power while you’ve been laying back. The Oracle gave me a prophecy saying that there would be a sphere in the sea of monsters, but the sphere wouldn’t activate without the touch of the guardian. She also mentioned that if I tried without the help of the guardian, time would reverse for me. I didn’t listen to the warning, so I went into the sea in order to find it. The water Elemental attacked me when I went for her sphere and tossed me into some kind of pool that made me into a child,” he said and the aggravation never left his face as he explained what happened.

“No offense, but it kind of sounds like it was your fault. I mean the Oracle gave you a warning from the sounds of it,” I said and instantly the lightning in the sky seemed to grow violent as the guy with the spear gave me an angered look.

“No, I went to look for it because you haven’t. You started all of this and you were the one that gave us the idea to find the spheres in the first place. If the spheres only work for their guardian, then without you my quest was doomed to fail anyway. So now I’m officially recruiting you for a quest,” he said and grabbed me by the shirt before dragging me away from the bus stop. As we rounded the block, I saw my bus drive down the street toward my stop.

“Can’t we do this in a week or something?” I tried to argue. “Today is my last day at school and my mom has this whole trip to the beach planned out. Plus, I don’t even know who you are.”

“No we can’t, you have put this off long enough,” the guy said as he just kept tugging at my shirt. “Now hurry up or we are going to miss our ride. I’m Joseph Mierek by the way.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant until we rounded another corner and walked a few blocks down. We then entered a small store that seemed to have an overly large parking lot. I mean there were about five parking spots up front and maybe about forty more in the back of the store. The sign above the door said something like Pegasus Travel Agency. As soon as we walked inside, there was a dinging sound from one of the motion sensors and we walked up to the front counter.

“Excuse me,” Joseph said to the guy behind the counter. The guy was reading a news paper and didn’t really seem to be that interested in us as he folded it in half to get a look at us. He raised an eyebrow as he scanned us over and I noticed he had a nametag that said Ernest. I thought it was kind of funny because he didn’t seem that earnest about anything.

“What do you want?” Ernest asked with a tone that said how dare a customer interrupt me at work, the nerve of some people. I could tell Joseph was more than a little annoyed at his tone, but seemed to hold himself back.

“We need two one way trips to Camp Half-Blood,” he said and placed about ten golden drachmas on the table. “Immediately.”