The Beast of the Sea~Chapter 4

The paperwork was surprisingly easy to fill out. All I needed to do was sign at the bottom of an agreement about how the Pegasus Travel Agency wasn’t responsible for any injuries the rider may sustain during my trip. There was also a weird bit of text saying not to feed them after midnight, but I kind of just skimmed over that part.

“Alright, seems like y’all are all set and paid for,” Ernest said as he flipped one of the gold coins in his fingers and I watched as it landed in his shirt pocket, a trick I found somewhat impressive. “Now remember, hold on tight.”

“How do we make them…go?” I asked as I had never ridden a horse before, much less a horse that was half rooster.

“Simple enough, just give them a gentle kick and they will go where ya need them to,” he said with a smile.

“Alright,” I said a little worried and gave the Hippalectryon a small kick and it lunged forward. I watched as the front of the horse seemed to be galloping like any other horse, but the back half was moving so much quicker, like an actual rooster if it was running away from something. The two sets of feet seemed to be going at two different speeds which confused me to know end, as I wondered how it ever figured out how to run. I didn’t have much time to think about it as I looked forward and saw the fence line of the large stables, and I was heading right for it.

“Slow down, stop, heal!” I started to shout, but the Hippalectryon ignored my orders and kept moving forward. Just before we hit it, I felt myself get lifted into the air and I looked around. The horse half had pushed its’ front legs off the ground while the back tried desperately to life its’ own weight off the ground. We managed to clear the ground for just long enough to make it over the fence and there was nothing but clear land as far as I could see.

“This thing is trying to kill me!” I heard Joseph say from behind me. I looked behind me, sure that the Hippalectryon would be paying more attention to the road then I could. Joseph on the other hand was actively trying to control his Hippalectryon by pulling on the reins to try and get it to go a certain way. However, it seemed to dislike being controlled and would pull against him in the opposite direction. At one point, I got worried because I could feel a sense of growing hostility in the animal and I knew that wouldn’t end well.

“Just let it do what it wants, or I’m sure it is going to buck you off. Don’t ask me how I know,” I told Joseph, so with a bit of reluctance he loosened his grip on the reins and the Hippalectryon seemed to be much happier, running alongside me. “So, are we going the right way?”

“Hard to say, everything is moving so fast,” Joseph said and I looked around. I wondered how I had missed it before, but right now everything seemed to be zooming around me as if I was fast forwarding through a movie or something. I caught glimpses of buildings and sites, but nothing I could really pinpoint and I think I was starting to feel a bit motion sick. “I think we just passed New York City.”

I took another look around, against my better judgment, and I saw the Statue of Liberty in the distance. It was gone in a flash and I found myself on the shore line as the Hippalectryon seemed to be running on a beach. However because of the sand, they were forced to slow down to tolerable levels of speed.

“Thank the gods,” I said as I felt my stomach catch back up with me after a few minutes.

“You think this is fast, you should see my motorcycle…if I could ride it that is,” Joseph said as we rode up the beach. Even if he was a child of Zeus, a flying motorcycle seemed more Ares’ style, but I wasn’t going to say that out load. Ares and his children had a way of annoying almost everyone and I had seen earlier that day the kind of power Joseph had.

“Maybe some other time, I like to keep my feet on the ground if I can help it. Zeus can be picky about who he lets in the sky,” I said and a small sound of thunder rolled across the sky.

“Oh he isn’t all that bad. He mostly just has a thing against children of Poseidon…and sometimes Hades…and he got into an argument with Hermes about a package that was lost in delivery while being air-mailed…but normally he lets anyone in the air,” he said encouragingly, but I decided at that moment that I wasn’t going in the air anytime soon unless Zeus swore on the Styx not to blast me out of the sky, and even then that wasn’t a sure thing. The gods were immortal, so they sometimes got off light with promises on the Styx or found a way around them.

Before long, I saw the borders of the camp come into view. With the number of demigods quickly growing, as this was the summer season, Camp Half-Blood had expanded the borders to almost twice its’ original size. While Thalia’s Tree still stood as the official entry way to the camp, several years ago the tree started to grow seeds. A few of the Demeter and Persephone campers got the bright idea to plant them around the edges of the border. The result, the power of the Golden Fleece seemed to enrich the seeds of Thalia’s tree and the border began to grow to the point where a few of the new trees had to be cut down or the border could have expanded all the way to Connecticut.

“Good to be back?” Joseph asked, but I only silently nodded. In truth, I had kind of been avoiding coming back here for my own, more selfish reasons, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

As our Hippalectryon slowed down, I heard a bell ring from one of the lookout towers. It was different from the We’re under attacks again bells so at least it was good news. Campers started heading for the beach to see who was heading back to camp today. Then through the crowd, I saw a girl with bright red hair and eyes looking right at me. It was then that my heart sunk just a bit into my chest, but I kept going.