Sylvester Falcone and the Titan's Revenge

Sylvester Falcone and the Titan's Revenge takes place two years after the events of The Last Olympian and the events from The Lost Hero to The Blood of Olympus do not apply.

Warning: This story has a PG-13 rating on account of containing strong violence, bloody violence, horror, threat, and mild language

Blurb

Sylvester Falcone was only the most normal person raised by his father in New York. However, the untimely death of his father provokes him into taking to the streets and discovering that he has unbelievable capacities for thought as well as the ability to overwhelm every monster that comes his way. It is then that he discovers he is the demigod son of Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Battle Strategy, and his life is turned upside down. After a fateful prophecy is given that predicts his battle with an ancient, vengeful enemy, Sylvester is forced into a magical world of violence, danger and deception.

Prologue - The Squabble of Sky and Sea

The man in the Hawaiian shirt appeared in a column of thick blue water. that reached twenty metres high and spread two metres wide. When it descended and scattered across the golden floor beneath him, there was a very tall man standing there. He was wearing leather sandals, khaki Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that was unbuttoned to reveal a white vest. The man was deeply tanned so that he was almost caramel-brown, and his skin around his face was wrapped in sun-crinkled that betrayed a load of smiling. He had curly black hair that was split down the middle, and his eyes were sea-green and positively sparkled with intelligence. He had a bushy black beard.

Holding a great three-pronged bronze trident, the man walked up the steps in front of him. Beneath those steps, clouds stretched from whole miles around. The city in front of him was magnificent, beautiful in every sense of the word. Its palaces and streets were made of sparkling, glittering gold and silver, and he could see a myriad of beings of incredible shapes and sizes occupying those locations. At the very centre of this magnificent city was a gigantic palace that stretched higher than any of the buildings in the city, and most certainly any of the buildings in the world beneath them. Calmly, the man in the Hawaiian shirt walked up the steps, through the streets, towards that palace.

As he passed, people turned and bowed when they saw him, and this effect coursed through every being in the houses and establishments he passed, like a complex Mexican wave. He looked around him as the people bowed, daring infrequently to look at him. He smiled, admiring their politeness. He knew that they were lesser than him, but did not believe that they were beneath him. All beings, in the long run, were equal. That was an unavoidable necessity of nature.

Deciding to demonstrate his abilities for those who enjoyed watching, he crouched and then surged into the air on a gigantic, flying wave of sea water, with him standing stoically on the crest. He soared through the air as if surfing through the atmosphere on a surfboard of water. He reached the very peak of the palace, in a colossal hall that domed over his head in beautiful colours. There was a circle of thrones around him, in a curved U-shape. None of these thrones were occupied. There was only one other man in the entire hall. He stood on the terrace that wrapped around the throne room, arms folded, looking down on the planet beneath them.

The man in the Hawaiian shirt approached this other man, whose silhouette soon cleared. This other man was quite towering, with extremely impressive muscles and shoulder-length black hair. and a grey-and-black beard that bushed underneath him. His eyes were brilliantly electric-blue, and his face was proud and serious, but still very handsome. He was dressed in a dark blue pinstripe suit and red tie. The air around him smelled very faintly of Ozone.

"Brother." greeted the man in the pinstripe suit.

"Zeus." returned the man in the Hawaiian shirt - Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Without turning to face his brother, Zeus cast his hand across the clouds beneath him. Lightning was blasting from them in white explosions. He centred on one particular place with his supernatural vision, and Poseidon followed his gaze until they were looking at the same thing: a great mountain, with a column of clouds converging on the very peak. The mountain was littered with tiny beings, of varying colours and appearances - monsters. Zeus turned to his brother.

"Do you see it?" he asked.

"I see it, brother." answered Poseidon.

"How did this happen?" asked Zeus, "Those clouds were perfectly placed less than an hour ago. Look at them. They are pulsating around the mountain, as if....as if what has been happening there for so many centuries has just been disrupted. And, then, it returns to normal."

"Atlas."

"Yes," Zeus's look was very grave, "How this happened, I am not sure. But I am very sure of who and why it has happened." He pointed to the very edge of the mountain. Two figures were scaling down it, trying to escape whatever they had seen there.

"Is that...." gasped Poseidon, focusing on one of the figures.

"Yes," answered Zeus, "it is. This is a very serious thing that has transpired. And, because of it, the Underworld has very briefly opened, and monsters from the depths of Tartarus were unleashed. They did not escape. They were unleashed."

"Have you heard from Hades?"

"No," answered Zeus, "and that is one of the things that worries me. I knew Hades to be reclusive and distant, but not...not like this."

Poseidon looked over the mountain, and could just see the two figures reaching the bottom of the mountain and escape into the woods.

"Brother Zeus," he focused on one of the figures, "I think we should keep a closer eye on Athena from now on. She is on to something. What it is, I do not know....but I am deeply concerned. One of those people is superhumanly strong, but the other....the other is much more powerful than I would expect of his parent. Do you agree?"

"Strongly." Zeus nodded, "I shall be watching this boy with a very close eye." With that, Zeus turned towards his brother and fixed him with a firm, serious stare. Then he exploded into a burst of white energy, which became a lightning bolt and surged into the sky, leaving the space where he was standing empty. Poseidon turned and looked down on the mountain one last time. He could swear he could hear screaming from the peak of the mountain.

Piercing, intense screaming...

Chapter 1 - Sylvester

Sylvester Falcone's back felt like it was on fire. It was burning him from the inside, and blood was streaking down his sides from underneath his jacket. He could barely see, he was so dazed. His mind felt like it was being sawn in half very, very slowly. His hands were numbing and his feet were failing. It was fortunate that he was not alone in the journey: another, far larger person was supporting him by taking Sylvester's left arm over his broad shoulders. He couldn't see the person's face very clearly, but could certainly make out that the person was bald and had huge muscles.

The pain took him by surprise again and he cried out. Right on cue, he heard a dreadful, earth-shaking roar echo behind him. The person supporting him, whoever he was, quickened his pace. A subconscious part of Sylvester noted how they had increased speed by half a mile per hour, and that the clothes he was wearing were unnaturally tough for their material. Despite the wound, he felt strangely calm. He felt at peace, as if being sliced along his body had brought him unachievable peace.

"Just a little bit further mate! Away from the mountain. Come on..." the person carrying him assured him, breathlessly. Behind them, the screaming had intensified to incredible heights and he was sure that people several cities away could hear him. He turned his attention to the woods they were now rushing through, and could distinctly see creatures fleeing. He couldn't see their shapes, but some of them were very unusual. Some of them had twin snake tails instead of legs, some of them looked like human-seal hybrids, one of them, he noticed, was very large and sprouted curved horns. They were all fleeing from the mountain, no...they were fleeing from them.

He looked down at his hand and noticed that he was carrying a sword. The sword was the length of his arm, and made of some strange bronze metal. It was extremely well-made and finely kept, completely faultless as far as appearances went. There was another sword slid into his belt. This was a very large sword, well over three metres, and made of a strange silvery metal. It was very well made also, he could tell, but it was chipped repeatedly from a number of battles. The sword was bejewelled by a red gem in its hilt.

"Keep going..." he whimpered, softly. They were carried a little longer, when at last, as the sun set over their heads, Sylvester was laid against a tree and the person who had carried him sat down in front of him, panting, "Where are we?"

"Hoover Dam," rasped the figure in front of him, "we should be safe here, it's far from that mountain." Then Sylvester's senses returned to him and he gasped. The person in front of him was indeed very big and looked extremely strong. He was dressed in a tattered pair of brown shorts and a short-sleeved blue shirt that stretched over him for dear life. His head was almost egg-shaped, and he was practically neckless under that great jaw. But then he saw that the person had one strange quality: he only had one eye, one eye socket in the very centre of his forehead, above the nose, where an eye the size of a tennis ball revolved desperately.

"Are you alright?" the one-eyed man, the...Cyclopse! that was it!, asked him.

"I'm fine." Sylvester lied. "My back is killing me....killing me!" He turned around and showed the injury that he had sustained only minutes ago. There was a huge scar on his back, running from his right shoulder to his left hip, split by the stretching of his skin and bleeding dangerously.

"By the beard of Zeus!" exclaimed the Cyclopse, "I knew he cut deep, but by all the Gods, that's brutal. Take off your jacket, we need to bandage that thing."

"I'll survive...."

"No you won't!" insisted the Cyclopse. "There should be some nectar in here somewhere." He slid off a ledger and fished inside, pulling out a small phial of something he couldn't see. The Cyclopse slid over and forced the stuff down his throat - the stuff tasted fantastic! And, immediately, he felt stronger. The blood stopped flowing, but the liquid ran out before it could mend completely. He unconsciously knew that there was a great, ugly line cutting him diagonally in half.

"There. Better." the Cyclopse said, leaning back, "So...what do I call you?"

"Falcone," panted Sylvester, "Sylvester Falcone. You?

"Batista. Just Batista." returned the Cyclopse. Sylvester turned and looked at himself in a puddle by his feet. The boy who looked back at him looked like he'd been through Hell and back: his face was red with sweat, and his chest inflated massively with every desperate breath. He had hair the colour of liquorice, close-cropped, and his eyes were a deep lime-green. His skin was very tanned, and he admitted to himself, dispassionately, that he looked quite handsome. However, he saw that as irrelevant. Good looks wouldn't save him here.

"So, what now?" asked Sylvester, "What do we do?"

"We wait." muttered Batista, "We can't move at night cos there'll be monsters out, returning to the mountain...we have to hide out here until daylight."

"Can't we just call someone?"

"Not without drawing unwanted attention, and I mean unwanted attention." Batista shook his head, "Go on, sleep. I'll stand guard for tonight."

Sylvester rested his head back, and sleep came incredibly easy. The last thing he remembered was dropping the sword in front of him, watching it clatter at his feet.

Scenes flashed before his eyes as he dreamt: he dreamt of his father - he remembered his father in his police uniform, with a gun strapped to his belt. His father smiling at him over breakfast, before leaving early for work. The dream changed, and suddenly he was at the front door, and there was a tall, hooded woman towering over him, pressing a large slender package into his hand. Then, suddenly, he was running. Running from strange creatures. He remembered using that sword that had dropped at his feet, using it to defend himself against one of the biggest dogs he had ever seen.

And then the dream changed completely: he was standing at the top of a mountain, on a summit where the wind battered at him from all sides and thunder boomed. He turned around and saw the Cyclopse, Batista, buckling under something. He was buckling under a large pillar, as if trying to use his massive strength to keep it from squashing him into a grease spot. But, it was obvious, his strength wasn't enough. He then heard laughter - loud, booming laughter that made the earth shake. He then turned around and a gigantic silhouette darkened the ground around him: a gigantic man, taller than any man he had ever seen, with muscles that put Batista to shame. The tall man approached, balling his fists....

...and Sylvester was shaken awake by some powerful hands, and Batista's great blue eye peered down on him. He blinked back the dream and sat up.

"What is it, Batista?"

"Someone's turned up." explained Batista. He turned to see a thin, crouched creature standing against a tree above them.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Grover Underwood," explained the creature, stepping into the light, "I'm here to get you guys someplace safe."

Chapter 2 - The Big House

He woke up. The sun was already rising over Cabin 6. He rolled over, and was soon facing the library in the Cabin. It was always like this: Library, armoury and crafts room first, beds second. He slid off of the mattress and winced as his uglily-cut feet flared against the floor. Screwing his eyes under the minute agony, he turned and slid on his blue animal jacket. There was a girl sitting opposite him. She was really pretty, athletic, with blonde hair and deep grey eyes. She sported an incredible figure and large breasts, which were stretching her shirt so tight it looked like it was about to snap. She was sitting over him, looking particularly anxious.

"Rise and shine." she called, "Nice to see you've woke up at last."

Sylvester looked around him, searching for his sword. He found it. Lunging, his fingers found the hilt of the sword and crushed around it. He swung around and the girl ducked, yelling. Sylvester was on his feet in an instant, the sword held at the girl's throat. He backed her against a wall. His head was killing him, and he couldn't think straight.

"Where am I?" he said, but despite his anger he was surprisingly calm. The girl didn't look at all worried by the blade at her neck.

"Listen to me. I'm a friend...I'm a friend..." she said, calmly.

"Where am I?" Sylvester repeated, tensely.

"Camp Half Blood." answered the girl, "You're safe here. Nobody's going to hurt you...."

"Please don't talk to me like I'm a child, when I have a sword at your throat."

"Sorry," said the girl. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence. "Put the sword down, so we can talk."

"Drop the knife your hiding behind your back, and we can talk." ordered Sylvester, before gasping at what he had just said. He hadn't known, until he had just said, that she was hiding a knife. He could tell by how she was carefully placing her arm, and the fact that her hand had been in her belt beforehand, and something sharp had definitely been there. The girl held up the knife - a golden, superbly-made dagger - and placed it on the bed next to her.

"Put the sword down, now."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Annabeth Chase," she said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

The tip of his sword lowered from her neck and dug gently into her bulging breasts. She gulped.

"Ok," he sighed, lowering the sword before placing it gently on the bed, "So, tell me. Why am I here?"

"Is your back still hurting?" asked Annabeth. Sylvester frowned and then felt a sharp pain in his spine: he still had that vicious scar on his back. It still cut into him.

"Yes." he answered.

"We managed to heal it," explained Annabeth, "but you refused to have it removed completely. Said it would serve as a reminder of your mortality. A lot of us couldn't understand what you meant."

"Where's Batista?"

"The Cyclopse?" Annabeth bristled, "You allowed him in the borders of the camp. He's helping rebuild the damage you did on the way here."

"Damage?"

Annabeth laughed at this, "You don't remember? You were chased on your way here. A Chimera!"

"Chimera? Part dog, part scorpion thing, you mean?"

"Yep." said Annabeth, "You've been through the wars, quite literally. Monsters really seem to want to kill you...a bit more than monsters, apparently!" She pulled him to his feet and led him out of the Cabin.

"Come on. I'll explain everything." she assured, walking him into the sun. The place outside was beautiful: twelve cabins encircling a large field, and around it were so many awesome things: a climbing wall that spewed lava, an archery range with targets that buzzed through the air as if they had a life of their own, even a bonfire with bulging great flames of incredible colours. It was all very fascinating, the design of the whole place. Fascinating? How did he think of using that word? Sounded a bit robotic.

"So, Camp Half-Blood," he said, "I'm guessing...Greek?"

"Very good." said Annabeth, "See, the Greek Gods are real. And so are the monsters from Greek mythology. Minotaurs, giants, satyrs, they are all real. You've met your odd few of them on the way, I think. And, sometimes, the Greek Gods have children with humans, or mortals. The monsters always want to kill these children, these demigods, because it is penance for being unable to kill their parents. But, these demigods are remarkably powerful. They inherit a number of their parents' powers. Poseidon, you can control water and breathe underneath it. Ares, you are a great fighter and a decent tactician. Hephaestus, you are damn good at forging and technology."

"And I am." asked Sylvester.

"It turns out that you and I are siblings," said Annabeth, "You're a son of Athena!"

"Athena?" Sylvester frowned, "The Goddess of Wisdom?" She nodded.

"Come on, I'll introduce you to Chiron." she led him towards the Big House - the name, Sylvester decided, was self-explanatory. There, she drew him into a big room roofed and walled with thick wood. There were two men gathered around the table. No, one man, and one....thing.

The thing was a great centaur: a white horse's body from the waist down, a middle-aged man from the waist up with a bushy beard and a muscular frame. He was crouched over what may as well been a dog basket with a dark green cushion. The man opposite him, trading pinochle cards from him, was one of the ugliest people Sylvester had ever met in his life. The man was fat, ungainly and had a huge head with a mess of hair so black it was almost purple. He wore a leopard-skinned Hawaiian shirt and brown shorts, and his stomach bulged out from under his shirt, and from his bloodshot eyes and drooping expression that looked permanent, he was no stranger to strong wine.

When he looked at me, the first emotion that crossed his face was complete disgust, "Oh, a newbie! Welcome, puny weakling, may I ask your name?"

"This, Dionysus," said Annabeth, laughing nervously, "is Sylvester Falcone."

"Sylvester Stallone?"

"Fal-cone!" muttered Annabeth through gritted teeth. The centaur twisted around to face them, and he actually smiled when he saw them.

"Sylvester!" he cried, "You are awake. How are you feeling? How is your back?"

"Erm, I'm fine." Sylvester said fine, "Back's still burning."

"'My back's still burning'." mimicked the fat man, Dionysus in a babyish, high-pitched voice, "You heroes and your whining! I can't believe I have to suffer the bunch of babies that Athena sends us!"

Sylvester noticed Annabeth fuming with rage at the remark. He himself didn't feel anything. However, the moment Athena's name had been ridiculed, a whipcrack of lightning writhed terrifyingly close to the Big House. Chiron calmly looked up from his cards when he heard it. Dionysus screamed and dived under the table, scattering his cards, and putting his hands over his head. Sylvester walked over and leaned under the table.

"The storm's over now, sir." he said, politely, "Plus, judging from your cards, you appear to have won the game." Dionysus glared at him, but then his face lit up when his cards were mentioned. He sprang up from under the table, tipping it over in the process without hurting his head at all.

"Yes!" he cheered, "I've beaten you, Chiron. At last. Thank you, Athena!"

"Your scared of Athena?" Grover looked like she was close to sniggering.

"You should definitely be afraid of Athena, Grover," answered Dionysus, sourly, "Don't believe me, ask Teiresias." He sat himself down, dusted himself off and looked like he had calmed down, "What do you guys want?"

"Actually, Dionysus," said Chiron, "I asked him to be brought here the instant he woke up. I have a few questions I need to ask him." He pulled up a chair beside him and gestured for Sylvester to join him. Sylvester did so.

Chiron cleared his throat, "Do you know what this is?" He picked something up from under his horse body and Sylvester recognized the battle-bitten sword with the red gem that he had carried down from the mountain. Annabeth stared when she saw it, like she recognized it. Dionysus also looked shocked at the sight of it, like what he was looking at was actually a very unfriendly snake.

"Di immortales!" exclaimed Annabeth.

"It's a sword." said Sylvester, bluntly.

"This sword," said Chiron, "is not just a sword. It belonged so someone who would certainly not see it taken from him."

"Who does it belong to?"

"It belongs, you gibbering imbecile..." Dionysus started, when suddenly the collar of his Hawaiian shirt tightened around his throat as if it were alive and he choked, twisting and pulling at his shirt until it ripped off of him. Keeping the fabric close to his chest, "that sword belongs to the Titan, Atlas!"

Now he remembered the tall man on the mountain, "So that was his name."

"What do you mean?" asked Annabeth, "How did you get that sword?"

"He won it." said a voice, and Sylvester turned to see Batista in the doorway, approaching from behind. He sat down between Chiron and Dionysus, "I was a prisoner of that Titan. I don't remember much, but I do remember that he had trapped me under the sky. I could barely stand under the weight that column he put me under. Then, Sylvester appeared. He had scaled the mountain from the rough side - it was seriously stormy there, you see, so he came up the side which was blocked from the wind, which was in itself incredibly dangerous. He saw me. And then he saw Atlas. Atlas..."

"Atlas refused to let Batista go when I asked him. So, I challenged him to a duel He accepted...he was laughing fit to burst when he accepted, if I remember." interjected Sylvester, quietly. Dionysus looked alarmed at this. Chiron didn't look shocked at all. Annabeth leaned in, "Fighting that guy...it was harder than any monster I'd ever fought before."

"You've fought other monsters?" Annabeth asked.

"Zip it, Annie Beth!" snapped Dionysus, summoning a can of Coke to his hand out of thin air and biting off the top so that he could drink.

Batista took over, "Atlas drew his sword, and Sylvester drew his. They charged at each other, and started hammering at each other with their swords. It went on for twelve hours, and I saw every second of it. Sylvester....Sylvester was amazing! He wouldn't stay still for a moment, he kept taking high grounds, dancing around Atlas, twisting the Titan's attacks against him, but none of them managed to land a single strike on one another. Looking at him, I would have thought that Sylvester had been trained by Achilles himself! But, then Atlas made his mistake. He cut Sylvester across the back, slicing underneath his jacket and slicing him across the back. That was when, for the first time, Sylvester lost his cool. He went at Atlas like an animal, disarmed him of his sword and stabbed him in the heart!"

Dionysus choked on his Coke and reflexively crushed the can into a sliver of metal. Annabeth gasped so hard she shrieked. Chiron remained exactly as he was.

"I drove Atlas back with my sword in his chest....there was golden blood rushing down my arm." continued Sylvester, "I slammed him into Batista, knocking him back and forcing Atlas back under his burden."

"Apparently, I then went really pale." Batista cut in, eager to end the story on a high note, "He collapsed, and I noticed that the wound Atlas had dealt him went really deep. I'd recovered my strength, so I managed to pick him up and help him down. He picked up Atlas's sword along the way, as a souvenir I expect, and we scaled the mountain together. The rest, you already know."

There was a long silence. Finally, Chiron spoke, "I need to discuss this with Mr. D in private."

Annabeth stood next to Sylvester and led him out of the Big House. For a moment, Sylvester turned and looked up at the attick of the Big House. There was a woman standing in the window: she was very tall, and her features were silhouetted by cobwebs and cracked glass, but he could make out black hair and intense grey eyes, and he was certain that they were fixed on him. He turned around and followed Annabeth into the Camp and forgot all about the woman at the window.

Chapter 3 - The Bully Slayer

Camp Half-Blood was one of the most immaculately beautiful places he had ever been to. Everything about it was deliciously creative and crafted as if it by the greatest construction workers of all time. Sylvester was considering all of this just as a volley of flaming arrows streaked over his head. It came to him as if in slow motion, mere moments before they could strike him time seemed to slow down and he was overwhelmed by the impulse to dodge them. As they rushed over his head he straightened up and leaped over a mechanically-controlled axe that sliced at his feet at nearly ten rotations per second. Hopping over the axes, and careful not to step on the trick tiles on the floor in front of him, Sylvester pirouetted over the gauntlet with perfect elegance.

There was a climbing wall in front of him, the one that spewed flames and lava and sprouted spikes and boxing gloves. He leapt on to it and was nearly wiped out by the first sprouting spike. Like a spider, he clung on to the wall and scaled upwards. He didn't know what it was, but he could see every single thing before it happened. It was as if instinct made him jolt out of the way of every incoming attack. He sprang to the left as a spray of freezing water spewed from one hole, and ducked as an arrow was propelled from another.

"Come on, Sylvester!" screamed Batista from several metres beneath them. The camp cheered after him, except for a section of the Ares Cabin who looked on with intense scowls. For the life of him, Sylvester couldn't possibly understand why they were being so sour. He hadn't talked to any of them, so he couldn't have insulted or offended any one of them, let alone the lot of them. He was near the top. Just a few more steps...

He made it! He sprang up to the top of the climbing wall with a supported front flip, using the final steps as levers for this move. He landed perfectly, fished the flag out of its perch in front of him, before rushing to the edge and waving it for all to see. Cheers erupted from the world beneath him, and the Athena, Apollo and Hermes cabin applauded uproariously.

He turned and climbed back down from the rope ladder. When he landed, instead of waiting for people to come and congratulate him, he moved over to the next point of interest he had in mind: the sword arena. A number of the campers followed him, with Batista and Grover at the head. He didn't know exactly what they were hoping to see, he was just practising. He was fascinated by their increasing interest in him, and the fact that, throughout the whole day, Chiron hadn't taken his eyes off him. Sylvester had subconsciously known that the old centaur was watching him from afar, with those incredibly observant eyes that concealed whole centuries of training heroes.

He realised that Batista was talking about his battle against Atlas. He was describing it very extravagantly, with overenthusiastic gestures and intense descriptions of what he saw were key parts of the fight. He quickly walked over to the Cyclopse and patted him on the back, "It wasn't really that impressive, Batista. Don't over-dramatise it."

"Are you kidding me?" laughed Batista, "You were amazing!"

"The Titan nearly killed me, like, a hundred times!"

"I saw the battle with my own eyes," said Batista, dramatically, "I saw you fight. I reckon you're a really powerful demigod if your able to defeat Atlas, let alone kill him." Sylvester gave up on trying to humble his friend and went back to approaching the arena.

He reached into his belt and pulled out his sword - Atlas's sword had been taken by Dionysus as a spoil of war to be put in the attic of the Big House. He had been very careful carrying it, as if it were made of glass. He spun the sword in its hand, his wrist rotating, making the blade swirl like a propeller. Once he had tested its balance, like he always did before using his sword, he got to work on the mannequins. After several minutes of practice, he succumbed to the fact that he was actually really good with a sword. His style - quick, cunning and evasive - seemed to come naturally to him, like riding a bike - which, he figured out earlier that day, he could do blindfolded.

He worked for nearly half an hour, shredding mannequins into sawdust without breaking a sweat, when suddenly he felt the urge to duck as something raced towards his neck. He tucked and rolled, turning just in time to see the double-bladed spear that nearly beheaded him crunch into the dummy he was about to behead. The boy who held the spear laughed and heaved out the blade, spinning the weapon expertly in both hands. He was very beefy, with muscles that told of ages spent in the gym. He had flame-red hair cut really close to his skull, unwelcoming mud-brown eyes and a facial structure so jagged that the jaw was stabbing out at an awkward angle and he looked like he was perpetually grimacing. He was dressed in a white tank top and tracksuits that clung to his legs, as well as a pair of mountain-climbing boots.

"That was a little uncalled for," remarked Sylvester, emotionlessly. The boy laughed. He looked to be the same age as Sylvester, but that was where the resemblance stopped dead.

"Did you have to duck?" moaned the boy, shaking his head and juggling his spear between hands. The weapon was very unconventional looking - there was a thin, triangular blade at both ends of the shaft. It was obvious, from the way he held it so carelessly without worrying about impaling himself by accident, that he was very comfortable with the weapon and used to wielding it, "You spoiled my fun!"

A few of the kids from the Ares Cabin sniggered at him. The boy spun around, spreading his arms like a proper showman. His smile was one of the worst smiles Sylvester had ever seen.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Sylvester, curiously. The boy spun around and laughed sadistically.

"The name's Mortenstein, Victor Mortenstein. I'm the son of Ares." he took a sarcastic bow, "Aren't you going to bow before the best fighter in the Camp?"

"The best fighter?" There was no mockery in his voice, just blatant curiosity.

"That's right." said Victor, grinning, "And, since you're new here, you should probably know that any newcomer who is followed around by a crowd for more than a minute is immediately on my list of duelling opponents."

"I don't want to duel you, Victor." said Sylvester, his eyes never leaving his attacker.

"Too late." sneered Victor, cackling. "There are only three rules to this game. One: You have a sword. Two: I have a sword. Three: I skewer you like a stuck pig and beat you into the dirt. Simples!"

"I'm not going to fight you, Victor." insisted Sylvester. At this, the crowd groaned. They were spoiling for a fight. Ares and Aphrodite were all behind Victor. However, Hephaestus, Hermes and Apollo Cabins had crowded around him as well, and they were offering fists and grins of encouragement. He deduced that the easiest way out of this situation would be to humour this son of Ares, "Fine. Let's do this."

Victor came at him quicker than he expected, but his brain suddenly screamed with activity and his arms moved independently. Holding the sword both hands, he twisted the first blade of the spear away from his chest, before ducking as Victor turned and swung the opposing blade at his neck. Victor was a seasoned fighter, he could tell. He knew what he was doing. But his moves were clumsy, excessive. He didn't use his brain as much as his brawn.

Victor stabbed again and Sylvester batted the blade down. Victor pressed into him with the shaft of the blade in an attempt to pin him to the ground. Sylvester manoeuvred underneath the shaft, rose up when he was between the spear and Victor, before pushing his elbow against the spear and shoulder-charging Victor in the chest. Victor dropped the spear, staggered back, slipped and fell flat on his back, spread-eagled. Sylvester picked up the spear before it hit the ground and approached its owner, holding the tip of the sword to Victor's throat.

Silence fell over the arena.

"There." he said, sternly, "You've had your fight." Sylvester raised the spear above his head and stabbed it down into the ground of the arena, next to Victor. Victor stared at him, dumbfounded and winded by the unexpected speed of his defeat.

Cheer exploded around him and Annabeth vaulted the arena barrier to meet him.

"That was awesome!" cried Annabeth. She slung an arm around his shoulder and they moved to exit the arena, when suddenly he heard a sharp smack cut the air around him. Spinning around, Sylvester saw Victor topple back a second time as an arrow with a boxing glove on the end ricocheted off his chest. Victor backward-rolled, saliva streaming down his cheeks. His face was flushed with rage. He had tried to attack Sylvester while his back was turned.

"That's for a lack of sportsmanship!" Somebody in the Apollo crowd called, and the cheers turned to raucous laughter. Sylvester sighed. Both Victor trying to attack him from behind, and being attacked himself by an unknown Apollo demigod, was completely unnecessary.

Annabeth found him again in the Athena cabin, where he was busying himself painting over a very large piece of cardboard. There was a plate of coloured paints to his right, and his movements were unbelievably delicate and precise. Sylvester looked up at her, his concentration breaking for a moment.

"What are you painting?"

"The street where I lived. Harlem, New York." Annabeth looked at the painting and gasped. He was incredibly talented at painting: the whole painting was impossibly detailed in terms of size and colour, ranging from the shades of the buildings, the feathers of the pigeons and seagulls, the breadth of the headlights on the cars - which, upon observation, were distance-perfect - and even the ripples in the rivers and water. She stared at him, beaming.

"It's fantastic!" she exclaimed, "What did you have to work on?"

"Just my memory," said Sylvester, modestly.

"You're kidding!" cried Annabeth, laughing and sitting down next to him, "How can you remember all this."

"I just...do. I don't know what it is, but every single time I try to remember, I remember every single detail of what I recall." explained Sylvester, streaking a tiny string of yellow for the iris of a wood pigeon, "What did you come to talk to me about?"

"I just wanted you to know that there's going to be a campfire tonight," answered Annabeth, "And, since you're officially a camp hero for kicking Victor's butt, I thought you should show up. Plus, there's something you should know about: Dionysus and Chiron have been talking all afternoon. They're confused as to the circumstances of your fight with Atlas. They're puzzled as to why or how Atlas got himself free at all. They want you to tell them everything about your life up until defeating the Titan."

Sylvester went very, very still.

"What is it?" asked Annabeth.

"Fine," said Sylvester, "I'll tell them. I'll tell them everything...."

Chapter 4 - An old woman at the door

"Sylvester! Breakfast's ready!" called Richard Falcone. An eight-year-old Sylvester Falcone rushed down the stairs to meet him. Unlike the way he was at Camp Half Blood, this Sylvester's hair was a shock of black and he had a perpetual smile on his face. He leapt right over the last four steps, just like he always did descending them, and sprinted to meet his father at the table. It was the same as always - a full English, without the eggs as Sylvester hated eggs, with a glass of orange juice on the side.

Sylvester's father, Richard Falcone - stocky, casual, with long black hair and lime-green eyes, dressed in his police uniform with a newspaper at his elbow - handed him a knife and fork and the two of them ate in silence. This was probably the first time in years that they had eaten in silence. They always had something to talk about, but recent events had prompted that tradition to be broken today, somehow. Finally, halfway through breakfast, his father spoke.

"I'm going to be away until later than normal today, Sylvester." he explained. Sylvester looked up, as if no part of that sentence surprised him, "Something's come up. We've got a lead on this gang of smugglers. You wouldn't know what that means, but the point is that they are very bad people. Me and the others are going to spend most of the day rounding them up."

"What time will you be back?" asked Sylvester, quietly.

"At best, I'd say half eleven." his father answered. "I'm sorry, Sylvester. You'r going to be alone for a little while longer today."

"I'll be fine," assured Sylvester, softly, "I can look after myself."

That was more true than anyone knew. Ever since he was six years old, he had learned to entertain and take care of himself without the aid of his father. By the time he was seven, he could cook his own lunches and take care of the tax returns really easily. Except, this time, he didn't seem sure. He was certain that something would be different about today. It was eating at him.

"You sure? Okay. If there's anything you want, anything you need, you can either call me, or there's Sally next door." suggested his father.

His father left, as he always did, at eight-thirty in the morning, with a gun strapped to his hip and a badge clipped to his chest. Sylvester watched him drive off, before turning around and slipping on his school uniform and sliding a bag across his shoulder. He always took the bus to school, because if he rode a bike he would do so blindfolded by his own choice, and his father disapproved of such a dangerous move. He always took the top deck and front seat of the bus, and read a book for the duration of the journey.

There was no denying it: he hated school. It was so boring, so basic, so easy. His math and modern languages skills were unparallelled in the class, and he was a very fast runner. He recognized that the others in his class were intelligent in their own way, but couldn't understand why they were so slow. He soon came to the conclusion, and accepted, that some kids were more intelligent than others. And, as one of the former kids, he couldn't flaunt his intelligence or insult other people's he could just get along with his life surrounded by these people.

But, he noticed, there were those who kept staring at him throughout the day. Those who avoided him, were wary of him, were scared of him. He couldn't blame them. This had all started when Sam Peterson had tried to beat him up, along with his friends. Sam Peterson, Sylvester remembered, was a towering, overweight boy with a mess of brown hair and a sneer on his face that would never go off. He had cornered Sylvester in the boy's toilets, and had tried to extort money out of him, backed up by three of his ugly little cronies. Sylvester had calmly returned the threat by telling them that, for this demonstration of undeserved supremacy, he would regret this. In fact, Sylvester had specifically said 'If you ever come to threaten me again, you will be struck down so hard you will never get back up'

And that was exactly what happened. Sam had tried to follow him to his house, but just before he could attract Sylvester's attention with a poorly-executed insult or derogatory name, a car had sped into him, breaking his neck and flattening him against the road. Sylvester had been drawn by the sound of Sam's bones breaking. The driver was never found.

And everyone was still staring at him. There were rumours bouncing off of the kids like ricocheting bullets - the worst rumour was that Sylvester had pushed him into the car. Anyway, it didn't make a difference today at all. Nobody talked to him, but he didn't mind. He liked keeping himself to himself. And, when he hopped off the bus at three o clock in the afternoon, none of the others came to talk to him. He didn't care. He just walked back to the house, picked up the key from under a plant pot and let himself in.

It got past 10:00, and Sylvester had gotten bored of watching TV or finishing every book series he had chosen to read from the library. He had completed every game in succession on his PlayStation. He had nothing else to do. It was dark outside. He sat on the stairs with his head in his hands, and waited.

Eleven thirty. Sylvester was still sitting there, waiting. What was taking his father so long? Then, a knock at the door shocked him out of falling asleep and he sprang to his fee, rushed to the door and pulled it open, expecting his father to be standing there, smiling.

He wasn't.

Instead, a woman towered over him. She was hunchbacked, and dressed in a mass of old rags of several dark colours. Her eyes were very bleak, as if they were lifeless. She stooped down so that she was eye-to-eye with him. He backed away, moving to shut the door, but the woman moved unbelievably fast. Her hand slammed against the side of the door, the fingers locking around it and holding it in place, seconds before he could shut the door on her and probably break off her fingers.

"Good evening," greeted the old woman. Her voice was like a creaking floor tile, "I have a delivery for one Sylvester Falcone. Is that you?"

"I can't tell you," said Sylvester, stoically. The old woman chuckled.

"Very good. Very wise." she pulled out something from under her coat - a rectangular cardboard box that was slim enough for her to lock her fingers around, and about the length of her arm. She weakly handed it to him, "Please, could you give this to Sylvester once he returns. Tell him 'It's to keep the bad people away'. Good night to you."

She turned and limped out of sight. Sylvester frowned, looking at the package in his hand. He then shut the door. Walking into the kitchen, he ripped open the cardboard package, and fished throguh the folds of paper that protected whatever was in it. He scattered the paper along the floor and observed the sole content of the package.

A sword. Three feet long, made of a strange, shining silver metal. In contrast, the hilt of the sword was made of a strange golden metal, and was big enough for him to hold in two hands, and the pommel was spherical and the size of a golf ball. Like the rest of the hilt, it was golden. The grip of the sword was wrapped in a strange leathery material that somehow made it fit perfectly in his hand. The crossguard was the interesting part: it was shaped like the spread wings of some bird of prey, the feathers of which were incredibly detailed and precisely shaped. He picked it up, holding it in both hands. It was surprisingly light. He saw, it came with a scabbard and a

Why would that old woman bring him a sword? Was it something that a neighbour had bought on eBay, but realised it was largely useless against a bazooka?

A knock at the door shocked him a second time and he spun around, nearly dropping the sword. Quickly, he replaced the sword into the package and hid it under the table, before rushing to the door. Opening it, he was about to say his dad's name when he saw that, once again, another person entirely was standing in front of him.

It was Melody, his father's workmate at the homicide precinct where he worked. She was very stocky, with a bun of brown hair and really sweet blue eyes. The worst part of what he saw of her now was the fact that she was dressed in her police uniform, and she wasn't smiling.

"Sylvester." she said, softly, "There's something I need to tell you. Can I come in?" He stepped aside and she walked slowly in. He led her into the living room, where she sat herself down opposite him and cleared her throat. Her face was unnervingly solemn.

"Do you want anything to drink, or..." Sylvester asked.

"No. I won't stay long." said Melody. She leaned in.

"Listen," she explained, "something's come up. Your father...he told you he went after these smugglers in the city. Him and his squad went into this smuggler's den, as per their orders. There was a gunfight." She swallowed, as if something hard was being caught in her throat, "Your father...he didn't make it. Your father's dead, Sylvester. I'm so, terribly sorry..."

Chapter 5 - Rachel Recites a Ditty about Death

"...and I've been on the run ever since," explained Sylvester to Chiron, on either end of the fireplace, "I ran away from home that very night, the very night I found out that my father was dead. I left with only the bare essentials: the clothes I was wearing, a big bottle of mineral water and the jacket my father gave me for my birthday - the jacket that, he said, my mother had given for me before she left. I've been battling monsters ever since."

"What monsters did you fight?" asked Annabeth, eagerly.

"Well, I got attacked by a Hellhound on my second day, and I killed it in one strike to a nerve in its neck," he went on, "but the one I remember the most was a Sphinx..." Annabeth looked up at him from this, as if remembering her own encounter with such a beast, "it gave this riddle, this ten-verse riddle, and I solved it easily. It tried to attack me when I got it right, and I crippled it by cutting at its legs."

"You actually got a riddle from a Sphinx!" cried Annabeth, "No fair!"

"Annabeth," said Chiron, calmly, "please, let us focus on the subject matter. What else do you remember. What brought you to Mount Othrys?"

Sylvester looked up, "This guy. He woke me up while I was sleeping in an alley one day, told me to go to Mount Othrys - he told me that I would meet my mother. He told me she awaited me dearly. I did as he told me, but there was this really vicious storm when I got there. The winds were too fierce for me to climb it from the pathways, and I couldn't go from the West because there was this....thing sleeping there, it was a lizard with like a thousand heads. So I took the steeper side. I climbed that side of the mountain pretty easily, if I'm honest. Then I met Atlas."

"Describe this man." asked Chiron.

"Huge." said Sylvester, "Not as big as Atlas, but still really muscular. He had this crew cut black hair and wraparound sunglasses. He was riding a motorbike....His face, his face was really brutal, like he'd been in a load of fights."

Annabeth stared at him. Dionysus, who was busying himself playing with a grapevine miserably, looked up from what he was doing and looked more shocked than any of them.

"Ares." the Wine God muttered.

"Who?"

"The God of War." explained Chiron, "It's a long story, but let's just say he's one troublesome God. More so than any of the minor Gods. Oh, my goodness, look at the time. We're about to have a campfire. You must join us, you are an honorary camper."

Annabeth went over and took his hand. Sylvester got up and she led him out of the Big House again. She stopped when they were outside and stood in front of him.

"So, what was the riddle the Sphinx asked you. Tell me, before I cut you in half!" she laughed, before punching him playfully on the shoulder, "Kidding. I'm pretty glad, actually, that I got past my Sphinx so easily...it was one of the highlights of the day, if I'm honest."

"Good to see that there isn't a hungry mob waiting for us outside." said Sylvester, happily. Annabeth looked at him.

"Why would that be a bad thing?"

"Well," Sylvester thought for a moment, "it seems a little bit sadistic for people to turn the most terrifying experiences a person has endured into a story that inspires cheers and encouragements for that person to fight against bullies like Victor Mortenstein." Annabeth shook her head and walked him down to the volleyball court.

"I don't think you understand," she said, pointedly, "You beat Atlas in a fight. Atlas is the second strongest of all of the Titans, next to Kronos. He was too much for the Goddess Artemis, and my friend Percy, combined, to handle. And yet, you, a fifteen-year-old demigod with absolutely no official training, managed to defeat him."

"He cut me too, you know." said Sylvester.

"And you disarmed and stabbed him!" exclaimed Annabeth, "I believe they aren't only admiring you, they envy you."

"I see." Sylvester turned away, looking at the Demeter and Hermes campers who were hammering the ball at one another in the volleyball courts. His attention was reversed when somebody called Annabeth's name and turned to see a girl a little shorter than him rushing up the hill towards him.

"Annabeth!" she called, "Wait up." She was built like a hockey player, had frizzy red hair and a face that was littered with freckles. Her pink shirt and heavily doodled jeans were a size too big, but she had belted the jeans to her so tightly that it almost split her in half. Her eyes sparkled green.

"Rachel!" laughed Annabeth, jogging over to meet the girl, "Hi. Sylvester, this is Rachel Dare, our....our Oracle."

Rachel extended her hand and Sylvester shook it, smiling warmly.

"Sylvester Falcone." he said, "Nice to meet you."

"Charmed." Rachel grinned brightly, "Wow, Annabeth, which section of Aphrodite's orphanage did you pluck this guy from. He's the hottest guy I've seen since Luke..."

"Ahem!" coughed Annabeth, noticeably loudly. Rachel realized she'd crossed a line and cleared her throat, before carrying on.

"I just wanted to let you know that Victor's really fuming up," she said, and suddenly she was serious as a heart attack, "he kept screaming his head off about some son of Athena beating him easily, claiming that he let him win. When one of the Aphrodite kids said otherwise, said that the Athena kid won fair and square, Victor nearly strangled him. Just didn't know if we should tell Chiron..."

"Victor tries to kill another camper, outside of the sword arena, and there's any doubt that Chiron should be told about it?" Sylvester said curiously. Rachel glanced at him, and then laughed.

"He's a sharp one," she remarked, "well, erm, I'll go tell Chiron. See you at the campfire." She jogged up to the Big House.

The campfire that night, Sylvester realised, was more spectacular than he had expected. The flames, when mixed with the shrouds, produced incredible colours. The campers that danced and sang and dined around it all seemed to be smiling and laughing, as if they didn't have a care in the world. The night sky, illuminated by the stars and the harvest moon, was beautiful.

Dressing himself in a blue animal jacket, sleeveless rugby jacket and red jeans that he had pressed himself to perfection. He slid up the hood over his black hair and journeyed down from the Athena Cabin. Sylvester sat down in a deck chair close to the fire and rubbed his hands together. Campers danced around him, hooting joyously. He looked into the flames and plucked a marshmallow on a stick from the plate next to him and dangled it over the fire.

He peripherally noticed a girl walk over and sit on the log next to him, dressed in a yellow T-shirt and a skirt that had been torn short. He turned around, and looked at her. The girl was very pretty, with the body of a netball player, with straightened light-brown hair and blue eyes that shone like beacons. Her face was flawless, without freckles or spots, and she sat very comfortably, as if she was as relaxed as he was. The smile on her face was confident to the point of being cocky.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked. Her voice was very high, with a California accent.

"You've joined me, so what's the point?" Sylvester said, smiling back. The girl giggled.

"I'm Susan." she said, "So, you're the boy who attracts all of this attention. Sylvester, isn't it?"

"That's right."

"You won't join your Cabin?" asked Susan.

"I've not been on my own all day," said Sylvester, "thought it might as well be now. Which Cabin are you?"

"Apollo." answered Susan, "Oh, and by the way: Your welcome."

"For what?" Sylvester asked, "For saving my ass down in the sword arena."

"How did you know?"

"My ADHD," said Sylvester, "I noticed that, after he'd been hit, Victor's shirt had been marked in such a way that it told me the angle that the arrow had flown and, following the path of the arrow back into the crowd, I saw your face."

"Smart guy." she giggled, "So...what do you think of the Camp?"

"I think it's really interesting," said Sylvester, "the only problem is that we don't receive regular visits from our parents."

"Yeah, that's a real issue," said Susan, leaning back. A boy sat down next to her, squeezing Coke out of a can into his mouth. He threw the can into the flames and they bulged before returning to normal. The boy was significantly shorter than Susan, but his hair was extremely messy and the colour of shredded wheat. His face was puffy-cheeked and his brown eyes were a deeper shade of tree bark. He was dressed in a brown jacket that was very tightly-collared, to such an extent that Sylvester was puzzled on how he could breathe.

"Troy Callaghan," he introduced himself abruptly, "son of Demeter, and messiest camper on the premises. How do you do?"

"Oh, hi Troy," said Susan, "got bored of taking Pepsi shots with the rest of your camp?"

"Bored? How can you get bored? It's Pepsi, for crying out loud!" sniggered Troy, "I came here cos I wanted to meet the guy who kicked Atlas's beefy butt."

Sylvester groaned, "Can somebody please go and behead that Titan, so that they can focus on him instead of me?"

"Annabeth said you'd be trouble on the subject. How's the back?" asked Troy.

"Still cutting me in half?"

"Gonna make an awesome battle scar when your older." said Susan, optimistically.

Sylvester smiled Annabeth told him he'd find his own crowd - he had only spent two minutes with these two, and he found that he liked them. Then, without knowing what he was doing, he sensed the blade of a spear approaching them from behind. He fingered for the sword, for the feathered crossguard of his weapon, and spun around with his hand in his belt, clasping the leather grip of the sword. Victor Mortenstein laughed, holding his spear warily in both hands.

"Well, if it isn't everyone's favourite little show-off?" he sneered.

"If he's a show-off," said Troy, nervously, "what does that make you?" Victor scowled and his grip on the spear tensed. Sylvester's hand tightened on his sword, cautiously awaiting whatever attack the son of Ares had planned.

"Watch your wheaty tongue, Callaghan!" he snarled. A lot of the campers had stood up now, sensing another confrontation coming their way. Sylvester stood up straight, "You cheated in the arena, Falcone. This time, I'll beat you."

"I have said it before," said Sylvester, calmly, "I will say it again. I do not want to fight you. It is bad enough that I humiliated you in the arena, which was not what I wanted nor needed to do. I will not humiliate you a second time in one day."

"You cheated!" screamed Victor, his snarling face tightening.

"Come on, guys!" Susan stood up, shaking her head, "Tonight's not the night for a duel."

"Were you born yesterday, Cooper?" growled Victor, "Any night's the night for a duel. Come on, Falcone. Draw your sword. Or do you want to be stuck like a pig, like I said you would."

"Nobody is getting stuck." answered Sylvester, coolly, stepping towards Victor, "Put the spear down. I'm not going to fight you, and you are not going to fight me. Let's not spoil this for everyone."

"Spoil things?" called a bunch of kids from the Ares Cabin, "You can't spoil a night with a fight, that's like trying to ruin a Michael Bay movie with explosions!"

"What he said," Victor said, "Pick up your weapon. This is going to happen, whether you want to or not."

Sylvester smiled, not in a condescending way but in a way that told everyone that he was completely assured even with a spear aimed at his chest. The air was suddenly tense with anticipation, and the Campers had gone silent. Dionysus was watching, really eagerly, from his table next to Chiron, drinking from a can of Pepsi as if he were watching an acclaimed Hollywood action movie.

Sylvester removed his hand from his weapon and swung his arms by his side, lackadaisically. Victor's eyes were now slits of frustration

"It isn't going to happen. That spear is not going to touch me, or my sword." assured Sylvester, "Go back to partying with your Cabin, Victor."

Victor screamed and raised the spear, lunging for Sylvester. The campers moved to stop him - except for Ares and Aphrodite, who stayed exactly where they were, anticipating the brawl that was to come. Dionysus stayed exactly where he was, a smile growing on his face.

Sylvester calmly raised a hand and waved it at Victor. Victor recoiled, as if struck by a gust of wind. He staggered back, and the spear was ripped from his grasp by an invisible pair of hands and thrown across the campfire until it was at the hooves of Chiron. Victor stared at Sylvester, incredulously. The campers held their breath.

Victor furiously ripped a short sword out of his belt, his expression feral.

"You little...." he lunged for Sylvester, and Sylvester flexed his hand out of pure instinct. Just as Victor brought his weapon up to strike, Sylvester pushed at the space between him and the sword and the blade superheated from silver, to red, to white, before shattering with a vicious series of snaps. Victor stopped dead and cried as a shard of his sword buried in his wrist. Victor tore it out, his face aghast with disbelief and horror. He lunged for Sylvester, and Sylvester sensed a fast-moving presence zooming towards him....from behind! He turned around, and Rachel Dare slammed into him, her hands gripping for his shoulders and shaking him violently. Her eyes were glowing slime-green like lanterns and she looked like she'd lost her mind.

"The owl, brazier and lyre shall run into the ground," she screamed. She was surprisingly strong, and pinned him to the ground, her hands wrestling with his arms as he tried to free himself.

"Rachel!" cried Annabeth, who was now rushing towards them, elbowing past Victor.

"They shall be joined by the beast who is homeward bound," Rachel went on, her voice shrill and high-pitched to an undeniably painful extreme. She wrestled with Sylvester, who spun them over so he was lying on top of Rachel, twisting himself free of her. She sprang forwards like a frog and crashed into him, and they knocked Troy over as they tangled together like animals. Sylvester couldn't possibly understand what was happening to her, some sort of psychotic episode perhaps. Whatever she was seeing, it was driving her insane....and she didn't look easily scared.

Annabeth's arms wrapped around Rachel's waist and pulled away, and she writhed and thrashed like a child having a tantrum, "The Terror of the Gods awaits their call...."

"Somebody gimme a hand!" shouted Annabeth, before Rachel jammed an elbow into her throat. Choking, Annabeth fell to the ground and Rachel kicked her in the groin, and she rolled around on the grass, sobbing in pain. Rachel barrelled for Sylvester

"His daughter's kiss shall prolong their fall," her voice was now impossibly high. Dionysus bolted to his feet and flexed his arms. Grapevines punched from the ground around Rachel and wrapped around her arms and legs, before whipping up so that the grapevines were protruding from the trees around them. Rachel was hoisted into the air, spread-eagled, but she continued to struggle. From three feet above the ground, Rachel's teeth gnashed for Sylvester, her eyes burning with hatred, "The beach of brothers shall break its banks..."

"Sylvester, are you alright?" Susan rushed to help him to his feet, and he swiped the dirt off his clothes, before warily approaching Rachel, his eyes never leaving her.

"What the hell is happening to her?"

"Shush!" snapped Annabeth. She was looking at Rachel with horror but, most of all, fascination, as if she was seeing a Bengal tiger in the flesh for the very first time.

Rachel stopped struggling, her eyes started dimming and she hung her head and started crying, her sobs echoing across the camp, "And the mother of chariots shall....shall begrudge her thanks." Sniffling she dipped her head into her chest and started weeping hysterically.

The whole population of the camp, including the wood-nymphs who were now emerging from the trees and complaining about the grapevines which were unnaturally sprouting from their roofs. Chiron had arrived, his beard ruffled madly. He cantered to a halt next to Sylvester.

Dionysus hobbled over to meet them, "Well, that went well! Is the brat alright?"

"You know the drill, Dionysus," said Chiron, "keep her up there for twenty-four hours from now, until her impulses pass. Those eyes start glowing again, come fetch me at once. Are you alright, Sylvester?"

"I'm fine..." said Sylvester, panting, "She didn't hurt me. What the hell just happened?"

"Rachel...she's the Oracle." explained Annabeth, "And she just had a Prophecy...a Prophecy about you!"

Chapter 6 - Paintings that Predict the Future

Sylvester woke up two hours earlier than he usually did, and when Susan and Annabeth found him he was hacking at the targets whilst blindfolded with his sword. He was holding the sword with one hand - he was right-handed, but she noticed that he was using his left hand to wield the sword almost twice as well, if not a lot more. He was also wielding it in a reverse grip.

"Hey, Sylvester!" called Susan as they approached and Sylvester's blade stopped a centimetre from slicing through a target that was suspended level with his face. He lowered the sword, before peeling down the blindfold and turning to face them. He didn't look out of breath. He didn't even look like he was sleep-deprived, his eyes were completely unmarked by exhaustion.

"Hey, girls."

"Rachel's calmed down and stopped thrashing, but she's still crying tsunamis." answered Susan, sitting down on a bench not far from Sylvester. He wasn't sweating through his shirt, which made her curious. He looked like he'd been training for hours, "We just wanted to check that you were okay after her little outburst last night."

"She didn't hurt me."

"She knocked you down, like, three times." said Annabeth.

"I'm used to getting knocked over, after that Chimera attack on my way through the barrier." muttered Sylvester, stabbing through one final target before plunging into the ground, where it quivered a little before straightening. He sat down next to Susan, and Annabeth joined them.

"You said she was giving a Prophecy...what does that mean?"

"Rachel is an Oracle," explained Susan, "Oracles sort of predict the future, then interpret it in this cryptic riddle to the person the Prophecy is centred on, or somebody who is somehow involved in it. What happened last night didn't make sense, because Oracles usually introduce themselves then say 'Approach, seeker, and ask' before giving any Prophecy. They don't usually attack you, but..." She trailed off.

"But, what?" persisted Sylvester.

"This is the third time this year that Rachel has gone into some sort of psychotic episode whilst giving a Prophecy. We've called for Apollo to have a look at her, but he says she's fine. She says she's fine, in fact she has no distinct memory of ever having an episode," Annabeth took over, "she claims that the things she sees whilst giving the Prophecies terrify her, but refuses to clarify as to what they are."

"Do you know what she meant last night?"

"We have no idea." said Annabeth, "Come on, Grover has something to show us." He got up and the girls led him away from the sword arena. Rachel was still suspended the way Dionysus had left her during the incident, and she was still weeping. Sylvester felt like shivering and looking away from the girl, only to be tempted to look back out of sheer sympathy and pity for Rachel.

"Does she always cry after a Prophecy....the last two times, I mean."

"This is the first time, actually." said Annabeth. "The time before last night, she broke into fits of hysterical laughter and wouldn't stop running into trees. The time before that, she stripped off her pyjama shirt and stood at the top of the climbing war, showing off her stuff. That was really disturbing."

"Except for the Apollo boys," said Susan, blushing, "They kept begging the Hephaestus kids to make them cameras before somebody got Rachel to come to her senses."

"Have you considered an asylum for her?" asked Sylvester.

"Not a good idea." murmured Annabeth. They came to the attic of the Big House, where Grover was sitting by the window, waiting for them. The attic was loaded with tons of artefacts and weapons and pieces off Greek monsters. Sylvester spotted a really thick coat made out of what looked like the mane and back of a lion, a curved ivory horn as big as Sylvester's hand and seven huge reptilian heads with vicious, curved teeth and their tongues dangling out of their mouths as they snarled lifelessly at whomever had ended their lives.

"Grover?" called Annabeth.

Grover turned to face them, yawning. "Hi guys."

"You had something for us." Grover got up and walked them through to a separate room to their left. The room was very small, and littered with paintings.

"I was here with Rachel when she went off her rocker, see." explained Grover, "she was painting, and then when she was in the middle of one of her works she stopped. Her hands started shaking, and then...her eyes were glowing like dragon scales, and...you saw what happened."

"So, what?" asked Susan, faking a yawn herself. She was sitting next to an open window, looking down on Rachel.

"Look!" Grover cried, pointing at the paintings. Sylvester observed the paintings that lay, preserved perfectly, hanging from the wall in front of him. One of them was of an eagle owl flying through a night sky with a lyre in its beak and a hammer gripped in its talons. Another was of a skeleton in bronze armour with a sword and shield standing in the centre of the painting, surrounded by what looked like a disgustingly red-brown river of what may as well have been chocolate batter, for all the deep thickness it appeared to possess. The third was of the most beautiful beach that Sylvester had ever seen, with deep turquoise waters and shells and pebbles that lined it magnificently, like the very definition of paradise.

The last of them was the most puzzling - it was a portrait of Sylvester. Sylvester was backed against a dark sky, which intensified by long, sharp forks of lightning. His sword was in one hand, spinning around his wrist in a shining silver blur, he was wearing a thick grey fleece which wrapped around his chest, and he was holding a great circular shield underneath his jaw. The shield was the strangest part - it was emblazoned with a hideous woman's face. A woman with a writhing mass of snakes instead of hair.

"Isn't that..." said Annabeth.

"Exactly." said Grover. "These are scenes depicted in the Prophecy. The owl, torch and lyre. The beach of brothers shall break its banks. She was trying to interpret her experiences through painting, but they intensified and she went into another rage mood thing."

"Why would she have a vision of you?" asked Sylvester. "She hardly knows me. Or, do Prophecies not occur to Oracles specifically targeting people they know, or will know."

"That's right." Annabeth said, leaning in to look at the picture of the owl, "Well, this is a first. Is this another Great Prophecy?"

"I don't know." said Grover, "We'll have to ask her."

"I don't see that happening right now." Susan muttered.

"I know." said Grover, "She's only been there for six hours."

"No," Susan pointed down through the window and they rushed to join her. Aphrodite and Hermes had gathered around Rachel. Hermes had brought stepladders and the Aphrodite girls were climbing up with feathers and toothbrushes, and were tickling Rachel's armpits and the middles of her feet with them. Rachel was wriggling hysterically and giggling through light sobs, and her face was so red from laughter that she looked like she was going to wet herself. Annabeth laughed.

"Looks like she's having fun." she giggled.

"Might want to put a bucket underneath her in case she wets her pants." sniggered Susan.

"Anyway," muttered Sylvester, trying to bring them back to the subject, "She has a prophecy whilst trying to attack somebody involved in the prophecy. Isn't that a little bit suspicious, or was the first time she did something like this part of a prophecy about a daughter of Aphrodite flaunting her rack?"

The others looked like him. Grover shrugged, "We've asked Chiron, and he says that it means that the Fates are expecting a quest pretty soon. You've only been here a day, and you might go on a quest. That's pretty cool."

"Cool. Creepy. Crazy to an extreme." said Annabeth, shaking her head, "Sylvester, go back to your training, we'll try and talk this out with Chiron."

Sylvester shrugged and walked down out of the Big House. She walked underneath Rachel, to whom the Aphrodite kids had evolved from toying with her toes and were starting to playfully tickle her sides, making her scream and beg for more. He walked off past all of the constructions of Camp Half Blood and into the woods. The woods blotted out a great amount of sunlight, but what came through was a sensational shade of green that reflected off his face.

He walked, contemplating what he had just seen. The girls and Grover had just deduced that he would be sent on a quest. He was part of a Prophecy. And a girl he had just met had tried to beat the crap out of him whilst predicting a frightening element of the future. Not a very good start to the day, he decided. He drew his sword, observing the owl crossguard and curiously clean blade. It had been smeared with the blood of a Titan, but remained completely spotless. He found that oddly fascinating, and wondered who could possibly have sent the old woman to give him that sword. And how convenient that it was on the same night that his father died and he ran away.

He was distracted by the sound of the ground rumbling. He looked at the earth and saw that the grass and flowers were increasingly perfect as they led further to the west of the woodland. He walked towards the source of the rumbling until he came to a clearing right in the middle of the forest. Troy Callaghan was sitting on a tree stump, waving his hands slowly as if performing Tai Chi. The strange thing was that, all around him, grass was squeezing abnormally high through the soil, roses were blossoming in beautiful colours and shapes, bluebells peeled into life and trees were blossoming with bright pink and white flowers with every gentle gesture he made.

"Ever thought of visiting the Botanical Gardens?" asked Sylvester. Troy looked up and lowered his hands. He smiled and gestured for Sylvester to join him.

"I've always been able to do this," he said, "Children of Demeter can always make flowers grow in all shapes and colours. I remember one kid who managed to sprout a black rose in his cupped hands." Sylvester sat down next to him and surveyed the private garden that his friend had created.

"Who was your dad, then?" he asked.

"My dad," Troy turned to him, "he was a construction worker. Not very big-shot. He did try and burn a lot of the constructions to the ground so that he could break away with the insurance money, so now he's in prison. Not a very glamorous ending. Then a Satyr found me and brought me here. No monsters. No trouble. I never really liked what my dad did. You?"

"My dad." Sylvester inclined his head, "He was a cop in a homicide precinct or whatever you call it. He's...he's dead now. I don't exactly know what happened, only that he went on a case and never made it back out. I ran away from home when I found out. I was only eight years old, and I've been on my own ever since."

"That's nearly seven years on your own, being hunted by monsters!" gasped Troy, standing up and staring at him, "How the hell did you cope?"

"I just kept running." said Sylvester, "I had no other family, and according to the news I was a missing person, so showing up would mean a huge scandal and I'd end up in an institution. Then I had my battle with Atlas on Mount Othrys, and that led me here."

"I can't believe you were on your own that long." Troy exclaimed, making a group of Venus flytraps sprout and snap in succession, "I would have gone insane."

"I probably did....I thought I'd gone insane when I kept seeing those monsters show up. When I saw Batista holding up the sky, I was certain I'd lost the plot." Sylvester whispered, and they laughed, "I'm gonna be going on a quest soon. You ever done one of those."

"I've never been on a quest in the whole year I've been here." said Troy, "It was offered for me to be partnered with a jerk from the Ares or Dionysus Cabins every single time, so I had no choice but to say 'No way, dude'. You scared."

"I don't know what to feel." admitted Sylvester.

"You seem to always look like you don't feel anything." remarked Troy, "You didn't look nervous fighting Atlas, according to Batista. You didn't look scared humiliating Victor. You've just talked about your own dad, and your face hasn't changed at all."

"It's probably a trait in Athena." said Sylvester, "Stoicism."

"Apparently, Athena's really serious. That figures." piped Troy, grinning, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee type of girl...God."

The two of them smiled.

"What happens on these quests?" asked Sylvester.

"You usually have to rescue someone from someone else, or retrieve some kind of artefact from a really powerful thief. Once or twice, you just have to fight off a monster or tame a demigod who is causing trouble in a public area." Troy looked him in the eye, "If you're worried about surviving it, you don't know what it is yet. Could be anything. It could be trying to get Dionysus to smile for human reasons, which - trust me - would be an unbelievably frightening mission." Sylvester laughed.

"Thanks, mate." said Sylvester, punching him softly on the arm, "That's really reassuring of you."

He was about to say something else, when the ground shook violently and he staggered to his feet, trying to stay upright. It shook again and he fell against a tree and Troy fell against him. There was the sound of pounding around them whenever the tremors happened.

"Is that..."

"It's not me!" cried Troy. Another tremor sent them falling to the ground, and then something smashed. They looked up to see the sky had started shimmering, and then the shimmering turned to shards of glass which evaporated above them. The shield surrounding Camp Half Blood had broken. Sylvester looked ahead and saw exactly what had caused the damage. And what he saw made him grab Troy, get to his feet, turn and run for his life.

Chapter 7 - Trashing the Camp

The ground shuddered as the beast that was chasing them pursued. Sylvester ran as fast as he could, overtaking Troy but looking back and slowing down to ensure he still had his eyes on his friend. He had to grab him several times and push him ahead so that he was sure they both could escape. They dodged past trees to keep running, and Sylvester's heart pounded against his chest. They leaped over a tree stump and dodged under a fallen branch, skidding to their feet to keep going.

All around them, the forest was emptying. He saw wood-nymphs vacate their tree homes and flee from the monster that was smashing through trees after them. Sylvester risked a look back and immediately bolted his head to look in front of him before he could crash into a tree. What he did saw was a great mass of golden fur and four legs that ended in huge paws and black claws the size of hacksaws. The rest was a huge blur, it was moving so fast. He quickly gestured to Troy.

"Keep it back!" he called. Troy twisted his arms wide at a group of trees and suddenly, like a worm transforming into a centipede, they sprouted a million branches as thick as their arms, which interlocked, twisted and entangled to form a cage of wood. Sylvester and Troy skidded underneath the cage before it completed, before getting to their feet and continued running. The monster, whatever it was, tried to stop when it met the cage, but as a result it crashed into the wooden net and battered repeatedly agaisnt it. At last, it broke through the cage and let out a roar that painfully split into their ears.

They finally broke out of the forest and into the light, not daring to look back. Annabeth saw them and jogged down to meet them.

"Sylvester," she smiled, "I've been looking all over for you..." She looked over their heads and saw the monster that was chasing them. Terror wrapped around her beautiful features and she stumbled back.

"Manticore!" she screamed, and the Campers looked up and saw the beast. They dropped exactly what they were doing and all Hades broke loose. Sylvester risked another look back at the monster and saw precisely why they were so terrified. The monster that burst from the trees was significantly bigger than a seaplane and almost forty feet in length. It a lion's body with powerful legs and fiery-golden fur, except for the mane which looked about as thick as a mattress and a much darker yellow.

At its back was a black plated scorpion tail that ended in an egg-shaped sting that had one long, three-milimetre-wide barb and bristling with spikes thinner than a human hair and longer than Annabeth's dagger. It's head was the worst part - it was a human skull with oily hair the colour of its mane and with a very jagged jaw, and huge cheekbones. Its eyes were bright orange and burning with hatred, and its teeth were like that of a tiger.

Ares, Apollo, Hephaestus and Athena kids were bolting for their own Cabins to fetch weapons, whilst everyone else piled into the Armoury for the same reason. Sylvester turned back and saw the Manticore charge down to the Stables, looking for prey. It flattened the wooden buildings, splinters the size of swords jutting out of its body. It roared and twisted around as stallions stampeded out of the ruins, desperately. It moved in to catch one in its brutal jaws, when grapevines wrapped around its throat from up in the Big House and it reared back, shaking its head violently.

Dionysus appeared behind the Manticore, supporting the grapevines that were now growing around its front legs and locking between its jaws, tightening with the intention of crushing it. Dionysus tugged on the grapevines as if he were a cowboy reeling in an angry bull. The Manticore tugged at the vines that were now throttling it, and Dionysus was thrown over the beast's head. He hit the ground so hard that he ploughed a trench through the earth that went several metres deep. He tried to get up, but the Manticore kicked at a boulder above the Wine God, which tetered and pounded down on Dionysus. He disappeared from sight, flattened underneath the huge stone. The Manticore flexed its body, twisting until it had loosened the grapevines, then chewed at them until they fell from its mane in a pile of green shreds.

Sylvester turned, to see the Hephaestus kids line around the beast, producing rudimetary quadrouple-barrel machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The Manticore charged at them, and they scattered, their weapons misfiring hopelessly and peppering the air with explosions, like a crazy fireworks display. The Manticore's human face twisted with evil. Aphrodite kids sprouted from behind trees, hurling perfume vials the size of footballs at the monster. The vials exploded on its hide and the shards showered on the grass beneath it. The Manticore roared and its tail swirled, spikes flying from its sting and forcing the Aphrodite kids into cover.

Troy gathered the Demeter demigods to the left of the Manticore and they slammed their feet to the ground. The grass swelled with flowers, which sprayed squirts of fine, yellow pollen. The Manticore rocked its head and struggled to find its way out of the onslaught. It pounded the earth with its front paws, and the shockwaves ripped the flowers apart and knocked the Demeter demigods to the ground. Sylvester went for his sword, but was forced to dash to one side as the Ares and Apollo cabiners poured down the hill towards the intruder. At their head, his face livid with bloodlust and raising his ugly spear combatively, was Victor Mortenstein. They bore down on the Manticore, which roared so hard that the helmets flew off the Campers, exposing their heads. The Manticore charged and all but the Apollo kids and Victor fell back. Victor turned around and saw them fleeing.

"Cowards!" he screamed, before turning around and holding his spear in a reversed grip. He sprinted between the Manticore's legs, turned and stabbed for the underside of its neck. The Manticore turned at the last second, breaking the spear in half in the process. Crying out at the loss of his prized weapon, Victor tried to swipe at its legs with the two halves of the spear. The Manticore raised one front paw and brought it down on Victor to crush him. Victor raised his arms and grabbed its paw, wrestling with it to stop it from breaking his spine in two. The Manticore's claws unhooked Victor's breastplate and he fell on his backside. The Manticore lunged to devour him, when Apollo demigods sent a volley of arrows bounced off its mane, driving it back. The Manticore stabbed its tail for Victor, who rolled to his left several times as the barb of the tail punctured deeply into the earth, trying to skewer its prey.

Sylvester ran to help him, but his path was blocked by the Hermes kids who charged. The Manticore's tail swung for them as they came but, like chimpanzees, they backwards-somersaulted over the tail and landed flawlessly, producing potions. They threw them at the Manticore's face, and small explosions ricocheted off its cheeks. Smoke billowed around its head and it backed away, before rocketing forwards and knocking over the Hermes kids furiously, shaking off the potions, its mane writhing like a huge dog shaking water off after leaving a river.

It charged past them and smashed through the Ares Cabin at the top of the hill. Explosions rocked the earth, multicoloured flames punched through the sky. The Manticore came out of the wreckage with its entire body up in flames. However, it sprinted so fast that the wind itself quenched the flames in a matter of seconds. Victor screamed with despair and ordered for his fellow Cabiners to encircle the hill and hone in on the beast from all side. Sylvester saw Batista emerge from the Big House, and when he saw the Manticore he dodged past its huge body, running powerfully down the hill towards Sylvester.

"Sylvester!" he cried, "What on earth is going on?"

"Batista." Sylvester ran up to him, "There you are. I need you to do something for me. I need you to stand somewhere at the edge of the word and, when I give the call, I want you to punch the trees as hard as you possibly can."

"Why?" asked Batista.

"Just do it!" Sylvester could have done it through gritted teeth, but he didn't want to unnerve his friend more than he needed to. However, the Manticore was coming back and he had t oput his plan into action fast. Batista sprinted down to the edge of the woods and disappeared from view. Sylvester turned and called Susan's name. He finally saw her and rushed to meet her.

"Susan, are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm fine. Just a bit shaken up." she answered, "What do you want, I've got to get my Cabin ready for another attack on that thing..."

"What arrows have gou got? What special arrows?"

"Oh," Susan was overwhelmed by the question, "Well, we've got explosive, boxing-glove, tear-gas, Celestial Bronze and acid."

"Right," Sylvester pulled her in close, "I need you to get your Campers together, armed wiht Celestial Bronze and acid arrows. When the time is right, and you'll know when, I want you to aim straight for its face."

"Don't you think we haven't tried, it keeps moving!" snapped Susan.

"I've got a plan to help with that. Just, get into position!" Sylvester instructed. Susan glared at him, then turned and sprinted back to her fellow Apollo demigods, gathering them together. He then turned and dived to one side just before the Manticore freight-trained into him. The wind rushed into Sylvester as the Manticore went past, its tail writhing viciously. The Manticore unleashed a downpour of spikes on the demigods who had managed to collect nad were about to attack when they had to raise their shields and back away before they were run over by the Manticore, which stopped at the edge of the woods.

"Drive it back!" Sylvester shouted at the Ares kids, including a bewildered Victor. The Ares kids charged, throwing their spears at the monster. The Manticore recoiled as teh spears bounced off its mane. Now, only its head was sticking out of the woods. Sylvester squinted and saw Batista standing, nervously, a few metres away from the Manticore.

"Batista! NOW!" shouted Sylvester. Batista balled his fists and pounded the nearest tree to the Minotaur. It snapped in two and the tree came crashing down on the Manticore's head. The Manticore crumpled to the ground, its head writhing wtih pain. It got up, only for Batista to send anotehr series of trees crashing down on it. As the Manticore buckled under the assault, Sylvster signalled to Susan.

"Fire!" she ordered, and Apollo kids nocked and fired their bows. The Manticore shrieked as arrows sprouted from its eye sockets. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted from between the arrows as the acid nibbled at its eyes and the Manticore batted at their shafts, snapping them off. Blinking the rest of the arrows out of its eyes, the Manticore roared violently, its eyes horribly disfigured but burning with hatred. It charged straight for Sylvester, who brandished his sword and readied for the attack.

The Manticore's tail whirlwinded around its body, blindly and wildly, and launched a series of ferocious blows for Sylvester. He batted and swatted at the manticore's sting, strugglign to stay upright while blocking its vicious attacks with all of the strength he could find. He backed up the hill, but away from the Cabins and the Big House. They made straight for the strawberry fields, and this was where Sylvester pressed the attack, stabbing and cutting for its feet, its jaws, its neck and eyes. The Manticore's tail swiped his blows away, and for a few moments the two of them were evenly matched. Finally, the Manticore launched a spinning attack with its tail that knocked the sword out of his hand and sent him rolling to the ground. Triumphant, the beast roared and its sting rose and dived in for the kill.

However, they were interrupted when a deafening roar punched the air around them and Batista tore past Sylvester, his arms wide and his face aflame with anger. His hands grasped the sting before it could pierce Sylvester, and the Manticore snarled, waving its tail through the air. Batista held on for dear life, and it looked like he was wrestling with the head of a snake. However, Batista's attack was short-lived and the sting manouevred out of his grasp and plunged deep into his chest.

"No!" screamed Sylvester as Batista hit the ground with a thud. The Manticore turned on the Cyclops and opened its jaws wide. Sylvester got up, seized his sword and leaped through the air, just above the Manticore. He grabbed on to its hind leg and climbed up, clambering on to its shoulders and locking his feet around its neck. The beast realized that he was on it and shook, trying to wrestle him off. Sylvester's thighs held true on the beast and he held his sword with both hands, raised it high and plunged it into the skull of the beast.

The Manticore's scream burst from its mouth, at an excrutiating level, and its tail whipped around blindly. Sylvester turned jsut as the bulk of the Manticore's tail smashed into him, knocking him off of the beast's back. It was like being hit by a wrecking ball. He flew through the air, high above the ground, and the world rushed in a swirl of intense colour. He then hit the water with a vicious splash and the whole world went completely black.

Chapter 8 - Sylvester's Mission Impossible

Waking up was one of the most painful experiences that Sylvester had ever undergone since Mount Othrys, and that was saying something. From the moment he opened his eyes and tried to sit up, agony twisted inside his spine and he winced, leaning back. The sun blinded him. Sylvester tried to lift an arm, and succeeded. Sliding his legs to one side, he managed to awkwardly stand up. Annabeth was sitting on the bed opposite him. There was a pained expression on her face.

"You're alright!" she cried, relieved. Sylvester groaned in response. She helped him to his feet and pushed a cup of something to his lips. When he drank it, it tasted like a strong Ribena, but it brought the speech back into his throat.

"What happened?"

"You fell real hard," said Annabeth, "into the lake. Took a lot of nymphs to find you, and Batista."

"Where is he?"

"He's fine." Annabeth assured, "Jumping into the water healed the poison the Manticore dealt him. He pulled you out. He's been worried sick...and so have I."

"The Manticore...." Sylvester's eyes widened and he grabbed his sword, which was lying on the table next to him. He moved to go back out, but Annabeth grabbed him and held him back.

"It's okay," she said, soothingly, "the Manticore's dead. You killed it."

"I killed it?" Sylvester remarked.

"Stabbed it in the heart." Annabeth smiled, "Come on, Chiron wants to see you." She helped him out of the Cabin, and Sylvester gasped. The Camp was a mess. Ares Cabin had been bulldozed to shreds, there were small flames and torn-up chunks of earth all over the place. The stables were in pieces, the horses being strategically tied by satyrs to posts. Demigods were all over the place, trying to repair smaller damages done by the beast. The Manticore itself was a sight to behold. It was lying, spread-eagled like a cartoon cat that had been run over by a bus, over the strawberry fields. Its face was twisted in a deathly frown, its tail circling around its body, the sting broken off. There was a spread of blood half a metre wide around the beast.

"I like what it's done with the place." he muttered. Annabeth squeezed his hand.

"Don't let Victor hear you say that." she warned, "He's torn to shreds about losing his Cabin. Almost punched Troy for remarking about it. Come on." It took him a few moments to walk without becoming excruciatingly light-headed, and Annabeth led him up to the Big House. All around him, people looked and stared with incredulity. He understood. They saw him kill the Manticore, and then get smashed across the Camp, through the air, into a river, where he should have drowned. He couldn't blame them for looking at him like he had gotten up from a bullet to the head. Annabeth stopped when they were at the doorsteps of the Big House.

"I'll see you later." she said, then turning around and walking back.

Chiron was waiting for him in the Big House, and he didn't look at all happy. His arms were folded and he was looking into the fireplace as if it were the only fascinating part of the room. Dionysus sat opposite him, his fur coat wrapped around him. His puffy face was compressed into a scowl so tight that the cheeks bulged out of his skull. He looked annoyed, but completely unaffected physically, by the fact that he had been beaten by a Manticore.

When Sylvester entered, Dionysus turned and his scowl loosened.

"You're late!" he barked.

"You weren't time-specific, Mr. D." said Sylvester, sceptically.

"I don't care," grumbled Dionysus, "Tonight has been beautifully quiet, and I wanted something to complain about." Chiron shook his head and turned to look at Sylvester.

"Dionysus, if you please?" asked Chiron.

"Are we going to play Pinochle tonight?" Dionysus queried, sourly.

"I doubt it. I've got a lot to do tonight. So much paperwork to send to Zeus on this business with Miss Rachel Dare." Chiron answered.

"I can do it." Dionysus offered, "Consider it a favour from your immortal descendant."

"I insist otherwise, Dionysus." Chiron said, politely. Dionysus mumbled to himself incomprehensibly. He got up and walked miserably out of the room. Chiron nodded.

"Please, take a seat." he suggested. Sylvester sat down. Chiron looked down at him, and he appeared to be very, very concerned, "How are your injuries?"

"My back is killing me," said Sylvester, "did I save the Camp, or did it do more damage?"

"The Manticore was in too much pain to make another conscious attack." Chiron explained, "And I must congratulate you on your victory. Manticores are violent, rare, extremely powerful and very hard to kill. Now..." He cleared his throat.

"Tell me. What do you know about Cyclopes?"

"I know," Sylvester frowned, "that they are freakishly huge and really strong, but possess surprisingly soft hearts...and that's judging by Batista's behaviour."

"Cyclopes," explained Chiron, "are one of the great worries of the Olympian dynasty. They are a race of living creatures with intelligence enough to speak, but - no disrespect meant - no intelligence enough to be genius-level. They are notoriously clumsy and naive as youngsters, and as they get older their minds begin to settle on whatever characteristics they have by the time they reach adulthood. This means that if a Cyclops is narcissistic, he becomes a true egomaniac. If a Cyclops is brutal, he becomes a savage....If a Cyclops is obedient, he becomes a slave forever. And Cyclopes are very valuable as such creatures: they work on the forges of Olympus and Atlantis itself. They are, as such, in possession of complete immunity to extreme heat and have superhuman strength.

I am telling you all of this because, upon investigation into the area around Mount Othrys, a very large number of Cyclopes have gone missing. One day, they were thriving as a race, and the next, they weren't even there. Now, we haven't managed to get a lot out of Batista, but he does mention that the place he remembers before being pinned underneath Atlas's burden was extremely beautiful and people came and went from there in flashes of light on the horizon. It is my theory that someone is abducting them - we don't know how, we don't know why. But we do know that it has something to do with Atlas escaping the day you stopped him."

"What does this have to do with the prophecy?" asked Sylvester.

"Dionysus sent a very large group of satyrs and nymphs to visit every individual who would know where those Cyclopes would have gone," Chiron went on, "the search has been fruitless, but there is only one thing that is known: Achilles knew a number of the Cyclopes who went missing, and thus would know exactly where to find them. Exactly where they went."

"Achilles?" Sylvester frowned, "The guy with the cursed heel?"

"Not quite," replied Chiron, "He inflicted himself with a curse that made him invulnerable everywhere...except, at the flip of a coin, as it were, his heel. He got overconfident, not knowing his weakness, and thus his weakness cost him his life."

"If he's dead, then we'd be back to square one, unless...." he looked up at Chiron, "No. You aren't saying."

"There's only one place Achilles could be." Chiron's expression turned extremely grave, "The Underworld. Specifically, the banks of the River Styx."

"You aren't suggesting I go there?" Sylvester said, incredulously.

"I'm saying exactly that," said Chiron, "your quest, Sylvester, is to journey to the Underworld and to question Achilles, ask him where the Cyclopes have gone, go there, and bring them back."

"You want me to go to the Underworld....into Hell?" Sylvester thought for a moment, "Okay. One problem - how the hell do I get there? Do you plan on stabbing me where I sit and asking my ghost to go looking for him?"

"Preferably not." Chiron shook his head, "There is a way. In Harlem, New York, there is a gateway to the Underworld. You go there, you find the Underworld, you find Achilles...you find the Cyclopes."

"And who am I going with?" asked Sylvester.

"Normally, we'd leave the choice to you," said Chiron, "but the prophecy states that the bird, torch and lyre shall enter the Underworld - the three that shall enter the Underworld are the symbols of Athena, Demeter and Apollo. It also speaks of another - a beast who is homeward bound. It speaks of a Cyclops. Therefore you will be teamed with Batista, Susan Cooper and Troy Callaghan."

"Okay," said Sylvester, "when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow." said Chiron, "First light."

Sylvester did not spend as much time pondering the quest as he'd thought. He didn't remember thinking about it. He just remembered walking back to the Athena Cabin and dropping down on his bed, noticing that Rachel was being lowered down by the grapevines which had imprisoned her, as per Dionysus's orders of twenty-four hours. A wood-nymph rushed over and carried her up to the Big House.

Sylvester collapsed on the bedsheets and fell straight to sleep. Straight into a nightmare.

He dreamed that he was in Harlem, and there was the scream of police sirens tearing at his ears. There were blue flashing lights and bright yellow tape was being wrapped around sections of the street, blocking it off. Then, right on cue, was the sound of gunshots. His dream focused on one particular building - an apartment block that towered over the others, infested with dry rot and cracked windows and anything that would deem it unfit for human habitation.

There were bright flashes as guns blasted inside the building and the front door burst open. Richard Falcone rushed out, with a gun in his hand. His police uniform was ruffled as if he'd been in a wrestling match with someone far stronger than him. He rushed behind a car and three other officers followed through the door after him. They took positions outside the apartment, and police cars enveloped around the street. Officers sprang out, brandishing pistols.

"This is the police! You are surrounded!" somebody screamed through a megaphone, "come out with your hands behind your head!"

A figure appeared in the doorway and the guns jerked up to aim straight for it. But the figure fell to its knees and was dragged down the steps of the apartment, being held at gunpoint by another man. This man, Sylvester could see clearly. He was thin and tall, and bearded, and dressed in a thick mink coat and trousers that were probably too huge for him. He had a pistol trained on the man in front of him.

"Put your guns down!" he shouted, "I'll put down mine!" Richard Falcone stood up and walked into the middle of the scene, in front of the man in the mink coat.

"You let the man go, and drop the gun, we'll drop ours." he said, carefully.

"That's not going to happen!" retorted the man in the mink coat. Richard aimed for him with the gun.

"I want a car," the criminal continued, "and guaranteed passage to...."

"There will be no negotiations!" the voice on the megaphone called. "Let the man go."

"You know what? No!" the man in the mink coat aimed at the hostage's head with his gun, but Richard Falcone moved much faster and fired. The bullet punched into the criminal's chest and he was knocked backwards. Reflexively, the man in the mink coat's gun blasted and Richard was knocked over. Screams pitched higher than ever and the police officers, enraged by their comrade being gunned down, opened fire on the criminal as he threw his hostage to the ground, accidentally putting him out of the way.

Bullets pounded into the man's body and he was slammed repeatedly into the wall of the building behind him, buckling. The man fell to his knees and stared down at the gaping holes in his chest where the bullets had hit. Sylvester spotted Melody rushing out of the crowd and falling to her knees next to his father, horrified. His father weakly stroked her cheek, before slackening and falling back.

"Man down!" called one of the cops. But all eyes weren't even on the police officer lying, dead, in front of them. They were looking at the man who had shot him. Somehow, incredibly, he was rising to his feet, his face screwed with pain. He glared down at the police cars that were now surrounding it.

"Did you honestly think it would be so easy?" he snarled, and his voice had completely changed. It was deeper, scarier, with a tone as fine and strained as a stretched length of silk. The strangest part was, it was a woman's voice! "You mortals. So primitive. I shall show you all!"

He stretched his arms, and suddenly something really strange happened. His pelvis split out of his skin and grew into a huge, egg-shaped abdomen that stretched out so far that he had to limp down the steps so as not to feel squashed against the apartment. His legs, without him even falling or flying, rotated into the air, before jerking upwards, growing a third bone so that each leg had two knees, and growing to the length of two men. Six other legs, just like his, peeled from the joints between the abdomen and the torso. The trousers were stretched until they ripped and fell at his feet. His entire body from the stomach down blackened, his chest swelled and the skin of his arms and face turned a deathly pale. The mink coat fell to the ground and he arched his head back, his hair blossoming until it was level with his navel. The result was a huge monster - a huge, spider-human monster.

"Behold!" the monster screamed, before scuttling down, its front legs snatching Sylvester's father from where he lay and winding a mass of thread around his body, her grin broadening until it showed rows of sharp, horrifying teeth....

Sylvester screamed his father's name and snapped upright. He grabbed for his sword and held it in front of him, as if expecting the monster who killed his father to be bearing down on him. Instead, was another figure entirely. This figure was a woman, dressed in a great black cloak and a hood that shadowed all of her features but her jaw and a thin, red lip. Tanned arms keeping the cloak wrapped around her body, she drifted down until she was face-to-face with him. He couldn't see her eyes, but he saw that her skin was very toned.

"Who are you?" He ordered, his grip intensifying on his sword. The woman looked at him, her breaths slow and calm.

"Remember this, young one," she said, her voice soft and milky. She leaned in so that her breath was icy on his face, "In order to cheat death, one must first greet it." She then turned and did the strangest thing he had seen since he had arrived at Camp Half-Blood.

She walked over to the window, spread her eyes, before transforming into a great, winged creature and floated out of the window, hooting into the night. Sylvester walked curiously to the window, and watched her fly away.

"In order to cheat death, one must first greet it." She had said. What the hell did that mean?

Chapter 9 - A War of Flippers and Fur

The sun climbed over the top of the trees at Camp Half-Blood, and when it did, Sylvester was already awake and dressed. He was sitting at the steps of the Athena Cabin, with his sword held in front of him, observing it from different angles. The light that reflected off it was quite beautiful. The combination of gold and silver made it look like it was fit for a king or queen, and the incredibly precisely-moulded feathers on the crossguard seemed to be flexing and quivering whenever he moved it. Sylvester looked up when a shadow fell on him. Annabeth was standing over him, wearing a pink jacket and with a pack slung over her back.

"Rise and shine." she greeted, "Can I join you?"

"Be my guest." he patted the step next to him and she sat down on his right. She looked at the sword he was holding.

"That's a pretty well-made weapon you got there." she remarked, "who gave it to you?"

"I don't know." answered Sylvester, "But it just feels....it feels right to be carrying it. Mother must be a pretty mysterious deity to be so cryptic about everything."

"She is," Annabeth nodded, "Athena is the wisest of the Gods and Goddesses, but I don't know her that well. We've met a fair few times, but always briefly. She kept telling me that I should stay away from my boyfriend, saying he was too dangerous for me. I'm a demigod. Life is always gonna be dangerous for me!" She chuckled to herself.

"Is there something you wanted?" asked Sylvester. Annabeth nodded and slid the pack off her back, unzipping it and pulling out the first item inside, "Chiron asked for me to give you these."

The first item made Sylvester look away very slightly, it was so frightening. It was a large, circular iron shield, nearly the width of a grindstone. There was a hideous face emblazoned on the centre of the shield - the head of Medusa, which he had seen in one of Rachel's paintings.

"Aegis," Annabeth said, "One of several shields that Hephaestus forged with the face of Medusa. As you've probably guessed, the face would frighten anyone who look at it. It's also pretty tough, could take a nuke head-on."

"Ever thought of using it as a Halloween decoration?" asked Sylvester.

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Annabeth said sarcastically, and poked him in the ribs. He grinned and shifted on the step to face her head-on. "There's also this."

She produced a polished iron breastplate. She waved her hand over it and it transformed into a thick, dark zip-up grey fleece. Annabeth handed it to him along with Aegis.

"Chiron's old breastplate." she went on, "He insisted you have it. There's also that sword. He had a look at it while you were asleep. Tell you what, press the point between the wings on the crossguard?"

Sylvester frowned, and did as he asked. The middle of the crossguard shifted inwards and the sword shone like sunlight and shrank into a large, metal blue flashlight. Sylvester arched an eyebrow.

"Intriguing." he commented. He grabbed the lens of the torch and twisted, and almost jumped when it shone and transformed back into a sword.

"Look at the flat of the blade, angle it against the sun." instructed Annabeth. Sylvester did this, and the sunlight intensified off the steel. There was an Ancient Greek inscription etched into the flat of the blade. In front of his very eyes, the Greek letters danced on the blade and read one word 'Sunfire'.

"In Greek, it reads Iliosfotia." corrected Annabeth, "I suppose that it's the name of the sword."

"Because sun fire reduces all who look upon and touch it into less than rubble." guessed Sylvester.

"I suppose." Annabeth shrugged. She looked up as two other people walked towards them. Troy Callaghan was one of them, dressed in a chainmail suit disguised as a long-sleeved thermal vest and carrying a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball bat. He had combed his hair for the occasion and was wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, complete with a matching jacket. Susan was the other, and she wore a mercifully long green skirt and tights, along with a pink Justin Bieber top. There was a pink jacket wrapped around her waist with a double-knot. There was a collapsible steel bow gripped in one hand, with a metal wire connecting the edges. The bow was expertly-crafted and she held it very confidently. There was a quiver of silver arrows tipped with Celestial Bronze, among other things, attached to her back. Her hair was tied in a ponytail.

Finally, bringing up the rear, was Batista. He was dressed in a very thick American football T-shirt and shorts, and his muscles bulged out of his clothes very dangerously. His one eye was bright with excitement, and he overtook the others when he saw Sylvester.

"We're ready when you are, boss." laughed Troy, grinning broadly. Susan nodded after him. When they were inches apart, Sylvester stood up, spun his sword before sliding it into its scabbard, and sliding the grey fleece over his head. It was a perfect fit. He slung Aegis across his back.

"Let's go." he said. Annabeth walked them through the forest to the borders of the Camp. She then stopped and Sylvester turned to face her. The others stopped and waited.

"I guess this is goodbye," said Sylvester, "for now."

Annabeth nodded, and held out her hand, "Good luck."

Sylvester slowly took her hand, and she suddenly pulled him into a crushing hug. Sylvester gasped as her arms locked around his shoulders, pinioning him to her. She whispered in his ear, fighting back a very hard sob, "You're going to freaking need it."

"We'll be fine." assured Sylvester, "I'll bring you back a souvenir." He was making it sound like a trip to Disneyland. They pulled apart and faced one another.

"Bye, then." said Annabeth, softly, "Say hi to Achilles for me!"

They turned and started jogging down the hill. Susan overtook them briefly, but for most of the journey she and Sylvester were level with each other. Then Batista barrelled past them. When they reached the bottom of the hill, Troy called for them to stop and catch his breath. He snapped his fingers and a loaf of French bread squeezed from under his sleeve. and he tore a chunk out of it with his teeth.

"So, where do we go from here?" he breathed, "How do we get to Brooklyn?"

As if under stage direction from a play, Sylvester heard the beep of a horn and turned around, slowly. A cab was moving down the road in front of them - a typically yellow taxi with dusty windows and a flashing panel on the roof with a phone number and web address on it. The taxi stopped next to them and the two back doors flapped open like the wings of a bird. Sylvester looked into the driver's seat, where a middle-aged, extremely bulky and hairy satyr sat, glowering up at them.

"Taxi for Sylvester Falcone and friends." he recited, robotically.

"That's us!" cried Batista, excitedly. He plunged into the taxi, which lurched under his immense weight. Exchanging puzzled looks, the other three went in after him. The inside of the taxi was rather cramped, so they were all squashed together uncomfortably. Aegis pressed painfully against Sylvester's back.

"Harlem, please?" called Susan at the driver. The doors automatically slammed shut and they were slammed into the back of the taxi as it burst into speed across the road. Regaining their bearings, the four of them sat facing one another, quietly. Troy straightened his baseball cap.

"How long from here?" he asked the driver.

"Half an hour." the driver said, miserably. Batista looked completely at home in the confined space. Susan straightened up.

"So, what's the plan?" she queried.

"We find the gateway to the Underworld, somewhere in Harlem."

"Somewhere in Harlem?" muttered Susan, "That narrows it down!"

"At least it's definitely in Harlem," Batista said, optimistically. Sylvester looked outside. The world was blurring in a vortex of colour, the car was going so fast.

"Aren't you afraid of the speed-limit?" he called.

"They can't see us," answered the satyr at the wheel, "it doesn't matter how fast we're going, the Mist hides us. Relax. We're almost there..."

They were interrupted when a resounding crash exploded in front of them and the taxi upturned. Susan screamed and Batista slammed against her, protecting her from any impact. The world slowed down and Sylvester looked around. There were explosions tearing up the road around them and figures blurring between them, screaming. The taxi went upside-down and crashed, shuddering under the impact. Sylvester fell forwards, but turned around and Aegis broke his fall. Batista landed on his back, his arms wrapped around Susan. Troy landed, face-first, on Sylvester.

"Di immortales! What the hell was that?" exclaimed the driver, struggling his legs out of the steering wheel and hammering the door open to get out and investigate.

"Batista," choked Susan, "let go of my waist!" He was crushing her.

"Sorry," Batista whimpered, innocently, straightening his shirt. Sylvester fell against the door, which came off and he tumbled out on to the road. They were in the middle of a deserted street, and there were clouds enveloping the sky. He helped heave Troy out and Batista squeezed through with a painful look on his face. Susan crawled out on all fours, fishing for her bow.

"What the hell was that about?" screamed the driver, and Sylvester turned to face him. He was walking towards what looked like two huge groups of teenagers brawling together with clubs and bats and chains. They stopped fighting and turned around. Sylvester looked closer, and realized that one of the groups were a bunch of telkhines - with dog-like faces, black bodies and spacious whiskers, and these were dressed in identical jumpers and baggy trousers, with balaclavas concealing all but their faces. The other gang was a gang of satyrs - these were dressed like goths, in all-black jackets and jeans. Their horns were punching through their football caps and their goat legs tore at their jeans. They were carrying baseball bats and chains, whilst the telkhines were wielding knives and their own huge claws.

One each gang stepped out to face the driver. The satyr spoke first, in a high-pitched voice, "Sorry about that, old boy. That was just a stray grenade I dropped. Thing is, these circus freaks keep trespassing on our streets. They don't seem to get that anything on the compass corner of the city which faces Camp Half-Blood is ours!"

"Ha!" snorted the telkhine, in a much deeper voice, "you're just telling them what we told you! This is our territotry. The waterworks and sewers are much better and more fun to swim in!"

"The lands are more fertile here!" shouted the satyr, "Better for us, than you smug-snouted scum!"

"What did you call me, punk!" fumed the telkhine.

"Okay, that's enough!" shouted the driver, approaching the gangs who were this close to clashing again, judging by the scowls and brutal snarls on their faces, "Let's just calm down, here!"

Sylvester was just approaching, when the telkhine leader growled, "Calm down!"

He burst towards the driver with amazing speed and knocked him over, his claws digging into the satyr's neck and making blood fountain out of the wounds in his throat.

"No!" cried Troy, brandishing his bat. The gangs looked up at them.

"More trespassers!" shouted the satyrs, and suddenly the gangs were spreading around, prowling towards the four of them. Batista was already balling his fists nervously.

"Tell you what, furry-face." growled the lead telkhine. "Whichever kills the most out of those four wins the territory. Deal?"

"Deal!" screamed the satyr leader.

"This doesn't sound good...." Batista started, when the two gangs boomed with war-cries and charged.

Chapter 10 - Rush on the rooftops

"Run!" Sylvester drew Sunfire from its scabbard and held it in both hands. Susan drew her bow and Batista readied in a boxing stance.

"You guys, run!" cried Troy, stepping forwards, "I got this!" He spread his arms wide and the ground shook slightly. Then thick, asparagus-green weeds as thick as Sylvester's thumb burst from the road, latching around lamposts and billboards and aerials until there was a dense, green spider's web of weeds between them and the gangs.

"Will that hold them?" asked Batista, nervously.

"Sure." Troy didn't sound so sure. Then a number of clawed telkhine arms ripped through the weeds, their talons curled and vicious.

"Get back!" screamed Batista, rushing towards the taxi and grabbing it by the hood.

"What on earth are you doing?" exclaimed Susan.

"I said, get back!" repeated Batista, tensing his muscles. With a heave, he lifted the car high above his head as if it were only a classroom chair. Turning as if he was tossing a caber, Batista hurled the car at the neet of weeds. The car created a huge black shadow as it bore down on the weeds and a bunch of the telkhines' faces appeared through the web just before the taxi crashed down on them. The net collapsed, entangling those who were trying to climb through and around it. A number of satyrs and telkhines cried out as they were flattened under the car.

"Let's get out of here." Susan suggested.

"That sounds like the best idea." agreed Sylvester, coolly, "Take the alley to the left and split up. Go!" The four of them plunged down an alley, disappearing into darkness. They could hear the incoherent curses and complaints of the gangsters who were trying to twist out of the pancake of metal and weeds that Batista had left them in.

Batista and Susan took to the left once they were out of the alley, whilst Troy went with Sylvester and they went on forwards. Sylvester bounded and leapt on to a wall, scaling up it, whilst Troy produced a length of beanstalk from his palm and used that like a grappling hook after Sylvester.

"So, what's the plan?" asked Troy.

"We split up the gangs and try and reason with them separately."

"What makes you think they'll listen?"

"They want land." explained Sylvester, "We'll try and discuss who gets the land without getting them to kill us all."

A satyr sprang up from the edge of the roof to their right, brandishing a meat cleaver. Troy grabbed his bat from his belt, but Sylvester had already drawn his sword as four more satyrs followed the first. Sylvester noticed that they were carrying pepperspray cans, wooden spoons, and even a headless broom. Sylvester charged into the group, Sunfire gleaming.

The satyr with the meat cleaver sliced down with his weapon, and Sylvester deflected the blow easily, then turned the blade inwards so that he slammed the pommel into the cheek of his opponent. Troy twisted the grip of his baseball bat and it transformed into a huge, wooden club with a bulging end like a hammer. He had already shattered the wooden spoon of a satyr behind him with his club and was backing away as another satyr moved into him with the headless broom. Sylvester ducked another swing with the meat cleaver, then knocked his opponent down with the same pommel strike.

He turned and sliced at the satyr with the headless broom across the shoulder. The blade tore through the satyr effortlessly, cutting him in half. Gushing thick black blood, he slid, in two unequal pieces, to the ground with his insides rolling out, and Troy nodded his thanks at Sylvester, who shrugged back, before turning and batting away the attacks of three satyrs with signposts for weapons. The metals scraped together, prompting feeble sparks to fly. He pushed the satyrs strategically to the edge of the roof, where they dropped their weapons reflexively and thrashed helplessly. Sylvester feigned a lunge for them, and they jerked away, sending themselves falling back over the roof. Sylvester looked over the edge, peering down. He had performed his strategy perfectly - they had fallen into a skip, where their fall was cushioned harmlessly by pile upon pile of bin bags.

Turning around, he saw Troy smack the last two satyrs out of the way with his club before turning to face Sylvester. Sylvester spotted a number of curved claws protrude from the edge of one of the roofs and grabbed, Troy, prompting him to run. He spotted small explosions of golden dust that told of Susan ploughing through her attackers with her Celestial Bronze-tipped arrows. The two of them leapt from one house to another, before swerving to the left and leaping off the edge, into the streets. Troy clung on to Sylvester, who positioned him on his back, before removing Aegis from his shoulder and desperately pressing it underneath him.

Aegis made a sickening crack as it hit the ground, and Sylvester used it as leverage to cartwheel forwards, so that both he and Troy landed awkwardly on their feet. Picking up Aegis, which was utterly unmarked by the collision.

"Smart move," rasped Troy, leaning forwards with his hands on his knees and heaving painfully. Sylvester smiled.

"Son of the Goddess of Battle Strategy." reminded Sylvester. They were interrupted by the increasing screams of telkhines as they gathered on the roofs above them. They crouched and dived down into the streets.

"These guys are ridiculously suicidal." muttered Sylvester.

"Whatever you said." said Troy. Sylvester brandished Aegis and held it in front of him, Sunfire held carefully low. Troy gripped his club with both hands, "Any more smart ideas of negotiation?"

In answer, Sylvester held up Aegis for the telkhines to see and they shrieked, recoiling violently and crashing into each other.

"Now!" ordered Sylvester. Troy brought up his club and slammed it against the road. The ground shook in vicious tremors and the telkhines yelled, tumbling over each other, clawing their own faces by accident and some of them even pitched into trash cans, writhing blindly.

Sylvester turned and Troy ran, with Sylvester quickly overtaking him. His ADHD then spiked and he turned, only for Batista's iron chest to smash into him. Sylvester careered back, backwards-cartwheeling to regain his balance before backing against a wall under the force of his collision. Batista exclaimed and ground to a halt, creating gouges in the sidewalk. Susan came to a halt next to him, an arrow drawn in her bow. She seemed to have been able to retrieve her arrows after she shot them.

"Holy smokes, you scared me!" panted Susan.

"You scared us?" retorted Troy, laughing, "Batista's the one who knocked Sylvester over, the little..."

"Calm down, guys!" Sylvester walked between the three of them, retrieving Sunfire from the ground at his feet. "Now we're here, we need to try and stop them from making any more mistakes..."

"Mistakes?!" cried Troy, "You mean, trying to kill us?"

"And getting themselves killed as a result." Sylvester pointed out.

"Fair point." breathed Susan, "I've already killed three satyrs, and Batista's already thrown too many through too many windows."

"Didn't need the running commentary." remarked Troy.

"Guys, they're coming!" cried Batista, pointing. From either side of the street, satyrs and telkhines were rushing towards them. There was one gang on one side, the other opposite, and Sylvester, Batista, Susan and Troy were smack-dab in the middle of the battlefield. The gangs stopped dead and suddenly turned unnervingly quiet. For a moment, nobody moved.

"Stop this!" called Sylvester, "What's the point? We've already proved we're better than all of you, so why carry on attacking us."

"For territory!" cried somebody in the telkhine gang.

"For the leader you threw through a window!" continued someone in the satyr gang, pointing a furious finger at Batista.

"For a decent sewer to swim in!" announced another person in the telkhine gang.

"Gross." mumbled Susan.

"You want territory, am I right?" Sylvester asked. Both gangs let out cries of reply.

"What do you think you're doing, Sylvester?" muttered Batista, "They're just going to carry on chasing us."

"No they won't," whispered Sylvester, before raising his voice. "How about this? Satyrs take the fields, parks and generally grassy parts of this district. Telkhines take the sewers, the rivers, the waterworks. Everyone lives. Everyone's happy. No beating each other up in gang wars."

There was a very long silence.

"We're doomed..." muttered Troy, when two members of both gangs limped forwards.

"Agreed." the satyrs - one of them short and revoltingly obese, in a denim jacket and torn bike shorts, the other skinny and bent, with horns jutting sideways like a second pair of ears and a green-striped jumper that stretched over his ankles, "Your terms?"

"Just let us go." said Sylvester, calmly, "Let us pass through your territory to the train station. We'll get out of your hair....blubber, whatever, and you can get on with your lives."

The whiskers on the lead telkhine bristled. The representatives of both gangs exchanged glances.

"We have a deal." they growled, in unison.

Chapter 11 - Attack of the Pensioners from Hell

"Well, that could have been ugly." remarked Batista.

"We could have just carried on cutting them up until there were none of them left, though." said Susan, casually.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Because that would be a lot quicker than negotiation." answered Susan.

"But it would increase the chances of getting us killed." Sylvester pointed out. They had been directed to a bus station not far from where the two gangs had started agreeing on who took which territory. They stopped near Grand Central Station, where, upon looking at the train times that hung from the panel on the wall, they decided to wait until the 19:30 train which, the satyrs had told them, would take them to the nearest gateway to the Underworld.

They used their own cards to get through the entrances, before waiting on the benches in the middle of the station. The windows poured sunset through the lights into the very centre of the station. Sylvester chose a seat next to an old woman who was fishing in her handbag for something. There, the four of them synchronised watches, when Batista's stomach growled like an elephant's cry. Batista massaged it, grimacing with embarassment.

"I'm hungry, too, come to think of it." complained Troy, self-consciously.

"Try conjuring a baguette in your hand again." suggested Susan.

"Won't be a proper meal." Troy stood up, "Anyone else hungry?" When they nodded, Troy turned and walked up to a McDonald's kiosk on the far side of the hall. Batista rushed after him, his footsteps shaking the ground minutely beneath him.

Susan and Sylvester sat down, side-by-side. After a short silence, she turned to him.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked.

"Thoughts shouldn't cost anything to be expressed." said Sylvester, softly, before looking up, "Sorry, sure...I was thinking about the Manticore's attack on Camp the other day."

"What about it?" asked Susan.

"The Manticore," he explained, "it was after me. Even after we'd blinded it, it went after me. I'm beginning to think that somebody's got something in for me. I mean, everywhere I go, monsters attack me. Everyone I've asked has said that my attacks have been more extreme than any of them. I mean, a Sphinx doesn't just show up out of nowhere, doesn't it?"

"I guess you're right." she said, "I don't know much about that sort of thing. I was claimed when I was five, and my mum went mental, thinking that I was cursed. It was then that Annabeth showed up and brought me to Camp. We managed to dodge most of the monsters that were in the area, but then I got attacked by a Laistrygonian Giant." She rolled up her shirt a little, showing a purple scar on her stomach, "He left his mark on me before I drove an arrow through his mouth."

"Your dad never came after you?"

"Nope," answered Susan, "never got a single sign from him. I had to get my own bow from the Hephaestus Cabin, and I'm pretty glad because the ones at my Cabin were really basic."

"I see what you mean." he sighed. Susan fidgeted and then turned to him.

"I'm just gonna take a leak," she winced, "be right back." She got up and left. Sylvester sat back and observed the place around him. It was very impressive in terms of architecture, with the expressed intent to look magnificent. Perhaps a little too ambitious, on that front.

"Very sweet." squealed a voice next to him and he turned around. The old woman next to him had turned to face him. He hadn't had time to focus on her very well, but now he saw her quite clearly. Her hair was a bun of grey. She was slightly hunchbacked, in a purple skirt and darker tights , with a blue jumper and red-and-indigo striped T-shirt that looped over her waist. Her body was ludicrously thin, like the slightest blow would break her into a pile of lined sawdust.

"Young love," she giggled, "so sweet."

"We aren't lovers." rejected Sylvester.The old woman wagged a finger at him.

"Oh, my dear," she trilled, "you are mistaken. I know love when I see it." She turned over to him.

"What is your name, dear?" she asked.

"I think it's unwise to share my name with a complete and utter stranger." the woman looked very taken aback by this. She smiled, eventually.

"Very wise," she said, "I knew a man, once. More than a man, I'd say. Great guy. Smart as hell, I might add, and really good-looking. You know, he had brothers. They were always fighting. That's the problem with siblings, they will always squabble. I've lived out my life surrounded by children who are always fighting. When you live out your life surrounded by hate, you know love when you see it."

"I'm guessing this guy of yours found somebody else, someone prettier, someone younger..." Sylvester guessed, smoothly, "Excuse me..." The woman's hand clasped around his wrist. He froze. She may have looked like the human equivalent of a stick insect, but her strength was frightening. He held his gaze into her eyes. They were bleak as stone. She smiled at him.

"No, my dear." she whispered, "His brothers ousted him the moment they found a nice place for themselves, and he has lived out his life at the bottom of the popularity scale ever since. And I am bound to him, out of respect. Because he doesn't care. He doesn't give a damn what people think of him. You see, when you're alone, deary....you grow up real fast. You learn more about the world than you do among a pack...the power of one exceeds the might of three."

"Let me go." breathed Sylvester, trying to stay calm.

"And, you see, when I hear that this man is going to have an unwanted visitor," the old woman purred, her voice turning slightly shrill with intensity, "I see it as my right to keep these visitors from disgracing his halls with their presence. Turn back, boy. Go back to your Camp. Protect it. Keep your friends close...so that it'll be more painful when you lose them."

Sylvester brandished Sunfire in its torch form, and the moment the old woman saw it, her face blazed with fury and she struck him hard under the jaw with her cane. The blow sent Sylvester flying back off his feet in a flash of agony and he hit the tiles several metres away, sliding as if he were on ice across the polished stone plates. The old woman rose to her feet, walking towards him as the people scattered to let them pass. Sylvester got up, groaning, and she flew at him, leaping through the air.

As she jumped, she transformed. Her clothes became a spread of leathery black wings that spread almost twice the length of her arms, and her face twisted into a mask of insanity, with a maw of thick yellow teeth. Her arms were hunched with curved talons. Her cane turned into a flaming whip as long as her body was tall, and her eyes blazed with fire. She bore down on him, and he twisted the end of his torch, and it became the three-foot metal sword in his hand. The monster shrieked at the sight of the blade and he cut at her throat with the side of his blade. She snapped her whip against his sword, and the connection created a shockwave that rocked the very air between them. Sylvester rolled underneath the monster, before turning and cutting at her back.

The monster looped the loop high in the air, so that she scratched the roof as she went, before turning and soaring down to meet him. Sylvester was about to attack again when a vicious grey blur cut past the monster's throat. Susan was suddenly at his side, nocking another arrow. Sylvester bolted to his feet, unslinging Aegis from his back. The monster dived and cracked her whip at them. The thongs struck him across the chest, sending him flying across the hall. However, Chiron's breastplate protected him, it seemed, from the worst of the attack. He flipped and landed roughly on his feet. Susan tried to aim again, but the monster clawed at her, her talons raking across Susan's chest. Susan screamed and fell back, her arrow misfiring and striking a fire alarm. The alarm boomed and people rushed around, screaming.

"Aaaaarrrrrgh!" snarled the monster, her face screwing under the sudden burst of sound. Susan backed away from her, her hands covering the vicious, smoking mark that had been left on her chest. The monster turned and flew back at her, but she nocked another arrow and fired. The arrow struck the monster in the eye socket and plunged through until it was sticking out of the back of her head, black gore dotting the sharp flint at the end. The monster circled in the air, madly, ripping at her face to try and free the arrow. Sylvester sprinted, dodging terrified New-Yorkers, to meet her.

"Are you okay?" he asked. Susan let out a hoars, choking cough in response. Then she gagged and spoke painfully.

"I'm fine..." she lied. Sylvester dragged her out of the crowd.

"What is that thing?" remarked Sylvester.

"A Fury." answered Susan, "The torturers in the Underworld." It was almost hard to believe that the shrieking, loop-the-looping bat-like creature above them was a sadistic torturer in the prisons of Hell, but looks could be deceiving, Sylvester supposed.

"We need to get the others and find that damn train!" Sylvester decided, but then saw that the Fury was now turning and zooming down to meet them. The look in her eye, her intact eye, was crazy. She dived for them, missed and her hands and clawed feet clung to the clock in the middle of the station. She looked up, spread her wings and let out a terrifying shriek that rattled the entire building.

A shriek that was met with other, higher shrieks. Sylvester looked up and saw two windows on either side of the station shatter as two great, black monsters bolted through them on leathery wings. They both saw that one of their kin had an arrow protruding through her eye, and screeched with rage. The three furies circled the air above them, then dived like spitfires.

"Get down!" Sylvester shoved Susan to one side as one of the Furies knifed between them, her claws thrashing for their necks. They produced fiery whips and, as they flew, the whips spiralled like the tails of some giant reptile. They moved to dive again, when Batista appeared from behind Susan, snarling. He charged at the Fury in the middle as she charged for him. Before she could strike him with her whip, he grabbed her with both hands around the side of her head and drove his foot into her chest. The Fury dropped the whip and writhed. Then the other two grabbed Batista by each shoulder and lifted him off the ground. He struggled against them, his huge hands swiping for their necks.

Then one of them cawed as a club spiralled for her head. It struck her with a vicious snap and she fell to the floor beneath her. Troy picked up his club and approached her, warily.

"Bad bat!" screamed Batista, wrestling with the Fury until they were face-to-face, then striking her across the nose with his hand. She let go, hissing, and he dropped helplessly. A web of cracks ruptured the ground where he landed, and he got casually to his feet. The group gathered in the middle of chaos as people battled to escape the battle. Sylvester had no idea what they were seeing with the Mist, but he knew it was absolutely horrifying.

"We need a plan," panted Susan as she straightened against a bench and started massaging the slashes on her torso.

"Got one." answered Sylvester, hazarding a glance from the Furies and at the panel where the train times were listed, "Batista, I need you to draw them towards the nearest train tracks. It'll be a more confined space, they'll find it harder to manoeuvre. When that happens, Troy, you cover all exits, in and out of there, make sure they can't get out. We'll hold them over the tracks as best we can."

"How is that a good plan?"

"You'll see." Sylvester brandished his sword and then tore Aegis from his back, sliding it down one arm and tensing it. The Furies had regrouped and were now bearing down on them.

"Now!" Sylvester called and Batista threw a punch that glanced off her left wing and unbalanced her. The other three sliced for him and he ducked, before turning and running for the next tunnel to a train. The Furies turned and rushed after him. Sylvester and the others ran in their direction, as the Furies went single file as they entered the tunnel. They came to the platform that stood over a track, where Batista launched himself at the Furies. One of them had the good sense to dart underneath him, but the others tried to attack, and he grabbed their whip-hands, driving them to the ground. One of them lashed her whip at him, coiling it around his waist, and he roared with agony as the flames bit into his flesh. Furiously, he brought his fists down on her, loosening the whip. The Furies kicked him off them, only for Sylvester to leap from the tracks and stab down on them.

They rolled out of the way, and he missed. They moved for the exit, but Batista stood in their way, his arms spread. Susan aimed and fire, her arrows pinning one of the Furies' arms to the wall. The other two lunged, but Troy batted at them with his club. They backed away and Sylvester joined his friends, holding up Aegis for all to see. The Furies screeched, arching their heads back and moving towards the wall, where one of their kin was nailed to the wall.

"Why does Hades want me dead?" called Sylvester.

"None of our business!" hissed the Fury that had first attacked him.

"You're his second-in-commands, and it's none of your business?" Sylvester pressed forwards as the Furies thrashed their whips, which rocked against the shield and created a blinding network of fiery cracks. Susan readied another arrow and they backed away.

"Your mother sent us!" snarled the first Fury, with an arrow still sticking from her eye socket. That created an unexpected lurch in Sylvester's heart. He shook his head.

"You are lying." he said, but he instinctively knew that they weren't. The Furies sneered.

"You know nothing, son of Athena!" giggled one of the other Furies. Then they flew at him, their claws outstretched, their vicious teeth bared.

But Sylvester had planned this to happen. He had timed it perfectly. Just as the Furies jumped, a horn boomed across the structure of the tunnel. Bright lights spread across the walls of the tunnel as the huge mass of a train burst across the tracks and smashed into the Furies. Their claws were moments from raking at his cheeks when suddenly the train powered into them and they were knocked out of sight at nearly a hundred miles per hour. Sylvester glimpsed a spread of intense golden gore smear across the windows of the driver's carriage. Susan jumped.

Within moments, the train had passed and they were alone.

"We did it....we did it." Troy panted, thumping his chest and rasping with exhaustion. Susan nodded, before collapsing against a bench and slackening on to her side, her face reddening.

"Susan!" cried Batista, rushing to her side. Susan had tears in her eyes, and Sylvester saw that the claw-marks that the Fury had dealt her were now flaming red and looked like whatever was in the claws was now coursing through her veins. Troy knelt down and felt her forehead.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, "She's boiling. Someone help me get her jacket off..."

They slid her jacket from her shoulders and tried to tug it off without bringing pressure to her wounds. She slumped against the bench and started shaking.

"Susan," said Troy, calmly, "I need you to slip some of this stuff into your scars." He pressed a collection of wet leaves from a flask in his pocket, into her hands and guided it to her chest. She stiffened before he could place her hands over the wounds, "Okay, fine. I won't look." The claw marks ran under the collar of her shirt and she gestured for Troy to look away as she pulled her bra off a little to spread the wet leaves over the scars. Batista and Sylvester turned and looked away.

"What is that stuff?" asked Sylvester.

"Stuff Chiron gave me," answered Troy, "Leaves from his own garden. Unfortunately, they can only be used once..."

They looked back to see Susan inch to her feet, heaving, "Where do we go now?"

"If mythology is to be believed," deduced Sylvester, "then either the Furies will be back, or Hades'll send even worse things here to kill us. We need to find some other place to go." He supported Susan as she tried to stay upright. They walked together out of the station, but as they left, Sylvester remembered what the lead Fury had told him.

She had told him that his mother had sent him. And, from the look in her eyes, she wasn't lying!

Chapter 12 - The King of Olympus gets a Migraine

It took only a minute before Susan could properly walk. And, when she did, she sprinted. Almost moments after they left the train tunnel, they heard the scream of police sirens. Sylvester led them towards a fire exit and Batista smashed the door open. There was a cop patrolling the alley beneath them. Sylvester had no interest in killing any mortals - the moment he came to the metal staircase, he vaulted over it with only one hand and drop-kicked the man in the small of his back. The man slumped, and Sylvester instinctively knew which nerve to pinch in his neck to make him pass out. The others followed down the stairs, Batista supporting Susan on his back.

The moment they reached ground level, Sylvester heard people cry after them, and saw cops brandish pistols, kneeling behind cars, exactly like they had done in Sylvester's dream. Sylvester called and Susan fired an arrow from her bow. It struck the car in the middle and a huge net burst from the flint, wrapping around several of the police officers. As they struggled against the net, the group dodged into an alley and out of sight.

Sylvester stopped to let the others go past, before running after them. Troy returned his club into its baseball bat form, and Sylvester pressed the crossguard of Sunfire so that it became a torch again. He tossed it into the air, knowing that it would slip between the zip-lines of his rucksack. The two of them sneaked away from the police cars that were now blockading the station, and stopped when they reached a playground, where they found a place in the bushes to hide.

Once they were sure that they were alone, Troy waved his hand and suddenly a carpet of knotted green grass where they sat together. Sylvester unslung his pack and stretched his arms.

"Well," he remarked, "that went terribly."

"That was intense." Batista breathed. Susan winced in agreement, dropping her bow, "Now, what?"

"Chiron needs to know." suggested Susan, "We were just attacked by Furies. Plus, we should really find out how the Camp's getting on without us."

"Agreed." Sylvester said, producing a drachma from his pocket. Troy waved his hand again and a rainbow streaked through the trees, illuminating their faces. Sylvester cleared his throat.

"O Iris, goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me, Athena Cabin at Camp Half-Blood, New York." he chanted. He tossed the coin on one thumb into the rainbow. It dissolved and the rainbow transformed into a large oval of multicoloured light. The light shifted into the bedrooms of the Athena Cabin at Camp Half-Blood.

"Couldn't you have chosen the Aphrodite Cabin?" moaned Troy, "At this time of night, they should be getting changed, so it'll be much more interesting..." he trailed off when Susan shot him a fiery look.

Annabeth was kneeling over her table in the Cabin, and when she looked up and saw them, she jumped. A smile soon broke across her face.

"Annabeth," said Sylvester, "hi. How's things?"

"You first!" cried Annabeth, "Have you seen the news? Something's happened at Grand Central Station..."

"That's exactly why we're calling," explained Sylvester, "we just got attacked by the Furies...."

"Holy crap!" shrieked Annabeth, "Are you alright?"

"Susan's got a few marks," answered Sylvester, "but, otherwise, we're fine. We just need to know if anything's happened at Camp since we've been gone."

"Tell me what happened!" insisted Annabeth, "Tell me!"

"Annabeth..."

"The Furies just attacked you," Annabeth's tone turned stern, "I want to know why. Did they say anything?"

"Apparently, they were trying to stop us from reaching the Underworld," Susan groaned, "but that's not the worst part..."

"I asked them who sent them." said Sylvester, "It turns out, they were acting on the orders of mother!" Annabeth's face darkened and she stared at him.

"They were lying..."

"They weren't." contradicted Sylvester, "I could see if they were lying, and they were telling the truth."

"What happened then?"

"We smashed them to pieces!" cheered Batista, only for Troy to shush him.

"Actually, we led them into getting run over by a train. They're dead."

"Are you joking?" gasped Annabeth, "You killed the Furies. All three of them, at the same time..."

"Back to the point," Sylvester cut her off, "we need to know - has anything happened at Camp?"

"Actually," Annabeth said, "yes. We found shards of egg shell on the nerve centre of the shield line around Camp."

"So?"

"The Manticore." she went on, "It was placed, as an egg, at the very point where the shield separates the Camp from the rest of the world. The ground shook before it attacked because it was trying to escape its egg, but the shield was holding it back. Somehow, its growth sped up into adulthood and drove it insane, making it attack the Camp."

"Erm..." Troy looked completely puzzled.

"So somebody put it there." Sylvester said, "It didn't just stumble upon the Camp and try to break the shield by itself."

"Which means..." A look of alarm crossed Susan's face.

"This was planned." Annabeth took the words right out of his mouth, "The sooner this is over, the sooner we can get to the bottom of it!"

Sylvester thought about what this meant. Somebody had placed the egg at the nerve centre of the shield line, meaning that they meant for all that destruction. He ruled out Victor, because he knew that Victor's horror at the destruction of his Cabin was genuine. Dionysus was an obnoxious and sour son of a hippo, but he wasn't murderous of children. Chiron wouldn't even dream of doing such a thing.

"Annabeth," said Sylvester, "our mum...has she had a history of trying to kill her own children?"

"Kill them?" gasped Annabeth, "No. Athena can be extremely ruthless when pushed, but she's not been known to do such a thing. In fact, she doesn't like the idea of murder. She finds it....how would she put it? Illogical! She did brand one of her children, Daedalus, for murdering his own nephew out of jealousy. I don't know much about her."

"Sounds like a perfect mother!" Troy mumbled, and Susan smacked him across the shoulder.

"Don't say that about a Goddess!" she snapped, "They can hear you!"

"Can they?" whispered Sylvester. None of the others heard him, but he realized that Annabeth guessed. Her look was very sorrowful at what he was probably thinking. He didn't go in depth about what he was thinking, but it crossed his mind - why didn't Athena just show up? Annabeth had met her. Daedalus. All of her children. Except him. He purged those thoughts. They were narcissistic. He was thinking like Victor Mortenstein.

"Anyway," Annabeth said, "I'd better go. Chiron will need to hear about this. I'll see you guys real soon."

"Bye." Sylvester waved his hand into the image and it evaporated. Annabeth's intense grey eyes clung on to the mist for a few moments, before being replaced by the leaves drifting through the trees. Sylvester turned and they exchanged looks.

"We should get some sleep." he suggested. They agreed. Batista turned around, but was asleep in almost a second. The the others just slumped against trees and closed their eyes, but they were obviously far from sleeping. Batista's snoring was almost as loud and distracting as his hungry stomach. Sylvester went flat on his back and exhaled. The sky looked beautiful from between the trees. So beautiful it was almost unbelievable that the Gods could create such a beautiful painting that was the world around him. He then drifted off to sleep and dreamed of someone screaming.

He was standing in a vast room made of gold and silver, bejewelled magnificently with emeralds and diamonds that seemed to have been spread across the walls and roof like glitter on a fourth-grade collage, but much more artistically. Clouds loomed underneath them through glass sections of the ground beneath them. The room was circular and lined with a horseshoe of eleven thrones of incredible varieties. The one in the middle had a huge man sat in it. This man was black-bearded, his facial hair enveloping almost his whole skull. There were people gathered around him, pinning him to his throne with their arms. They were all dressed in Greek Armour, and they moved too quickly out of desperation for him to keep track of their features.

There was one of them - a great, ugly lump of a man with a bald, misshapen head and a muscular frame that put sumo wrestlers to shame - standing behind the throne, holding an awl in one hand and a hammer in the other. To his horror, Sylvester realized that he was hammering at the bearded man's forehead. There was a hideous line that was streaming golden blood where the hammer had already done its work. The bearded man was screaming with the voice of the most terrible hurricane, his tone booming and mercilessly powerful in its emotion.

Sylvester walked towards him to look at his face. It was twisted with unspeakable anguish, but he distinctly heard something hammering from inside his skull, like a trapped animal banging on its cage, desperate to escape. Sylvester wanted to go closer when the bald man with the awl and hammer hacked at the edge of his skull and it split open like a treasure chest. Golden gore spilled out, and a thick fissure of intense white light. The other people pinning the bearded man down recoiled against the light, crying out in a cacophany of varying voices.

Then something very strange happened. Sylvester saw, with a feeling of unrelenting shock, a tiny pair of hands the size of Ritz biscuits. Fingers the size of baked beans hooked around the lower half of the bearded man's skull, and a pair of arms followed. A small body crawled out of the fissure, and flopped on to the man's lap, before sliding, in a pool of golden blood, to the floor at the feet of the people around it. The bald man clipped the awl and hammer to his belt before producing a thread and needle and started stitching the two halves of the man's forehead back together. The only one of the people gathered around the throne who didn't look enthralled at what had taken place was a woman with hair the colour of liquorice and a seemingly constant leer on her face.

The tiny body on the floor - naked and with a screwed up face - started to grow. Greek armour started to spread across its body and, before long, it was the height of an athletic teenager. Sylvester stared in revolted fascination as the baby became a teenage girl, with thickening muddy hair that was slowly darkening. Arms that were now muscular enough to pass as that of a devoted netball player stretched and reached out for something the eyes couldn't see. Another man, a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a mischievous face, rushed over and helped her to her feet. She slipped in the golden blood, before finally finding her balance. It was like she was a baby in a teenager's body, walking for the first time. Then she grew and aged until she was a strikingly beautiful woman who looked to be in her thirties.

Her hands groped around her body, curiously, measuring around her limbs and chest and her cheeks. She looked at the salt-and-pepper-haired man, before over at the bearded man who was now struggling to his own feet, massaging his head. She walked over, her eyes curious and shockingly intelligent. He approached her, and she fell into his arms, into a passionate embrace.

"Father..." she whimpered, "I'm..." she stopped short, like she had a fierce stammer. She didn't know her own name.

"You are Athena," the bearded man said, his voice suddenly soft and ripe with compassion, "Your name is Athena." The young woman smiled and her eyes sparkled, and...

Sylvester was smacked across the face, shocking him into waking up. Batista was standing over him, holding one crunched hand over his face. He had only flicked Sylvester across the face, but it felt like being struck with a cucumber. He got up.

"Batista," he yawned, "what is it?"

"It's Susan and Troy." cried Batista, "They've disappeared!" Sylvester looked around, and saw that Batista was right. Susan and Troy had gone. He saw that Susan's bow and Troy's baseball bat were lying, discarded, against trees. Susan's jacket was there too, where she'd been sleeping on it as a pillow. Sylvester turned around. They'd left without a trace.

Chapter 13 - The Shrine of the Faceless Hypnotist

The whole wood seemed to be against him. Sylvester took maybe a hundred turns, and he couldn't find his way out. He cut through a thousand interlocking branches and leaped over even more toppled tree trunks, which Batista then simply smashed through without slowing down. He didn't dare call out his friends' names, knowing that it would attract whatever had taken Susan and Troy. He could hear Batista breathing sonorously behind him as he pounded between the trees.

"What are we looking for?" cried Batista.

"Keep your voice down!" said Sylvester.

"Sorry," Batista quieted his voice, "What are we looking for?"

"Broken branches," said Sylvester, "Footprints, toppled or abandoned nests, anything that would suggest a monster in this wood."

"Where do you suppose they are?"

"Well, I don't know, don't I?" laughed Sylvester, "Wouldn't be sprinting like hell all over the wood to find them if I knew."

Batista shrugged. The two of them stopped. Batista had Susan's bow and Troy's club gripped in one hand, careful not to snap them. Sylvester held Sunfire in its sword form in one hand, using the other to feel ahead of him in the darkness.

"What if...." said Batista, "what if they're dead."

"They aren't dead, Batista. If they were....if they were...don't worry about them." Sylvester hid the fact that he was worried perfectly. He didn't want his own exhaustion to be the reason for his friends' loss. He would never forgive himself if it were. He spun on his feet, desperately searching for a clue as to where they were, where they could be.

And that was when he saw it. A bright light, deep into the woods, shining out from its source like a beacon for others to follow. For him to follow. He patted Batista on the arm and Batista saw it. Then they made out two teenage figures silhouetted in the light - a boy and a girl. Sylvester sprinted after them.of them sprinted towards the light. It might have been his imagination, but the trees became greater in numbers, cutting off the bigger spaces for movement in the wood. He had to slow down and Batista had to inch past every trunk so as not to get his bulk stuck between any of them.

The light intensified and suddenly Sylvester made out a clearing in the middle of the woods. He went on his front and crawled towards it. The clearing, he saw, had something built around it. A circular series of upwards-reaching stones, sharpened to points like huge teeth. The clearing was much bigger than he expected - it stretched nearly the width of a football field. And it was full of children.

Sylvester spotted children of varying ages - babies, toddlers, preteens and teenagers, all of them seventeen or younger. Much younger. And they were all doing the strangest things. Four ten-year-olds were sat in a circle and playing what looked like four-way thumb-wrestling matches. A group eight-year-olds were lined side-by-side, creating Mexican waves. One of them, a twelve-year-old, seemed to think he was carrying a sword and fencing an invisible opponent, and from the look on his face, he might as well have actually been in combat...except, his eyes were shut.

That was the strangest thing about them. They all were doing something with their eyes closed. And they were snoring!

"What is this place?" whispered Batista, behind him.

"Ssh!" snapped Sylvester, getting to his feet. In the middle of the clearing, he realized, was a circular pool, with boiling, frothing liquid that looked like thick tar, but was a deep, deep blue. And there wee two teenagers standing in front of it. Susan and Troy!

Sylvester made a move towards them, when the pool started frothing so fiercely that it hissed with purple steam. Then, to Sylvester's shock, a man rose from the pool, standing bolt upright as if he were on an invisible elevator. The moment he appeared, Sylvester felt compelled to look away at once. There was a sudden feeling that he shouldn't look at this man, that he was dangerous, that he was a stranger, that he was....unknown. Numbness crept through Sylvester, but he suddenly found himself resisting it, like he was fighting off the urge to lie down for a little while.

"Sylvester," muttered Batista, and Sylvester noticed that he was yawning. Batista slid against a tree and yawned even longer, before smacking his lips and snoring. Sylvester stared at him, "Sylvester...we should....get out of..." then he was sound asleep. Sylvester couldn't help but feel helpless, seeing that his friend had been subdued by this unknown force.

Then the man spoke, "Oh, hello. How wonderful. I have never had a demigod visit my shrine before. Let alone two. Why don't you sit down?"

The man had the most extraordinary voice. It was soft and passive, like a purring cat, with a tone as gentle and peaceful as a sleeping infant. However, there was something strange in the voice. It sounded strange, it sounded subtle, it sounded...powerful. He gripped Sunfire tightly, and looked at the ground, at the light that the pool seemed to cast. He could see the two shadows of Susan and Troy, but not the third of the man who had emerged from the pool. He risked a peripheral look at his friends. Susan and Troy were kneeling in front of the pool, looking up at the man standing in the middle. Except their eyes were also closed. They looked powerless, submissive to this man's indecipherable power.

The man went on, "Tell me your names, children. I want to know who you are."

"Susan Cooper."

"Troy Callaghan."

The voices of the two of them sounded lazy, lackadaisical. They were asleep. They were dreaming...then how were they speaking intelligently, hearing this stranger. Who the hell was he?

"Lovely names. Demeter and Apollo, I'm guessing." the water sloshed and Sylvester looked away as the man moved to walk out of the pool, without bending over. Sylvester heard him move, only just. His footfalls were incredibly gentle, like a hunting cat's. Plucking up the courage, Sylvester looked over at the stranger.

The man was very tall, looking down on Susan and Troy. He was dressed elegantly in a long, black coat which drooped a hood over his head. The coat was a mesmerising sight - it seemed to sparkle and glitter with an incredible variety of colours, all of them sparkling individually like stars in the sky. It was as if the man had poured stardust over his coat. His coat dragged behind him, and Sylvester couldn't see his feet move, as if he were hovering, but he could hear his feet press the grass. He then looked at the man's face and clamped his eyes shut. Looking at the man's face was like looking at the sun itself. He was compelled by its light to look away, for fear that he would burn. The man's face was a shimmering bulb of bright silver, and it looked like its skull kept morphing into so many shades of the colour.

"Now, my children," the man whispered. His voice was one of the most compelling voices Sylvester had ever heard, like an orator who knew exactly what words and what tone would bend others to his will, "welcome to my humble abode. I hope you'll forgive me, but I do not take kindly to intruders near my place of worship...I am perfectly fine with mortals, they can be easily bent to one's will. But demigods...they are a different story entirely. Isn't that right, Sylvester?"

That did it. Sylvester was exposed. Gripping his sword with both hands, Sylvester spun around and prepared to let out a battle-cry. He charged out of his hiding place and swung for the man's throat.

And stopped. The man was gone. Sylvester's sword cut through thin air.

"That wasn't very nice." whispered the man, standing behind him as if he had been there the whole time. It was then that Sylvester realised that his eyes were blurring, and he blinked painfully. It was like sea water had been chucked in his face, and he was fighting to see through the sting in his eyes. He turned around, and tried not to run into any of the shut-eyed children, "Good evening, Sylvester. I've been expecting you?"

"Who the Hell are you?" hissed Sylvester, trying to keep the tip of Sunfire in his sight. His vision returned to him and he walked towards the man again.

"That is not very good hospitality, boy," crooned the man, and suddenly Sylvester's eyes stung again and the man was behind him, several feet away. Sylvester tripped and fell on his side. Trying to get up, he faced the man, but found himself looking away again as the man's blazing face turned to him.

"Who are you, you coward?!" Sylvester snapped.

"Coward, am I?" asked the man, "The Olympians, not so long ago, faced Typhon with odds of nearly ten-versus-one. What would you call them?"

"Typhon," retorted Sylvester, "was far more powerful than them combined, and incapacitated two of them in the fight."

"Very good." the man sounded impressed. His voice turned milky, gentler than ever, and Shylvester felt compelled to lie down and rest again, "As to who am I, come on. Guess. Look around you, and tell me who I am, child?" Sylvester looked around him. They were all asleep, but all upright and moving about as if they were wide awake, full of energy. What was the name? What was the name....

"You're kidding...." gasped Sylvester, "Are you really..."

"I am, child." answered the man, and the outline of his face flexed into a smile, "I am Morpheus, the God of Dreams. And this is my shrine."

Morpheus crossed the grass towards him, and Sylvester held his ground, sword held level with his chest, but suddenly he didn't feel too confident. He was up against a God. A God who could put him to sleep....but, on that note, why hadn't he? What was stopping him?

"Why am I awake?"

"That is an excellent question," commented Morpheus, inclining his head as if he were pondering the question himself, "you appear to be peculiarly immune to my presence. You are a son of Athena, I assume...I admire that one. I admire wisdom....it is something that, in dreams, you do not see too often."

"Why are you here?"

"I am here because of you, child." Morpheus answered calmly, "You have just awoken from a very powerful dream....it is unusual for such children to have such powerful dreams. Children's dreams are usually so imaginative, so ludicrously creative, they are not normally based on actual events. I find that, as boys and girls grow closer to adulthood, their dreams are perpetually about the other gender...the images that one finds in their heads, they are actually quite unpredictable."

"How do you know my name?" demanded Sylvester.

"I create every dream, every nightmare that every man, woman and child has. Ever had." Morpheus's arms moved from his coat and Sylvester realized that, though his face was illuminated and therefore unobservable, his hands were quite the opposite. They were clean, hairless and flawlessly human, with skin the colour of yeast and nails that had been perfectly manicured. There was a ring on the middle finger of his left hand, of a closed eye, "and, thus, I am attracted to the nightmares of every demigod on this wonderful planet. Yours, in particular....so beautifully delicious."

"What have you done to my friends?"

"They are perfectly fine, child." Morpheus assured.

"Stop calling me that!"

"Be careful how you talk to me, child," Morpheus's tone turned unexpectedly stern, before becoming silky and gentle again, "your friends are perfectly fine. I was just using them as bait. It was fortunate that you came here, to my shrine. I understand that you are trying to get to the Underworld, am I correct?"

"You are," there was no point in lying. Morpheus chuckled.

"I have a way for you to go. Look, through the trees." Morpheus turned and pointed ahead. Sylvester squinted and saw a stream of light push through the trees from a distance, and the boom of a train horn. A red inter-city train zoomed into view, a few metres away from the Shrine of Morpheus. Sylvester looked up and saw the front-carriage door slide open. A red arrow pointed through the door. Sylvester turned to Morpheus, who didn't turn back to him.

"This isn't a trick?"

"Do not impugn my honour, child. I am a God of my word." Morpheus circled him until he was standing behind him. Sylvester gripped Sunfire, prepared for another, futile, strike if Morpheus tried to attack him from there. Whether he meant no harm or not, Sylvester didn't trust this being, "Your ride is waiting, Sylvester Falcone, son of Athena." He walked back towards the pool.

"My friends." Sylvester pointed out. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Morpheus stop. Then, the Dream God raised a delicate hand, the one with the ring on, and clicked it. As if icy water had been sprayed in their face, Susan, Troy and Batista jolted back and suddenly they were on their feet, waiting to attack. Sylvester waved a hand at them and they stopped. Then they saw Morpheus and they straight-up froze. Morpheus didn't look at them. He turned to Sylvester, who struggled to brave the gaze of the Dream God. Morpheus stepped into the pool, which reached up to his knees.

"Good luck, children." Morpheus bowed his head slightly, "You shall certainly require it."

With that, he cast his hand at the ground and they yelled as a column of bright, silver energy as blinding as any light exploded where the God had been standing. The column reached higher than the trees, like the world's angriest flashlight. Then it squeezed back into its source. The pool was perfectly transparent, completely normal. There was no light. All of the children had disappeared.

And Morpheus was gone.

"What the bloody Hell was that about?" remarked Susan as Batista yawned deeply and stretched.

"That," Sylvester said, "I don't actually know what that was. I don't really want to know. But, at least, he got us a ride." Seeing the train, the group gathered and rushed towards the open door of the carriage.

Chapter 14 - Dreaming about cold-blooded murder

They took a group of seats near the left window, where Batista's seat crunched to half the height of the others under his weight. He shifted awkwardly, until he was comfortable and basically sitting on the floor. Troy sat next to him and Susan and Sylvester sat opposite them.

"We should get some rest." suggested Sylvester, "If we're going to make it to this doorway to the Underworld, I don't think we'll be given a taxi there."

"Better that, than the taxi we got on the way here." remarked Troy, "The one that, you know...blew up."

"That pause was literally pointless." Susan said.

"Sylvester's right." agreed Batista, "We should get some rest, right now..." Then he slumped back and started snoring very, very deeply. He sounded more like a horse snorting.

"Well, at least he agreed." Susan said, brightly. Sylvester laughed.

"You were pretty good out there, Sylvester," commented Troy, "you were an amazing fighter!"

"Not so bad yourself, Troy." Sylvester smiled.

"I was there too, you know!" said Susan, grinning. Sylvester sat back, and the last thing he saw was her arched over the table to arm-wrestle Troy, looking unusually confident. Then he blacked out and fell into a very strange dream:

He dreamt that he was standing in the middle of a beautiful river. He could hear the symphony of cries from birds that swept through the skies in a rainbow of beautiful colours. The trees of so many extraordinary shades of green were sprouting up into the sunlight, reflecting into the deep, turquoise water. A leopard prowled in the undergrowth, before shooting into the long grass as if it had spotted a new prey to hunt and kill.

He felt really strange. The wind was sweeping at his hips and ankles, at his stomach and biceps. He was wearing a very firm breastplate, a Greek helmet, gauntlets and a pair of spiked boots. His hair was long and skilfully braided, and it was brown. His chest felt surprisingly broad, and his skin was almost finely tanned. And he felt strong. He had never felt stronger in his entire life - it was as if he had done push-ups and twenty-mile runs every day since the moment he learned how to walk.

And he was fighting for his life!

Sylvester was carrying a sword and a large circular shield that protected his entire torso. And the woman opposite him was hacking at him with her own sword and shield. This woman was only a few inches taller than he was, and she was moving blindingly fast. Her skin was extremely tanned and she wore almost exactly the same armour that he was wearing. She had black hair that was also braided, beautiful brown eyes and a body that he would expect to find in a supermodel magazine.

He realized that the two of them were duelling and felt the desperate impulse to defend himself, but his body was moving of his own accord, moving precisely and athletically with the grace and efficiency of a jungle cat, and all of the lethality. She was pressing him back and he knew from every blow that he was forced to deflect that she was a master swordsman. She made every move perfectly, with so much strength and agility that he might have mistaken her for a Marvel heroine. He thought she found an opening and stabbed for her right armpit. The woman smashed the sword aside, but it had the intended effect of her dropping her guard on her upper body.

He pressed into her with a shield bash to the breastplate that knocked her a single step back. He then followed up with a brutal series of sword strikes for the weak points in her armour, im particular the areas around the elbows, stomach and thighs. The woman's face sparked with annoyance and she raised her shield to defend herself. Sylvester manoeuvred around her so that he was aiming for the small of her back, and stabbed for the point between her shoulder blades. The woman swiped around and the tip of her blade only just deflected his own. They faced off briefly, and he suddenly noticed that he was glaring at her with intensity that just wasn't him. The worst part was that she was glaring at him the exact same way, only ten times more vicious.

The woman let out a fiery battle-cry and charged, sliding her shield down her arm so she was holding it like a Frisbee, and she swung the shield for his neck. He flinched and the shield sang as it whooshed past his ear with only half a hair's breadth to spare. He launched a backhanded strike for her abdomen and she blocked it brilliantly. He progressed to unleash a succession of blows which she redirected and deflected without sacrificing any high ground. He smiled at the small triumph of occupying the advantage, and the woman smiled back cockily with the confidence of a champion boxer, only a lot more playful.

Fighting this woman felt really weird. It was like he knew every single move she could make - and she could perform those moves to beyond perfection - but had no idea when she would use them. There were so many ways that she could take the advantage, and so few of those would leave her at a disadvantage. This woman was looking at her like she was thinking exactly the same thing. Then she struck for his neck and he blocked with his shield. Whilst he was doing this, he took a step back and an unseen fish on the bed of the river rushed up and swept across the middle of her foot, tickling. He lost his balance jerking his foot away to fight the sensation, and the woman used this to her advantage. She kicked at the water with her left foot, sending up a spray of the river which he brought down his shield to block. Moving in for the kill, the woman swung down on the shield, knocking it from his grasp. She then moved again to stab a now defenceless Sylvester in the heart. He knew, unconsciously, that she would hold back. She would hold back with inches to spare, and it showed in her eyes....

Then the sky burst with light and a flash of energy burst from behind Sylvester. The woman looked up, alarmed, as the shadow of a huge man appeared behind them, brandishing a circular shield with a hideous face emblazoned on it. Alarm turned to terror as the woman saw the face on the shield and she staggered back. Out of pure instinct, Sylvester lunged with her sword while her opponent was distracted. The sword lunged through the woman's unprotected stomach with a sickening squelch. The woman's face blanked and she looked down. Panic enveloped her face and Sylvester felt a tidal wave of horror pierce his heart. What had he done? He turned around to see the huge, muscular man rush down the banks towards them. The woman fell to her knees and Sylvester caught her in his arms.

"No!" he cried, feeling a rush of tears stream down her face. The woman was choking. Sylvester pulled the sword desperately out of her stomach and it came out, completely clean. Blood torrented out of the gaping wound that split right through her body. "No!"

"I'm...." the woman whimpered, "I'm....I'm cold." She then hung her head back and stopped moving. Sylvester buried his face in her friend's neck and started weeping. The giant man towered over him, placing an affectionate but firm hand on his shoulder. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't happening. He would look up now and his friend would be looking at him, laughing playfully at the success of the prank. That's right, it was a prank. It was all just a bad dream.

The muscular man standing over him spoke, and he spoke with a girl's voice, "Sylvester, wake up! Wake up, we've got to go. We've got. To go. Now!"

He bolted to his feet, his fingers wrapping around his sword and Susan's hands clasped around his shoulders, pulling him to his feet. He looked around, to see the others backing out of their seats.

"What's happening?" he asked. Then he turned around and saw exactly what was happening. There was a swarm of black, scuttling, clicking insects - spiders, he realized with a sudden surge of horror. There were millions of them, swarming around the walls, ceiling and floor of the train, shifting over abandoned trays and cups and possessions that the other passengers had left behind as they tried to flee. For the first time in his life, Sylvester knew exactly what true terror was. Fear was throttling him tightly and he could barely move.

"Sylvester!" Batisat grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back and his senses returned to him. "We have to go!"

They turned and rushed through the carriages, but the spiders pursued them unnaturally fast. He didn't dare look back. He pushed the others in front of him. He had never felt such fear in his life. He couldn't believe that such fear had gripped him in such an instant. They barged through another door, into the driver's carriage where they stopped dead by the door. The spiders were still chattering and scuttling towards them, but they too ceased to proceed when they reached this carriage. They were trapped.

"We have to get out of here, now!" cried Troy.

A voice behind them laughed, "Oh, I'm afraid that will not be happening."

They spun around to see that a man was sat in front of them, in the driver's seat. He was very stocky, stockier even than Batista. And he was dressed in a black leather duster and wraparound shades, and the sheer presence of him made Sylvester feel inexplicably vicious.

"Who are you?" Susan had gone straight for her bow and there was an arrow nocked in place, ready to fly. The man stood up and pulled back the hood of his leather duster.

"Why, I'm Ares," he laughed in a deep, brutal voice, "the God of War. At your service!"

Chapter 15 - A God hijacks a train

The worst part of what he was seeing in front of him was that it all made horrible sense. The man in front of him looked almost strikingly similar to the arrogant, brutal bully that was Victor Mortenstein. They had the same brutal face - the facial structure was horribly broad, like he had been struck several times under the skull - the same cocky grin, the same easy demeanour as if they held all of the power in the universe, but didn't care to use it. Except the man in front of him was all of those things, but exponentially worse.

Ares was powerfully built, with thick, broad arms and legs, and an oily black crew cut. He wore red wraparound shades that concealed his eyes, and a black leather duster, matching jeans that were creased with the marks of intense physical activity, combat boots and a red combat shirt. He wore a necklace of iron padlocks around his neck. His cheeks, jawline and neck was riddled almost ritualistically with scars and cuts, like he'd been the setting for a praying mantis's break-dancing class.

All of this portrayed an intentionally frightening figure, but personally he didn't feel any fear. However, the effect was very different for his friends. Batista went to launch himself at Ares, but his friends held him back desperately, but he noticed that they too had fierce looks of rage on their faces, as if this man had just run over their childhood pets with a motorcycle.

"Whoa!" Ares waved a hand casually, "That's a little uncalled for. I only said 'hello'." He sniggered to himself with a voice tinted with playful violence.

Sylvester suddenly felt the urge to slit this man's throat, and struggled to keep his left hand from going for the grip of Sunfire. He finally succeeded in holding back, and calmed down. Ares walked between them, taking a seat at a table behind them. He stretched his arms and adjusted his cuffs, before looking up at them with a friendly smile - like a snake about to strike.

"Well, aren't you going to sit down? We have a fair lot to talk about." he asked, maturely, with some perfectly-refined politeness.

"Forgive me," said Susan, "but I think I speak for us all when I say that it might be a bad idea to sit next to the possible adult equivalent of Victor Mortenstein."

Ares looked at them, and for a moment he looked like he agreed with them.

"Fair enough," he said, "I'll admit that I wasn't impressed with the boy's behaviour lately. I remember his mother, though. God, she was a terrific woman. Quick and sharp as a scorpion, with the force of a charging rhino. But, I'm afraid, that boy hasn't quite learnt his lesson. I understand you kicked his butt in the sword arena....and again, I hear."

"He attacked first." Sylvester walked forwards, coolly, as if this man were the God of Social Skills and not the God of War. The others stared at him as he went and sat down opposite Ares.

"I can believe that." the War God said, "That's cool. As a rule, I don't fight my kids' battles. A fighter isn't a man who knows the odds are in his favour, then stacks them even more so, and then faces his opponent with five more brawlers behind him. I get so muck flack for what my kids get up to. I remember one kid, who went really bad, worse than any of my others...." He trailed off, and abruptly changed the subject, "Anyway, I thought we might have a chat."

"Did Morpheus plan for you to be on this train?" asked Susan, sitting next to Sylvester whilst the other two sat on the table opposite them.

"Oh, old Sleepy-Head and I have been friends for centuries," laughed Ares, "I think you'll find a lot of the dreams people have, at least 30% of them, are about beating up someone they don't like, or being at the centre of a heroic battle. Pity they're only dreams, I say. Back to the point, it is my train."

"Your train?" remarked Troy. Ares chuckled, and clapped his hands lightly as if activating an electric fireplace. Immediately, the scene changed. The exterior steel and iron of the train transformed into bleached bones. The overhanging lights between the aisles turned into iron cages hanging from chains, with hovering green fireballs revolving inside them. The red carpets turned to a thick material that looked like tanned human skin! Sylvester guessed that the engine of the train, instead of a streamlined slide and a glass windscreen, would be a big human skull.

Ares leaned back in his chair and snapped his fingers again. A plate of food appeared in front of each of them - a heap of McDonald's bacon burgers and chips, dotted with salt, with a small bowl of ketchup on the side and a can of coke complete with a half-pint glass. Troy immediately turned and tucked into his food, and Susan chewed at her burger nervously. Sylvester's eyes never left the War God, taking a wary sip from his Coke.

"Wow!" cried Batista, stretching out of the open window to look at the rest of the train from the outside.

"Welcome aboard the Bloodbath Express," recited Ares, in a sarcastically theatrical manner, "not my favourite method of travel - I prefer my Harley, which is the definition of a sweet ride! - but, still, needs must when the devil drives. Oh, and I forgot to mention, that no ride is to be ridden with weapons sheathed, so...if you please?"

Susan reluctantly put her bow and quiver on the table in front of her, whilst Troy placed his baseball bat to his right side. Sylvester reached in and pulled out Sunfire, laying it on the table. Ares stared when he saw the blade.

"Holy smokes," he remarked, running his hand smoothly across the weapon like he was stroking a farm animal, "that is one sweet sword. Pretty powerful, too. That's not Celestial Bronze!" He suddenly turned wary when he put his hand on the blade, as if he were actually running hand over a pool of lava, "Interesting."

"Back to the point." Sylvester asked. Ares laughed and produced a flick-knife from his pocket, then started absent-mindedly twirling it between his fingers.

"Alright," he said, "I heard you're trying to get to the Underworld. I also heard that a few people have tried to stop you....and, so far, haven't even come back from Tartarus since meeting you. Haven't reformed...can't move, actually, like something ran them over."

"The Furies did try to attack us, and they nearly killed Susan." Troy said, through a bulging mouthful of bacon and bread. To prove the point, Susan turned to Ares and stretched down her shirt, revealing the mended but still brutally visible claw-marks on her breasts. She quickly pulled her shirt back in before Troy could get an exploratory look down her top.

"That's unfortunate." Ares nodded, "Thing is, Hades usually gives his beasts special treatment - speeds up their reforming, and all. Strangely, he has done no such thing. The Furies should be flapping all over the Underworld, shrieking about this and that by now. The Gods are getting worried. The Underworld itself has been closed off to anyone immortal - Elysium, Tartarus, the River Styx, even the Garden of Persephone, they've all been blocked. Hades is up to something."

"How can you close off the Underworld to a God?" asked Sylvester.

"Isn't Zeus the ultimate boss God, can't he just walk in? How hard can it be?" laughed Troy, incomprehensibly through his Coke. Ares turned to him.

"That's the strangest thing." Ares remarked, "We can approach the entrances, but something's standing in our way. Something just stops us from going in, something convinces us that it's a bad place. Makes us scared. But, your mother," Ares jabbed a finger at Sylvester, "she concluded that such a thing can only be achieved by a God....by Hades. Hades is up to something, she says. All of the Gods agree, even Dionysus and Hera. They're all squabbling, and she's trying to keep them at bay while trying to defuse the situation, and she's doing great but you can only keep a wave from rising for a short time before a bigger one comes along. That's why I'm here, see."

"You want us to do something for you?"

"Wasn't that obvious?" Ares looked at him through the shades as if they were far less than simpletons, "I have a little job for you. You're going to look for Achilles, am I right? Well, I want you to do something for me en route. This train, it's going straight into the Underworld. Even though it'll stop in the Underworld without problems, I won't be able to get off it. Confusing, I know, but it's the truth. I want you to go into Hades's castle...."

"No!" Batista and Susan said, in unison. Troy was still wolfing down his chips.

"Let me finish!" snapped Ares, "I want you to go into Hades's castle, I said. I want you to find out what the Hell is going on. And I want you to put a stop to it."

"Won't Hades kill us if we try anything of the sort? Won't he blast us to ashes before we even get off this train?" Sylvester asked.

"He'd want to know why you're here first. That gives you a bit more time." Ares explained, "Take it from me when I say that the Big Three can be really suspicious. Hades is the smart one, I say. He'll let you through, I think, long enough to find out what you're up to. I don't know what he'll do after that."

"And what'll you want in return?" asked Troy, as if he was only just tapping into the conversation. His plate was greasy, but there wasn't a speck of McDonald's left on it.

"Funny you should ask that." Ares snapped his fingers and Sylvester yelled as his grey fleece, his disguised chestplate, was torn from his body by an invisible wrenching force. Ares caught it in midair and studied it, smiling, "I want you to report back to me. When you do, you can have this back. In fact, to make things a bit more interesting, you can have it back after you've done this, and beaten Achilles."

"Why do you want that?" asked Susan.

"Even a God is capable of sentimental value, girl." snorted Ares, "I don't know Chiron that well, but I see this as an artefact of war from a guy who hates fighting. Not that I understand that kind of thing."

"How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Sylvester. Ares smiled.

"I swear," Ares answered, "on the River Styx." The ground shook beneath them and Sylvester looked down fleetingly, before returning his gaze to Ares. Then the train stopped.

"Ah," Ares smiled, "we've arrived!" Sylvester turned around and saw the vast, black kingdom that was the Underworld.

Chapter 16 - Breaking into the Black Palace

The great expanse of black stone and red mist stretched for miles around, like a vast series of plains, mountains - like the Nether in that game, Minecraft, that his father had given him so long ago. Sylvester wasn't too proud, later on, to admit how frightening the place was to him, how much it exceeded the very meaning of the word Hell.

He turned to Ares, who looked totally relaxed surrounded by such an environment, finishing off his McDonald's with a smile on his face. Batista was looking at the place with a look much more horrified than the others. Sylvester saw, in the reflection of the window, that the look on his face was completely blank. He showed no emotion.

That was worrying.

"I like what they've done with the place." he said, "Looks very....satanic."

Ares threw his head back and laughed, "Nice one, little guy. Well, off you go. You've got a castle to break into, haven't you?"

Reluctantly, they got up and Ares watched them leave the train. Sylvester stepped off first and Batista hopped off, making the train shake from relief of such weight. The others followed after them and Ares leaned back, clapping his hands. The train whirred into life and suddenly burst forwards like a rocket-propelled grenade and disappeared into the distance. Sylvester sighed, and looked at the others.

"I left my Coke on that train!" whined Troy. Susan shook her head. Sylvester turned around and stepped back at seeing the huge, black palace that towered over them, stretching higher than the clouds. The towers and battlements were made of thick black obsidian, with peaks that spiralled into the clouds. It was surrounded by a massive moat of molten lava that frothed and churned violently. An obsidian/stone bridge stretched between the mainland and the front gate of Hades's Palace.

To top it all up, the palace seemed to be patrolled by skeletons in military uniforms from so many time periods - he recognized Civil War foot soldiers, World War Two paratroopers and even a bunch of Vietnam commanders. They were all brandishing weapons from their own timelines, as if they had held them all of their lives.

"Okay," said Troy, "bye." He turned to walk away, but Troy grabbed him by the wrist before he could take a single step. She pulled him back.

"Where in Hell are you going?" she exclaimed.

"To Elysium? The Isle of the Blest? A dead man's Burger King kiosk. Anywhere, but there!" He jabbed a finger at the huge palace. It was then that Sylvester heard a planet-splitting shriek that ripped through the air around them at an excruciating pitch. Sylvester buckled under the sound, and turned towards the source of the screaming - a great pit ringed with bronze several miles away. There was nothing but shadow engulfing that pit. Except, of course, for the screams of something terrible and furious. The screams of a vulture.

"Ares wasn't lying when he said the Furies wouldn't shut up." said Sylvester, "anybody'd be driven insane by that caterwauling."

"Amen to that." Batista agreed.

"So," Sylvester gathered them into a circle, "here's the plan."

Two minutes later, they took hiding places around the entrance to the bridge and, without warning, Susan sprang up and launched an arrow at the furthest sentry. The arrow struck him in the head and suddenly sprouted molten lava from two nozzles on the left and right of the flint, engulfing the skeletons next to it in lava. The skeletons shrieked and Batista sprang up, hurling rocks the size of his fist at them, sending them into cover. The lava died out, leaving spreads of twirling steam in the air, and in the commotion, Susan and Batista fanned out around the palace, firing at the skeletons and drawing them away from the door.

As the skeletons shrieked under the downpour, they desperately turned and aimed their rifles and crossbows at them. Susan threw herself into cover, and Batista stomped on the ground, sending a plate of black stone that took the force of the bullets and bolts. He then picked up the sheet of stone and hurled it at the skeletons, shattering three of them and sending two others, off balance, falling itno the moat. As the firefight spread to the back of the palace, Troy and Sylvester rushed across the bridge towards the gate of the palace.

Three medieval soldiers burst through the doors, brandishing swords. Sylvester drew Sunfire and blocked the first strike, before turning the blade of his opponent's sword into its own neck, beheading it, and then elbowed the skeleton over the edge with Aegis and it fell into the moat. Troy smashed the other's skull to pieces with his skull and Sylvester finished the third by splitting it down the middle, so that two halves of a skeleton dropped over into the moat. Stopping and ushering Troy through the door, Sylvester then slipped through it himself.

They pushed the door shut behind them. Troy laughed.

"That actually worked." he gasped.

"Come on." Sylvester said, bluntly, turning and walking from the door. The inside of the castle was darkened except for a bronze floor and Sylvester spotted human skulls pinned to the walls with their temples sawn open and with bright green flames twisting in them, like sickening little torches. He walked up the black steps and came to a door. There were no guards inside. They were probably rushing outside to pin down Batista and Susan. Judging from the explosions and the crashes and the hollow shrieks, that wasn't happening any time soon.

"Well, this is it." he said.

Troy nodded. They pushed at the door and it slipped very easily against their weight. The room inside was huge, domed, and with no lighting. There was only one occupant in the room, and he was sitting on one of the most bizarre thrones that Sylvester had ever seen. The throne was much taller than Sylvester, and twice as wide. It was made entirely of human skulls, whose jaws were fixed shut. They seemed to be fused together by an unknown, invisible force. They were nothing in comparison, though, to the man who was sitting in the throne.

The man was tall and imposing, with skin so pale it may as well have been silver. He had shoulder-length, glossy black hair that wrapped around his neck and cheeks. He was dressed in a widespread, flowing black robe with a hood drooped over his head and sleeves that lingered ten centimetres underneath his spider-like hands that seemed to have little to no flesh left in them. There was a skull ring on the middle finger of his left hand and a red opal one on the forefinger of his right. The opal was glowing with a fiery orange hue. Sylvester was suddenly compelled to lie on the floor and sleep for all eternity, or to go down on one knee and bow to the man in front of him. But, then, he realized, Hades was asleep. His eyes were closed and his head was drooped to the left, showing that he was deeply dreaming.

Sylvester walked towards him, and the temptation to bow down in front of the Olympian God increased with every step he took. Troy inched after him, suddenly extremely nervous. His sudden blinking episodes told Sylvester that he was close to buckling under Hades's incredible aura. Now, they were close enough to touch and he reached out, rubbing his finger along Hades's face. The man's skin was fiercely cold. Sylvester took a step back, expecting the God to wake up. Seeing this as a message to amp up the test, Troy desperately lunged forwards and punched Hades across the face.

"Troy!" exploded Sylvester, seizing Troy with both hands and turning to look at Hades. The God's head had rolled with the punch, but, miraculously, he hadn't woken up. There wasn't even a mark on his face. Sylvester glared at Troy, who was massaging his hand with a look on his face as if he'd taken a wrecking ball to the stomach.

"I'm in way too much pain to realize how cool that was...." he rasped, his face going red as he kneaded his torn, scarlet knuckles and tried to flex his fingers.

"Cool?" gasped Sylvester, calming down after the red mist in his mind cleared and he suddenly wasn't angry any more, "Good job he didn't wake up!"

"He won't wake up, even if you shot him point-blank with a nuclear missile." said a voice, and Sylvester spun around, sharply. Troy turned with him, brandishing his club. A boy appeared out of the shadows, dressed in a hooded black top which had a skeleton styled into its fabric, and black trousers. His skin was olive and his dark-chocolate hair was a hedgehog on his head, with a pinched nose and a wiry body. A sword was strapped to his belt and he had a skull ring on his left hand.

"Sylvester...." said Troy, unsure what to make of the boy in front of them. Sylvester was confused on such a matter himself. This boy didn't look physically impressive nor particularly intelligent, but Sylvester could just sense that an energy was contorting and pulsing inside the boy, and that he simply emanated power, like a light bulb.

"So, you're the people causing the trouble outside," the boy walked towards them, "what do you want?"

"Who are you?" asked Sylvester.

"My name is Nico di Angelo, but that isn't what I asked you." retorted Nico, coldly.

"We're here on orders, you see," Troy said, "from Ares." Nico flinched at the name.

"Ares sent you here?" he asked, "Well, that figures. Come to think of it, this has Ares written all over it. Who are you?"

"Sylvester Falcone," answered Sylvester, "this is Troy Callaghan."

"Hey." quipped Troy, uneasily.

"Why are you here? What did Ares want?" Nico got closer, and his hand was groping for the grip of his sword.

"He was wondering why the gates to the Underworld were closed to the Gods, why Hades won't communicate with Olympus and why won't the Furies reform." Troy explained.

Sylvester studied the expression on the boy's face. Nico had become increasingly tense as he stepped towards them, like he couldn't decide who was the predator and who was the prey.

"We've tried everything," Nico said, "nothing will wake him up. It's obvious he's not dead. I try and read his mind, and nothing comes up that will tell me how to wake him up."

"Have you tried pulling him out of the throne?" asked Sylvester. The sound of the Furies screeching had reached higher pitches as they moaned for spending the same time reforming as everyone else.

"He's a God." Nico stared at him, "He's heavier than he looks!"

"Well," Sylvester said, "there's nothing for it, then." He grabbed for Sunfire and tore it from its scabbard, at the same time spinning around and slicing for Hades's hand. The very tip of his sword split the opal ring in half, and the gem of the ring burst into a tiny ball of energy. Nico screamed with horror, and the man in the throne stirred. Nico wrenched his sword from its belt - a sword as black as coal and writhing with tiny shadows - and went straight for Sylvester. Sylvester reached into the same part of his mind that he had done back at the campfire with Victor Mortenstein. He splayed his hand at Nico, and Nico yelled, his arms shaking violently as the sword struggled to tear itself from his grip. Eventually, Nico's strength was overwhelmed by the sword's incredible energy and he let go, and the blade soared to the other side of the room with Nico left, incredulous.

At that moment, the skulls on Hades's throne opened their jaws wide and started shrieking in shrill voices worse than the Furies and the eyes of the Death God flew open. Troy screamed at the sight of the man's obsidian eyes, and Sylvester didn't waste a second on terror. He reached and grabbed Nico by the shoulder, pulling him between himself and Hades, holding Sunfire to his throat. Hades sprang from his throne, his robes writhing as pained faces started pulsing in and out of the fabric. He raised his hand, but Sylvester tensed the edge of his blade against Nico's neck. Nico went as rigid as a spear.

"Don't." whispered Sylvester, as Hades froze, shocked by the unexpected challenge, "Move. A muscle."

"Let my son go!" snapped Hades, in a malevolent, powerful voice, "Before I blast you to ashes."

"Sylvester, what on earth are you doing?!" cried Troy, horrified.

"Stay back." Sylvester said, calmly, "Stay back."

"I am warning you!"

"Don't waste your breath, Father...." Nico said, his eyes flaring up with fiery power. Sylvester saw shadows converged behind Hades, like water pouring into a spring. Then the shadows burst in a single, thick column, towards Nico. They went through Nico like he wasn't even there, and Sylvester exclaimed as he was spun off his feet, pulling Nico off balance. Sylvester was lucky he was still wearing Aegis on his back, because when he hit the window, the shards ricocheted off the shield and told him, without Aegis, he would have been shredded.

The shadows faded and Sylvester plummeted for the black earth beneath him. He unslung Aegis reflexively and slammed it into the ground seconds before he hit it. He cartwheeled against the shield and staggered when he landed. Hearing Troy screaming, he turned around and saw the boy spiralling above the ground, his club flying a metre ahead of him.

Sylvester was going to run and catch Troy - which he knew would be painful for him - when Troy spread his arms and a beanstalk punched through the ground, its leaves the size of Mini Coopers. Troy landed on one of the leaves, which he sunk into and then drifted down, landing on his back and groaning with relief. He then lost his balance and Sylvester ran in to catch him.

"Well, that was awkward." he murmured, picking his club up from the ground. Sylvester laughed and then heard an explosion stir the air behind him and turned to see Susan and Batista barge past them, yelling. They looked behind them to see a swarm of skeletons surging towards them, raising rifles and bayonets and crossbows.

"You just had to say that, didn't you?" groaned Sylvester, before they sprinted after Batista and Susan, with the army of the undead shrieking after them.

Chapter 17 - The Living versus The Dead

Sylvester was already getting fed up of running from a horde of bizarre creatures swarming after him, screaming. He had had enough of it since he'd started running away from the satyrs and telkhines, the Manticore, the Furies and now a bunch of skeletons. Except, this was probably a lot more frightening for him than the others. Within seconds though, they had come to a cliff and ground to a stop and Sylvester turned around, holding Aegis in front of his face. The army skidded to a halt, shrieking and swatting in front of their faces, snarling with horror at the gorgon's face.

The others stopped, swaying on the edge of the cliff, and then Susan fired an arrow into the crowd, which sent a surge of thick ice coursing through the first section of the army, freezing them solid. However, one of the skeletons fired a bazooka into the crowd and the ice exploded, the skeletons flying for them. Troy battered at them with his baseball bat and Batista punched them to pieces as they came. Sylvester raised Aegis, crouching, and the bones rattled against the metalwork with such a cacophonous sound that it actually sounded like Medusa's hair was hissing in fury.

Susan fired another arrow which went for the first skeleton in the crowd at such velocity and speed that it ricocheted off its head after knocking it down, hitting another, then another, then another, then another, and the skeletons were falling like dominoes, but more just kept coming. There were too many of them, Sylvester realized.

"Jump!" shouted Sylvester.

"What?" cried Batista and Susan, in unison.

"I said jump!" Sylvester shouted. Without any second thought, Batista grabbed Susan with both hands and jumped. Troy jumped after him, attaching a thick vine to the clifface and abseiling down. Sylvester turned and somersaulted absurdly well over the edge, using Aegis to break his fall against the black ground beneath him. Aegis clanged when it hit the ground, and he rolled off, slinging it on to his right arm and turning back to face the army that was now converging on the edge of the cliff.

"Now what?" asked Troy. Sylvester shrugged.

"We wait." he said.

"For what?" cried Batista, letting go of Susan. Sylvester turned around and, just as he had expected, there was a lone figure standing, knee-deep in the River Styx. The River Styx was a black and brown mass of dark water that seemed to stretch further than his eyes could see, further into the Underworld. The banks were spread with red sand. The figure in the Styx walked out on to the shore, hands by his sides.

The man was stocky and imposing, wearing battered Greek armour, with green eyes and crew-cut black hair. Unlike the others, he still had flesh, with the exception of his right leg from the knee-downwards, which was a splintered bone that forced him to limp.

"Ares!" exclaimed Susan, drawing an arrow, but Sylvester stopped her. The skeleton army had gone completely silent, and their eyes were now fixed on the figure.

"You," said Sylvester, "you're Achilles, aren't you?"

"Yes," the man's voice was deeply confident and fiercely combative, almost too similar to Ares, "I am. Who in the world....are you?"

Sylvester didn't bring out Sunfire yet. He didn't want this to get into a fight just yet. He wanted to reason with Achilles before it all got out of hand.

"We're from Camp Half-Blood," said Sylvester, "you see, a lot of Cyclopes have gone missing from around Mount Othrys. We were told you were the person who'd know where they went."

"Oh," Achilles's head inclined, telling Sylvester he was thinking. Did he even have a brain in his skull anymore? Sylvester didn't really want to know, "Mount Othrys, eh? Interesting."

"And?" Troy asked, impatiently, "Do you know where they are?"

Achilles grinned.

"I do," he said, "but, why should I tell you?"

"Because," Batista advanced to Sylvester's side, "it could result in you being sent to Elysium?"

"Elysium?" snarled Achilles, bitterly, "Do you think, if I could get to Elysium, I would be there right now, instead of wasting my time with fleshy little intruders like you? I'm stuck in the Fields of Punishment when I'm not hanging around this infernal place. It's always the same thing. I have to stand on a disco machine in a deserted arcade, having to do the Macarena, over and over, for the last eternity. It all puts the wrath of Zeus into this!" He jabbed a finger at his splintered heel, "But I can't do anything about it. I have no control. And all because I swam in this disgusting river!"

"Achilles," said Sylvester, "could you please tell us?"

"No." Achilles growled, "Not without a little challenge." He reached into his belt and pulled at the grip of a sword, drawing it halfway-out. Sylvester didn't move. Achilles chuckled.

"I'm not going to fight you." he said.

"No?" Achilles grinned, "Don't be so stupid, of course you are. Didn't you hear what I just said? You are not in control of your fate. The Gods are. Ares sent you here so easily because he loves a good fight. He loves toying with the odds. You're going to fight me. You have no choice."

He slid the sword fully out of its scabbard - a single-edged Celestial Bronze sword - and pulled a shield from his back. Sylvester pulled Sunfire out of its scabbard and raised Aegis. Achilles didn't react. Maybe, being in the Fields of Punishment so long, he wasn't as susceptible to fear as he used to be. The two of them faced each other.

"I've been looking forward to a good fight." sniggered Achilles, "Skeletons. Attack his friends. Give him something to be worried about." The skeletons burst into violence, leaping down from the cliff and smashing into the demigods with a fierce symphony of ringing steel and gunshots. Batista and the others charged towards the skeletons and Sylvester had to look away from the commencing skirmish to focus on Achilles. The warrior grinned.

"What's the matter, little guy?" he sneered, "Too afraid to fight me?" Sylvester answered by raising Sunfire in defence. Then he sprinted towards the greatest warrior in human history.

Achilles's first blow almost skewered him through the stomach, but Sylvester twisted his sword away and went on the attack, cutting for his waist, but Achilles blocked the blow fiercely and Sylvester ducked underneath a shield thrust, before cutting under his arm. Achilles battered down Sunfire and kicked Sylvester in the chest, but Aegis blocked his foot. Sylvester stepped back under the kick, spinning around, shifting his sword into a reverse grip and stabbing for the point above Achilles's breastplate. Achilles stepped out of the way and bashed him in the side with his shield, knocking him to the ground. Sylvester rolled backwards under the blow and immediately flipped athletically to his feet like a character in Arrow.

The two of them stopped for a moment, studying each other, deaf to the battle that was now occurring around them. They were now standing in a field of littered bones.

"Come on! Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" shouted Achilles, leering.

He charged and Sylvester awaited him. Before Achilles could cut his legs from under him, Sylvester twisted the dead man's blade with Sunfire, contorting and manipulating Achilles's sword out of the way to try and hack at the man's body, but Achilles kept moving, shifting his shield to defend himself. Achilles cut for his neck and Sylvester crouched, only for Achilles to kick at his face. Sylvester ducked underneath his foot and stabbed at his right leg, but Achilles hopped over him, raised his sword with both hands and slammed into him. Sylvester rolled sideways, getting to his feet and dodging underneath a series of cutting attacks. Achilles drove him back, and Sylvester struck him in the stomach with Aegis, crunching the man's belly in despite the battered breastplate placed in its way.

Achilles snarled and stabbed for his eye. Sylvester knocked the tip of his blade out of the way and lunged for the man's shoulder, but Achilles blocked him with his own shield. The two of them parted and Achilles lunged for him with a howl. Sylvester waited for him, having already devised a plan. He stepped back so that the River Styx was now behind him. The moment Achilles crashed into him, Sylvester reached out with his shield-arm and hooked Achilles's elbow over his own shoulder, executing a Judo throw that hurled Achilles head-over-heels.

Achilles landed hard on both feet, but his splintered right leg buckled. Achilles screamed under the impact, just as Sylvester expected, and Sylvester swung for Achilles again. Achilles tried to block him, half-blind with agony, but he wasn't strong enough and Sunfire's crossguard bent the blade of Achilles's sword right into his own shoulder. Achilles's screams pitched as his right arm clattered to the ground with the sword still held in his grip. Sylvester followed up his attack by spinning around on his feet like a dancer and slicing through Achilles's neck.

Achilles's screams dropped to silence as his body flopped to the ground. Sylvester dropped Aegis in order to catch the man's skull before it landed in the River Styx. Immediately, the sounds of battle were extinguished as the skeletons froze, shocked, as the head of their leader was held over the black, disgusting mass of dark water. A lot of them had arrows in their skulls, a few more had been bashed to splinters by Batista's strength and some of them were pinned to the ground by a net of vines. Sylvester held Achilles's head up level with his own face.

"Ready to talk now?" he asked, calmly.

"Unhand me!" roared Achilles, before twisting his skull down and biting for Sylvester's wrist. Sylvester tossed him into the air like an apple and Achilles yelled. Sylvester caught him again, this time holding him by the forehead and scalp, his fingers digging into the bone firmly. Achilles gasped with relief and Sylvester lifted him up again.

"I won't ask you again." Sylvester snapped.

Achilles whimpered, "Alright, I'll tell you! I'll tell you what you need to know."

"I'm listening."

"The Cyclopes are in...." he stammered, "they're in....Ogygia!"

"Ogygia?" Sylvester frowned. He knew, from the man's terrified face, that he wasn't lying. Then Achilles snapped his jaws up, biting again for Sylvester's hand. Sylvester let him go, and then drop-kicked the man's head as hard as he could. Achilles screamed as his head rolled through the air, high above the dark waters, before splashing into the Styx with a loud plunk.

"Well, that was awkward." remarked Troy.

Susan and Batista stood back-to-back, eyes on the gathering crowd of skeletons. They were looking unnervingly restless, like a horde of cats about to pounce on a ball of string, and then to fight over the threads. Then one of the skeletons raised a bayonet and roared gutturally at them and the others joined in the war-cries. Then they lowered their weapons and charged, when a burst of light exploded behind them and the skeletons reeled back. Sylvester recoiled at the light, which burst into the sky and twisted, like the sun itself had sent a ray down to pierce the Underworld. Then the light cleared and a woman stood in the middle of the empty circle she had created.

This woman looked to be in her very early twenties, wearing a dress looping over her shoulders and lingering inches off the ground. The dress, it seemed, changed colours every millisecond, twisting and morphing like a lens flare. Her maroon hair was in a jungle of curls and wrapped around her shoulders, and her eyes were bright blue, but seemed subdued, as if living in the Underworld for so long had drained them of all their life. She was very thin, and her skin was like cold steel. She was classically breathtaking to look at, and her smile could bring a thousand men to their knees.

"That's enough," she said in a sweet, dainty voice, to the skeletons, "go on! Beat it!" The skeletons turned tail and barged over one another as they tried to escape from the newcomer, soon disappearing from sight, forgetting their fallen leader. The woman turned around, then walked towards the headless, one-armed corpse of Achilles. She kicked it, and it didn't move, so she moved away from it.

"Well, at least you did me a favour." she said, "I've gotten fed up of that bratty Greek soldier, droning on and on and on and on, 'I was the greatest warrior of all time, and I was defeated by one measly arrow' this, and 'I should be on the Isle of the Blessed already' that, blah, blah, blah, so annoying."

She turned towards Troy, smiling like a fairy tale princess. She walked towards them as they gathered together. She seemed completely out of place in such a horrible realm as the Underworld, let alone the River Styx. Sylvester recognized her from looking at Troy and seeing that there were some tiny similarities between the two...as if they were siblings.

"Persephone?" he gasped. She glanced at him.

"That's right, pretty boy." she answered, before surveying the others, "So nice to have some good-looking kids here once in a while." She ran a finger underneath Susan's chin, as if surveying her from all angles, and then her eyes seemed to study Batista for significantly longer. Curiously, she bent down and looked into Troy's staring eyes.

"You look just like Mother." she said.

"Like...like Demeter?" Troy asked.

"Yes," scoffed Persephone, "you wouldn't want to meet her if you knew her like I do, though. Sometimes she's as sweet as a spring apple, and most of the times she's as repellent as an ogre's underpants!" She giggled to herself, before standing up and walking towards the River Styx.

"So," she said, "you're looking for the Cyclopes."

"Where exactly is Ogygia?" asked Susan, "Is that...is that in Spain, or something?"

"Not even close." Persephone turned gracefully around and her smile seemed instinctive, but suddenly she seemed slightly serious, "Ogygia is Calypso's island. Her....her permanent vacation." She sounded like she was looking for a much more basic description that wouldn't sound repelling.

"How do we get there?" asked Sylvester.

"Patience," giggled Persephone, "please? Oh, and thanks a bunch for waking up my husband, by the way....I cannot wait for him to start intensifying the acceptance process into the Fields of Punishment. You have no idea how busy it's been here, trying to manage the customers who have come after the Second Titan War, there are so many deaths. He's had to open up new places for the dead to live, without casting them into Tartarus because they won't stop whining! But, enough of my moaning. You're the kids who keep on attracting all of this attention."

"Or, more like, the attention won't stop hounding us." remarked Batista, "I mean, seriously, we cannot catch a break."

"Yes, I heard about the Manticore. And Morpheus. And those telkhines. Oh, yes, sorry about the Furies," she didn't sound apologetic at all, "My husband's last orders before he started snoozing was that any Demigods trying to get into the Underworld and disturb the 'peace' will have the special attention of the Furies. Any day now, he'll be reopening Tartarus and bringing all Hell on the world just to satisfy his temper. No, come to think of it, that's not him. That's more of a Zeus thing."

Sylvester sighed, "Are you going to help us or not?"

"Absolutely," Persephone answered, eyeing him playfully, "just needed to complain a little, to someone other than Cerberus, like he's ever going to give some constructive company. All he does is howl, and when he has three heads that's beyond insufferable."

"Listen!" Susan stepped forwards, "We're running out of time! We've got to get to Ogygia, and we need to get there fast."

"Why?" asked Persephone, "Oh, you don't know why. It's just a desperate need to get on with this so you can get back to your lives. Well, first, I think you should be more careful talking to me. I am the wife of Hades, after all. Second, I was going to help you. Just needed a bit more whining done."

She turned around and her smile softened, "Close your eyes. Go on. Close your eyes...." Sylvester slowly did as he was told. Then a sensation ripped through his body, and he yelled as he felt himself plummeting down into the unknown void beneath him.

Chapter 18 - They reach the Beach of Brothers

Hitting the water came as a shock to him, and it woke him up all right. His skin pulsed with impact as he smacked against the water, and bubbles erupting around him as he sank. His senses returned to him and he got to his feet. Then, he realized, Chiron's breastplate, in its fleece form, was back him, as if it had been so the whole time. Ares had lived up to his side of the bargain, after all. Maybe Morpheus was right when he said there was honour among Gods.

The sun above him blinded him and he blinked. Then he heard a crash as Batista and Troy smashed into the water behind him, and then looked up only for Susan to come plummeting down on top of him. He stumbled back and she landed explosively in a blast of white water.

Her head emerged from the water and she gasped. Sylvester pulled her to her feet and she blinked out sea water. Batista broke the water, supporting a choking Troy.

"Couldn't have picked a better spot." he muttered, "Although, landing on an inflated whale would be more preferable."

"At least it wasn't a bed of cactuses." Susan said. Sylvester didn't pay attention. His attention was focused on what sat in front of him. When the others saw it, their jaws dropped. There was a huge island in front of them, spreading nearly as wide as Camp Half-Blood itself. There was a huge ring of sand around it. Behind the sand was a mass of beautiful gardens and forests with incredible colours in their plants. In the hills of the island were caves tall enough for a Manticore to fit through.

Then Sylvester saw that the beaches were teeming with people. Sylvester immediately knew that they were Cyclopes, without even looking at the fact that they only had one eye and looked freakishly strong. They were all dressed for the summer in shorts, bathing suits, Hawaiian shirts, the lot. Sylvester even realized that some of them were in the water, surfing and snorkelling. They didn't look anything like prisoners.

"Brothers!" screamed Batista, delightfully, and he charged towards the beach. Some of the Cyclopes turned and grinned when they saw him, sprinting to meet him. The moment they met, they started tangling in an embrace and babbling to each other, and Sylvester guessed that they hadn't seen one another in a very long time.

"Nice to know that he's found home." said Troy.

"I know." Sylvester answered, "Let's find this Calypso." He moved on and Troy groaned.

"Right when we've found paradise, he has to go on with the quest." he muttered, before rushing after him.

When he reached the sand, he stopped running and surveyed the place around him. With so many people on the beach, one could almost mistake it for Hawaii - it looked like there was a huge party going on, and it had been going on for ages. Children rushed past him, chasing each other, their individual eyes wide with joy.

Then Batista sprinted towards them, accompanied by a much bigger Cyclops with a blue mohawk, in a red-striped wetsuit.

"Hey, guys." Batista called, "According to this guy, we fell out of the sky. We fell out of the freaking sky to get here. How awesome is that?"

"Insane." said Sylvester, feigning enthusiasm.

"I know, right." Batista laughed, and Sylvester lost sight of him in the crowd. His eyes were focused on the caves above them. There was a wooden plank bridge leading up to it from a sand dune not too far away, and the inside of the cave was roofed with bright green crystals that illuminated the place like moonlight. There was a chair in the middle, made of sticks, and a girl sitting in it. Sylvester couldn't make out most of her features, but he didn't need to hazard a guess as to who it was.

"Come on." he called to Troy and Susan. They rushed to catch up with him as he dodged the crowd, making for the wooden bridge at the sand dune. He took a moment to consider the fact that the bridge was very competently designed, with evidence that the Cyclopes' alleged superhuman strength had been put to great use. Walking on it, it was as sturdy as ever. When they reached the top, Sylvester looked back. They could see the whole beach from there. A dispassionate part of Sylvester thought that it looked quite beautiful from where he was standing.

The sun was what made the whole place so beautiful. It made the sea sparkle and the beach look like it was spread with gold. Everything just shone so magnificently. Sylvester turned around and carried on up the bridge.

Reaching the end of the bridge, Sylvester found himself looking at a great throne made of interwining sticks from palm trees, with cushions full of leaves pinned to the seat and the back of the chair. There were three Cyclopes gathered around the girl who was sitting there. One of them had the branch and leaves of a tree held in his huge hands and was using it to fan the girl. The other was approaching behind her and handing her a glass of fiery red liquid. The third was knelt in front of her, holding her ankle on his knees and massaging her foot.

The girl herself was only an inch shorter than Sylvester. She wore a white Greek dress with a low circular neckline trimmed with gold. Her hair was caramel, her skin was milky and her dark brown eyes were in the shape of almonds. There was a large necklace of flowers wrapped around her neck and she looked totally comfortable where she was sitting - but, she was sitting there like she was savouring every single moment of it, for fear that it would be taken away from her.

"Calypso." greeted Sylvester. The girl looked up at him and curiosity twinkled in her eyes. She didn't move from her throne, but it was clear she was very pleased to see them.

"Hello," she said with a voice like a thrush, "I was beginning to worry you'd become unconscious in your fall."

"Not for a lack of trying...." moaned Troy. When he saw Calypso, he tried to smile charismatically - he looked like an asylum patient.

"Put that smile off your face, Troy." whispered Susan, appearing beside him, "You look like you've had too many lemons in your last meal." Troy's face relaxed and he growled at her.

"How did you get here?" asked Calypso. Then she jerked her foot back and shrieked. The end of the 'here' became a high-pitched 'he-eere'.

"That tickles!" she giggled at the Cyclops at her feet, who grinned. The Cyclops then grabbed her foot and tickled it until she shrank, shrieking with laughter, into her throne and tearfully screamed 'Stop! Stop! Stop!', which she did. The Cyclops placed Calypso's foot back on her lap and continued massaging it, and Calypso let out the odd shrill giggle at her masseuse's playful work.

"We were sent," Sylvester explained, "by Persephone." Persephone frowned.

"I don't know the name." she said.

"Persephone is the wife of Hades." simplified Susan.

"Oh," her face darkened, "I know him. Why did she send you here?"

"She sent us here...." Sylvester looked down at the Cyclopes who seemed to be willingly making this girl's life infinitely easier, "because a bunch of Cyclopes have gone missing around Mount Othrys." The Cyclopes immediately stopped what they were doing around Calypso, and stared at him.

"Missing?" Calypso asked, stroking back a few strands of her caramel hair and twirling it between her fingers unconsciously, "Well, that figures."

"My lady...." the Cyclops fanning her face stammered, "there's something that I have to tell you."

"Ssh!" snapped the Cyclops at her feet, who tried to distract Calypso by tickling her sole, but though Calypso writhed a little and started giggling, she soon wrenched her foot free and gently slapped the Cyclops on the shoulder, grinning innocently, before turning back, standing up and slowly approaching Sylvester.

"And these Cyclopes....they're these ones?" she waved an arm across the island, at the partying masses on the beaches beneath her.

"Yes." Troy said, gravely, "They've been missing for some time. We're here to....to bring them back home."

"Bring them home?" Calypso's face blanked. She walked to the bridge and looked out over Ogygia with conflict stirring in her eyes.

"To....away from here." Susan said, "Back home, to our world."

"Of course." Calypso closed her eyes and gulped, "Of course. Silly me, for thinking it could last...go on."

"What do you mean 'thinking it could last'?" Sylvester frowned.

"It doesn't matter." Calypso said, abruptly.

Sylvester walked towards the edge of the bridge and she seemed to be looking at the beach as if it was the last time she would ever do so.

"They came to this island the same way you did, you know." she said, dreamily, "The Cyclopes, I mean. I'd only just woken up, when they started pouring out of the sky, into the sea. They landed on each other, without hurting each other at all. Not one of them were killed. They were all families, brothers, sisters, parents, all of them. They've been here ever since - over the last year and a half, now."

"Hang on a second." Sylvester remarked, "Over the last year and a half?"

"That's right." Calypso nodded, curiously.

"But, back home....they've only been gone two weeks, a month at the most..." Sylvester's eyes brightened as he arrived at the conclusion, "Time goes differently. Two weeks or a month in our world, over a year over here. That's why the Cyclopes down there are so relaxed, having so much fun. They've gotten used to it! They've had over a year to get used to Ogygia, they think it's paradise compared to the world they were born in."

"But, why?" asked Susan, "Why bring them here at all?"

"I've been pondering on that from day one," Calypso answered, "and I've arrived at the conclusion that the Gods are slackening their punishment of me. They're sending me company. Something like a Titaness's privilege, given that Kronos has been destroyed."

"You know about Kronos?" asked Troy.

"Hell, yes," Calypso turned around, "Got a thunderstorm here for the very first time when he was defeated by that Percy Jackson fella. Almost tore the island apart....turns out that happened all over your world when he was beaten, according to the Cyclopes."

Sylvester walked up to her, with Troy behind him, "We need to get them home, Calypso. is there any way you can send them back?"

Calypso turned around and gulped, as if she was fighting the urge to keep her mouth shut. She didn't want to tell them.

"Well...." She began, when they were interrupted by a vicious boom and Sylvester spun around, exclaiming, as the sky lit up a bright green in the distance, in a ball of lime like a fireball. The water rippled violently and Cyclopes screamed, running from the water in their bathing shorts, stampeding over each other in terror, as if they were running from a group of sharks.

"What in Hades?" cried Calypso, suddenly turning and sprinting down the bridge towards the beach. Sylvester and the others ran after her. Down on the sand, the Cyclopes had stopped running and were looking at the source of the light. As Sylvester got nearer the ground, he noticed that a boat was emerging from the light. The boat was the size of a small fishing boat, and made of an unknown black wood. There were oars sticking out of it, rotating in perfect unison as the boat approached the shore.

Calypso sprinted to the edge of the water, where she stopped. She raised a hand, which suddenly shone with a fierce energy that pulsated in her palm. But she froze when she saw the boat as it got closer, and when Sylvester got beside her he saw why she was so terrified. The people rowing the boat, he noticed, were tall women, hunched, with caramel skin, silky black hair and wearing white chitons. They were very beautiful, but looked really dangerous. But his focus was on the man sitting at the back of the boat, hands behind his head, relaxed. The boat was now five metres from the shore, and the man waved a hand and it stopped.

The man placed one hand on the edge of the boat, and vaulted over it superbly. Sylvester was partly blinded by the light of the sun, but when it cleared and his eyes adjusted, he could see clearly who the man was. And what he saw made the blood in his veins freeze as low as the arctic.

The man waded slowly towards them. The water only reached up to his knees. He was extremely imposing, thickset and shockingly muscular, with arms so powerful that he guessed they could punch through brick walls without any problem. He wore a really expensive-looking brown suit and tie, with a blood-red rose in his lapel.

To be continued...

Characters

Main Characters

• Sylvester Falcone: Main protagonist. Is spending summer with Annabeth's family
• Atlas: Main antagonist. Is once again trapped under the weight of the sky
• Susan Cooper: Has discovered that she has feelings for Sylvester
• Troy Callaghan: Is living with his parents in Oregon
• Annabeth Chase: Is becoming a sister figure for Sylvester
• Chiron: Is making reports of Sylvester's quest to Olympus

Other Characters

• Arachne: Has disappeared from the view of the Gods since Atlas's defeat. Current status unknown
• Victor Callaghan: Spends summer shoplifting/vandalizing properties with graffiti, has eluded police
• Rachel Elizabeth Dare: Has made a full recovery from the side-effects of her prophecy
• Dionysus: Is spending his summer sulking at being defeated so easily by the Manticore
• Nico di Angelo: Trying to pacify the Dead after Achilles's defeat
• Morpheus: Has disappeared from Zeus's view when Zeus went to investigate his Shrine
• Persephone: Is still living in the Underworld
• Hades: Has easily restored the Underworld to proper working order in the Fields of Punishment
• Athena: Has taken to watching over her son as she has always done his entire life
• Ares: Facing punishment from Zeus for his involvement in tampering with the quest
• Achilles: Is still reforming in Tartarus, lamenting irritably about being defeated by a son of Athena