Ataraxia [BTS au | Heroes of Olympus]

31

Jimin

They at last reached the Apennines. Yoongi had made sure the ship was as high in the air as it could go. Yet is was not enough, they had to turn back yesterday.

 They entered the fog above the mountain range. They might have gone a whole minute before boulders came raining on them. Not really raining, it was being thrown from the mountains. He almost ate a boulder. He was peering into the fog, wondering how it could be so difficult to fly across one stupid mountain range, when the ship's alarm bells sounded.

"Hard to port!" Taehyung yelled from the foremast of the flying ship. Back at the helm, Yoongi yanked the wheel. The Argo II veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives.He made the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark spherical shape hurtled towards him. He thought, Why is the moon coming at us? Then he yelped and hit the deck. The huge rock passed so close overhead it blew his hair out of his face.

CRACK! The foremast collapsed – sail, spars and Taehyung all crashing to the deck. The boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbled off into the fog like it had important business elsewhere.

"Taehyung!" He scrambled over to him as Yoongi brought the ship level.

"I'm fine," Taehyung muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs.He helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow. He peeked over more carefully this time. The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below them: a spearhead of blackrock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit was a mountain god – ourae, as Namjoon had called it. They was nasty. Like the other ones he had seen the ourae wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt. 

He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular, with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair and a wild look in his eyes, like a crazy hermit. He bellowed something Jimin didn't understand, but it obviously wasn't welcoming. With his bare hands, he prised another chunk of rock from his mountain and began shaping it into a ball.The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again other ourae answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys.

"Stupid rock gods!" Yoongi yelled from the helm. "That's the third time I've had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?"

Jin frowned. "Masts are from trees."

"That's not the point!" Yoongi snatched up one of his controls, rigged from a Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. The Celestial bronze cannon rose. He just had time to cover his ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtled away into the fog.

A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roars of mountain gods.

"Ha!" Yoongi yelled. Unfortunately, Yoongi's newest weapon had only annoyed the ourae. Another boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side. 

Jin yelled, "Get us out of here!" Yoongi muttered some unflattering comments about ourae, but he turned the wheel. The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. 

The Argo II picked up speed, retreating north-west, the way they had came.He didn't relax until they were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside – rolling green hills and golden fields.He stood on the quarterdeck as Taehyung picked mast splinters out of his arms and Yoongi punched buttons on the ship's console.

"Well, that was sucktastic," Taehyung said."Should I wake the others?"He was tempted to say yes, but the other crew members had taken the night shift and had earned their rest. They were exhausted from defending the ship.

 Every few hours, it seemed, some kind of monster had decided the Argo II looked like a tasty treat. A few days ago, he wouldn't have believed that anyone could sleep through a ourae attack, but now his friends were still snoring away below decks. Now whenever they got a chance to crash, they slept like a coma patient.

"They need rest," he said. "We'll have to figure out another way on our own."

"Huh." Yoongi scowled at his monitor. In his tattered work shirt and grease-splattered jeans, he looked like he'd just lost a wrestling match with a locomotive. "Another way," Yoongi muttered.

 "Do you see one?"

On his monitor glowed a map of Italy. The Apennine Mountains ran down the middle of the boot- shaped country. A green dot for the Argo II blinked on the western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. Their path should have been simple. They needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find an old temple called the House of Hades.

To reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east – over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn't worked out that way. Last time also they tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked.

Yesterday they'd skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no luck. The ourae were sons of Gaia, his least favourite goddess. That made them very determined enemies. The Argo II couldn't fly high enough to avoid their attacks and, even with all its defences, the ship couldn't make it across the range without being smashed to pieces.

"It's my fault," Jungkook said as he climbed the stairs to the deck. "The ourae can sense me."He glanced at him. The son of Hades looked pale, he had dark circles under his eyes. "Earth spirits don't like children of the Underworld. We get under their skin – literally."

"But I think they can sense this ship already. We have seven demigods on board." Jin said as Yoongi traced his finger down the map of Italy.

 "So crossing the mountains is out. Thing is they go a long way in either direction."

"We could go by sea," Taehyung suggested. "Sail around the southern tip of Italy."

"That's a long way," he said. "And Apollo just warned us to be careful of the mountain gods. It didn't sounded like he wanted us to take another path."

"Okay, let's wait for the others to wake up and we are gonna give one last try, if it doesn't work then we go north or south and get away from these nasty mountain gods." Jin said and he left to walk down the stairs.On the third try the crossed the mountains, Yoongi jumping around happily as he mocked the stupid mountain gods. It was a sight to see. Now they had to get to Epirus and back home before Polybotes.