²Olden Crown, heroes of olympus

009.

OLDEN CROWN
━━ chapter nine

━━ THINGS COULDN'T BE WORSE. Ding Dongs, snakes, and life sucked.

As Frank trudged up the hill, he wished things could go back to "normal". Things had never been exactly normal, but there was an easier time. An easier time before he got drafted into this insane quest and found out his father was a godly drill sergeant with an ego problem.

His bow and spear slapped against his back. He hated that stupid spear. The moment he got it, he silently swore he'd never use it. A real man's weapon, Mars called it. Then what was Frank's bow? Was that not a real weapon? This was all stupid.

There must've been a mix-up. There had to be some sort of DNA test for the gods' offspring. Perhaps the godly nursery had accidentally switched Frank with one of Mars's buff little bully babies. No way would Frank's mother have gotten involved with that blustering War God.

She was a natural warrior, Grandmother's voice argued. It is no surprise a god would fall in love with her, given our family. Ancient blood. The blood of princes and heroes.

Frank shook his grandmother's voice out of his head. He was no prince or hero. He was a lactose-intolerant klutz, who couldn't even protect his friends from getting kidnapped by wheat. His new medals felt cold against his chest: the centurion's crescent, the Mural Crown. He should've been proud of them, but he felt like he'd only gotten them because his dad had bullied Reyna.

Frank didn't know how his friends could stand to be around him. Percy had made it clear that he hated Mars, and Frank couldn't blame him. Abilene and Hazel taking turns glancing at Frank, as if worried that he might turn into a muscle-bound freak. Silently, he looked down at his body and sighed—he was not a muscle-bound freak, but might take that over the pudgy body he had. If Alaska really was a land beyond the gods, Frank might stay there. He wasn't sure he had anything to return to.

Don't whine, his grandmother would chide him. Zhang men do not whine. She was right. Frank had a job to do. He had to complete this impossible quest, which at the moment meant reaching the convenience store alive.

As they got closer, Frank worried that the store might burst into rainbow light and vaporize them, but the building stayed dark. The snakes Polybotes had dropped seemed to have vanished, too.

They were twenty yards from the porch when something hissed in the grass behind them.

"Go!" Frank yelled.

Startled, Percy stumbled. Abilene grabbed him by the arms before he fell all the way to the ground. She pulled him along as Hazel led the way. All the while, Frank turned and nocked an arrow—he shot blindly into the grass. He thought he'd grabbed an exploding arrow, but it was only a signal flare. It skidded through the grass, bursting into orange flame and whistling: WOO!

At least it illuminated the monster. Sitting in a patch of withered yellow grass was a lime-colored snake as short and thick as Frank's arm. Its head was ringed with a mane of spiky white fins. The creature stared at the arrow zipping, clearly startled. Then it fixed its large, yellow eyes on Frank. It advanced like an inchworm, hunching up in the middle. Wherever it touched, the grass withered and died.

Frank heard the others climbing the steps of the store. He didn't dare turn and run, no matter how much his feet wanted to flee. He and the snake studied each other. The snake hissed, flames billowing from its mouth.