The Nature of a Demigod

Spa Day

[Percy's POV]

I woke up in a rowboat with a makeshift sail stitched of gray uniform fabric. Annabeth sat next to me, tacking into the wind. I tried to sit up and immediately felt woozy.

"Rest," she said, her voice dead serious. "You're going to need it."

"Tyson...?"

She shook her head. "Percy, I'm really sorry." We were silent while the waves tossed us up and down. "He may have survived," she said halfheartedly. "I mean, fire can't kill him."

I nodded, but I had no reason to feel hopeful. I'd seen that explosion rip through solid iron. If Tyson had been down in the boiler room, there was no way he could've lived. He'd given his life for us, and all I could think about were the times I'd felt embarrassed by him and had denied that the two of us were related.

Then... Well... Our other loss.

"Y/N?" I asked, carefully. Annabeth went still.

I had seen what had happened to him. Scylla stole him right off of the deck. And then the ship blew up. There was no way he could have survived, but I really wanted to believe that he did.

Annabeth shuddered, and whispered. "He promised... " she said, a weakness in her voice that I haven't seen from her in the entire time since I'd known her.

"He... He might have lived." I offered. Annabeth shook her hair and turned to face me. Her eyes were red, and she looked like she'd been crying for hours. She and Y/N were really good friends, just like her and Thalia, and her and Luke.

She's lost a lot of friends. I wasn't sure what I could honestly do, but I put a hand on hers, giving a look of sympathy. She sniffed and turned back out to the water.

Waves lapped at the boat. Annabeth showed me some things she'd salvaged from the wreckage. Hermes's thermos (now empty), a Ziploc bag full of ambrosia, a couple of sailors' shirts, and a bottle of Dr Pepper. She'd fished Y/N's bag out of the water, bitten in half by Scylla's teeth.

It was pretty much empty, but Annabeth still had his sword and scabbard, laid off to the side, just for safekeeping. I checked in my bag and realized I had lost most things in the chaos, yet I still had Hermes' multivitamins. So that was a positive.

We sailed for hours. Now that we were in the Sea of Monsters, the water glittered a more brilliant green, like Hydra acid. The wind smelled fresh and salty, but it carried a strange metallic scent, too. As if a thunderstorm were coming. Or something even more dangerous.

I knew what direction we needed to go. I knew we were exactly one hundred thirteen nautical miles west by northwest of our destination. But that didn't make me feel any less lost.

No matter which way we turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into my eyes. We took turns sipping from the Dr Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail as best we could. And we
talked about my latest dream of Grover.

By Annabeth's estimate, we had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover, assuming my dream was accurate, and assuming the Cyclops Polyphemus didn't change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier.

"Yeah," I said bitterly. "You can never trust a Cyclops." Annabeth stared across the water. "I'm sorry, Percy. I was wrong about Tyson, okay? I wish I could tell him that."

I tried to stay mad at her, but it wasn't easy. We'd been through a lot together. She'd saved my life plenty of times. It was stupid of me to resent her. I looked down at our measly possessions. The empty wind thermos, the bottle of multivitamins. Our weapons, with one more of those than we had people to use it.