Thank you so much to everyone who voted on my book, you guys LITERALLY made my day!
(Well, technically night, because I only saw now at 12:10am..)
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Apollo's POV
I clawed my way through the passage, hugging Aria close, my lungs burning in outrage.
First you fill us with dark prophetic bees! my lungs screamed at me. Now you force us to stay underwater! You are a horrible person!
I could only hope Aria would survive the experience. Since she was still unconscious, I couldn’t really warn her to hold her breath. The best I could do was make our journey as brief as possible.
My mind began to play tricks on me as it sought more oxygen.
You can breathe underwater! it said. Go ahead. It’ll be fine!
I was about to inhale the river when I noticed a faint green glow above me. Air? Radiation? Limeade? Any of those sounded better than drowning in the dark. I kicked upward after beckoning to Meg to do the same. Well, as best as I could, anyway.
I expected to be surrounded by enemies when I surfaced, so I tried to emerge with as little gasping and flailing as possible. Doing this quietly was no easy task, but as soon as I took in our surroundings, I was glad to be such a ninja of soft gasping and flailing. However Meg still hadn't resurfaced. I'm sure she'll be fine...
On the dock, three blemmyae crouched over a large object that looked like two scuba tanks duct-taped together, the cracks stuffed with wads of putty and lots of wires.
The only reasons they had not noticed and killed us already were 1) they were busy arguing, and 2) they were not looking in our direction. Blemmyae’s peripheral vision consists entirely of their own armpits, so they tend to focus straight ahead.
No, sirree!” the trooper yelled as politely as possible. “That is not where the red wire goes, thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome,” said the ranger. “But I studied the diagram. It does go there, you see, because the blue wire has to go here. And if you’ll excuse me for saying so, you’re an idiot.”
“You’re excused,” the trooper said amiably, “but only because you’re an idiot.”
“Now, boys,” said the woman. Her voice was definitely that of Nanette, the woman who had tried to kill us on our first day in Indianapolis. It seemed impossible that she should have regenerated from Tartarus so soon after being killed by Josephine’s crossbow turret, but I put this down to my usual wretched luck.
“Let’s not argue. We can just call the customer-support line and—”
Meg took this opportunity to resurface with a huge gasp, much louder than I had. We had no place to hide except underwater, and I wasn’t in any shape to submerge again.
Nanette spotted us. Her chest-face twisted in a smile, her heavy orange lipstick glistening like mud in the green light.
“Well! Lookee here!! We have visitors!"
Helpless in the water, holding a half-conscious Aria, I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled, “Don’t kill us!”
Meg punched me hard enough to hurt. She glared at me like, that's the best you can think of?!
Nanette chuckled. “Now, honey, why shouldn’t we kill you?”
I glanced at the scuba-tank bomb. No doubt Leo Valdez would know exactly what to do in a situation like this, but the only advice I could think of was something Calypso had told me at the zoo: Half of magic is acting like it will work. The other half is picking a superstitious mark.
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Your Loyalty to Me
FanfictionThis is an Apollo x female oc story. Aria is servant to the Greek god of music, prophecy, archery, the sun, medicine and selfishness. They meet when Zeus adopted the little wizard after her family dies as a child of all the gods. But even as a 'ch...
