𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐓! [pjo]

XII; wheat babies

━━━wheat babies

.・゜゜・───・゜゜・

They really did go in guns blazing. They burst into a clearing, blindly swinging their weapons, slashing and stabbing at what looked like little murderous green cupid babies. Fuking weird.

Within moments the karpoi, the grain babies, were piles of cereal and grain on the ground, and Cal brought out her lighter. The piles rustled.

    "Try it!" She flicked the lighter on, "and I'll burn you to a crisp! Stay dead, and stay gone!"

    Frank winced.

    "She'll do it!" Hazel yelled. "She's crazy!"

    The karpoi scattered to the wind. Percy grinned at Hazel as Frank climbed to the top of the rock.

    "We wouldn't have found you if you hadn't yelled." He said. Hazel shrugged. Cal punched her shoulder, grinning.

    "How'd you hold them off?" He asked, stepping closer to Cal.

    Hazel pointed behind her, "a big pile schist."

    "Hazel!" Cal gasped, "Watch your mouth!"

    Hazel giggled.

    "Guys!" Frank called from the top of the rock, "you need to see this."

    The three of them climbed to the top. When they got to the top, Cal gasped,

    "Percy, Cal, no light! Put away your weapons!"

"Schist!"

"Fuck!"

The light from their weapons went away. 

Down below them, an army was on the move. The field dropped into a shallow ravine. On the opposite side of the road, grassy hills stretched to the horizon, empty of civilization except for one darkened convenience store at the top of the nearest rise. The whole ravine was full of monsters—column after column marching south, so many and so close.

Frank, Hazel, Cal, and Percy crouched against the rock. They watched in disbelief as several dozen large, hairy humanoids passed by, dressed in tattered bits of armor and animal fur. The creatures had six arms each, three sprouting on either side, so they looked like cavemen evolved from insects.

"Gegenes," Hazel whispered. "The Earthborn."

"You've fought them before?" Percy asked.

Hazel shook her head. "Just heard about them in monster class at camp."

She'd never liked monster class—reading Pliny the Elder and those other musty authors who described legendary monsters from the edges of the Roman Empire. Hazel believed in monsters, but some of the descriptions were so wild, she had thought they must be just ridiculous rumors. Only now, a whole army of those rumors was marching by.

"The Earthborn fought the Argonauts," she murmured. "And those things behind them —"

"Centaurs," Percy said. "But...that's not right. Centaurs are good guys." Cal grabbed his hand.

Frank made a choking sound. "That's not what we were taught at camp. Centaurs are crazy, always getting drunk and killing heroes."

The quartet watched as the horse-men cantered past. They were human from the waist up, palomino from the waist down. They were dressed in barbarian armor of hide and bronze, armed with spears and slings.