Meanie ➪ 𝙲𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚎 𝙻𝚊 𝚁𝚞𝚎

Chapter Twenty

He'd strolled into the clearing, head up, eyes narrowed.

And then he stopped.

In the middle of the clearing, still ten feet away from Andy's babbling brook, where the hazy image of Chiron floated a foot of the ground, he'd stopped in his tracks.

Andy had whirled around, turning to face Kronos, and the only exit. (Stupid stupid mistakes).

Kronos didn't move. He looked at Andy, then back at himself, then up at Andy again, seemingly confused.

Andy didn't hesitate. She slashed through the Iris-Message, then sprinted past Kronos, who had barely reacted.

The monsters outside the clearing didn't attack. They just looked at her, and bowed.

Then Andy got a look in the polished surface of a dracaenae's shield. Her breath caught in her throat. She was Kronos. Well, Luke, but her eyes were gold.

She looked back down at herself, but she looked the same.

This must be the Mist, Andy had realized. She nodded at the dracaenae, then started back up the hill, feeling the magic wash away. She disappeared into the crowd just as Kronos came bursting out of the clearing.

The monsters had been confused, which gave her enough time to make her way to the Mist barrier that separated the Garden of the Hesperides from the rest of the mortal world, and escape.

A small squadron of enemies, mostly dracaenae and demigods, had chased her all the way to the nearest train station, where she'd managed to slip onto the next outbound train, without a ticket.

(The secret was acting confident. Most people will let you do anything as long as you look like you know what you're doing.)

There didn't seem to be any monsters on her train car, so she settled in. She just hoped the train was heading east.

She'd been forced to leave all of her stuff behind, too, so all she had on her was her clothes, her sword, and a shield she'd been gifted when she joined the Titan army. And her notebook, of course.

Andy had never had enough time to tell Chiron and Clarisse everything that she learned. The IMs were too short, or someone interrupted them; whatever the reason, she just never had enough time. Now, she flipped through the book, reading through her hastily scrawled notes.

Once she reached the end, she whipped out a pen from her back pocket, and started to write about her adventures with newfound powers.

For about ten seconds she'd looked enough like Luke to fool the Titan Lord, a monster know for his observation and—just in general–overwhelming power.

And yet, Andy, a daughter of a minor god who had maybe one myth about him, was able to trick him.

The only problem was that she had no idea how to access this power.

Sure, she'd felt the faint presence of a layer of magic that obscured her, but she didn't do anything special to summon it, and it had faded away as soon as it came. Hopefully Chiron would be able to answer some questions about it, and maybe he would finally tell her about her brother.