[1] something new | pjo

xvii. seventeen

AFTER SAT IN THE MIDDLE BETWEEN ZOE AND THALIA ARGUING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT CAN'T BE HELPED,

Daphne just hoped that all this crazy adventure will just end very soon. Don't get her wrong. Of course she loved the constant adrenaline to kill and slash the monster but for these past days, from responding to Percy silly question to Zoe and Thalia bickering, she just a minute away from insanity.

"Can't this thing go any faster?" Thalia demanded. Zoe glared at her. "I cannot control traffic."

"You both sound like my mother," Percy said.

"Shut up!" they said in unison.

"Can all of you just stop talking? I'm having a headache!" Daphne groaned.

Zoe weaved in and out of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun was sinking on the horizon when we finally got into Marin County and exited the highway.

The roads were insanely narrow, winding through forests and up the sides of hills and around the edges of steep ravines. Zoe didn't slow down at all.

"Why does everything smell like cough drops?" Percy asked.

"Eucalyptus." Zoe pointed to the huge trees all around them.

"The stuff koala bears eat?"

"And monsters," she said. "They love chewing the leaves. Especially dragons."

"Dragons chew eucalyptus leaves?"

"Believe me," Zoe said, "if you had dragon breath, you would chew eucalyptus too."

As they drove, ahead of them loomed Mount Tamalpais. Daphne guess, in terms of mountains, it was a small one, but it looked plenty huge as we were driving toward it.

"So that's the Mountain of Despair?" Daphne asked.

"Yes," Zoe said tightly.

"Why do they call it that?" Percy asked.

Zoe was silent for almost a mile before answering. "After the war between the Titans and the gods, many of the Titans were punished and imprisoned. Kronos was sliced to pieces and thrown into Tartarus. Kronos's right-hand man, the general of his forces, was imprisoned up there, on the summit, just beyond the Garden of the Hesperides."

"The General," Percy said. Clouds seemed to be swirling around its peak, as though the mountain was drawing them in, spinning them like a top. "What's going on up there? A storm?"

Zoe didn't answer. Daphne got the feeling Zoe knew exactly what the clouds meant, and she didn't like it.

"We have to concentrate," Thalia said. "The Mist is really strong here."

"The magical kind or the natural kind?" Percy asked.

"Both."

The gray clouds swirled even thicker over the mountain, and they kept driving straight toward them. They were out of the forest now, into wide open spaces of cliffs and grass and rocks and fog.

"Look!" Percy suddenly shouted. But they turned a corner and the ocean disappeared behind the hills.

"What?" Thalia asked.

"A big white ship," Percy said. "Docked near the beach. It looked like a cruise ship."

Her eyes widened. "Luke's ship?"

"Luke's got a ship?" Daphne asked with a surprised tone.

"Why are you so surprised? How do you think he moves from camp?" Percy sassed.