Max Whitfield and the Sea of Monsters

Chapter I: I Wake up with a Bad Feeling

My name is Max Whitfield, and yes, I will say it, I'm not a dog person. There I said it. I have nothing against dogs, people who own dogs or people who just generally like dogs. I just personally haven't had great experiences, and as such am not a big fan. Those experiences include nearly being mauled to death by a giant black hound.

For context, I am a half-blood, meaning the son of an Ancient Greek god and a mortal. More specifically, I am a son of Hermes. And this means I am constantly in danger of being attacked by monsters. One of these attacks happened when I was seven, when a monster known as a hellhound attacked and managed to separate me and my mother. It took me five years to find her again.

With that cleared up, please forgive me if I don't immediately faint at the sight of a puppy. I believe I am justified.

Now, you're probably asking yourselves why this is relevant at all. Well, this has quite a bit to do with how this story starts.

You see, after I was finally reunited with my mom I decided to try living with her in the mortal world and be a regular teenager. This involved coming into contact with two things: school and monsters.

Ironically, I had been pretty successful with avoiding monsters so far. Sure I'd had a couple of run-ins, but by April I had become quite the expert at slipping past monsters mostly undetected. The true nightmare was school. Like most half-bloods, I suffer from dyslexia and ADHD. The dyslexia is because my brain is wired to read Ancient Greek instead of English, and my ADHD comes from the enhanced reflexes that would normally keep me alive in a battle. However, not many schools use books in Ancient Greek and my battle reflexes really don't help when I have to sit still in a classroom for hours. I think you can understand my dilemma.

Still, I managed to somehow drag myself through the school year with mostly passing grades. I attribute most of the credit to my friend Annabeth, a daughter of Athena, who I imagine lost many hours of sleep while trying to explain the basics of mathematics to me. I am not proud to admit that I nearly exhausted the supply of golden drachmas I had brought with me in case of emergencies.

That effort I (sometimes begrudgingly) made eventually led me to the last week before the summer holidays. And the Monday of that very same week started with a dream. Or as is more common with half-bloods, a nightmare.

I found myself in what looked like a harbor. It was nighttime, so I couldn't see much, but I could make out a human figure with its back turned to me. Beyond it I could see a large group of various monsters, the largest concentration I had ever seen. And even further back, I could barely make out the silhouette of what looked like a large cruise ship.

As I watched, a monster approached the figure. It looked like a woman, except for the legs, which were actually snake tails. Annabeth had told me about this monster before: a Scythian dracaena.

"The ship is ready. We await your orders." she informed.

"Good. Get everyone aboard. Pick me up in a few days at this location." the figure instructed, handing the dracaena a slip of paper.
"I'm going to pay an old friend a visit."

The figure then turned to face me, revealing a pair of blue eyes and a long scar running across his face. It was the face of my older half-brother Luke Castellan, who had looked after and been a role for me during my years at Camp Half-Blood. That is, until we had discovered last year that he had betrayed us and tried to start a divine civil war that would have destroyed the world. The shock of seeing him again was enough to jolt me awake.

I sat up with a gasp, panting slightly as I tried to recover my breath. The nightmare unsettled me, mainly because of the implications it carried. The monsters and the ship meant that Luke was gathering troops, which was concerning by itself. But the part that really concerned me was Luke's plan to 'visit an old friend'.