Camp Hermit-Blood - The Sea of Monsters

Tango

One minute, Zedaph was there.

The next, he was gone.

Tango thought he was right behind them when they fled the sea monster. Apparently not, because when they looked back, he wasn't there.

They searched the area for a while, but there wasn't really anywhere to hide. It was ocean in every direction. The sea monster was gone.

That could have meant two things: either Zedaph had killed it... or it had ran off to eat him.

Although Tango wanted to believe the first option, the second was entirely more likely.

So with heavy hearts, Tango and Tyson pressed on, hoping that if he and any others had survived, they would meet up at Polyphemus' island.

It wasn't long before they saw it; the hippocampi knew where they were going. The island looked like something that an expert terraformer would have made. It was a tropical paradise, except the amount of palm trees would have made it hard to build.

As soon as they neared the beach, Tango and Tyson were promptly thrown off the hippocampi.

"Kind of you!" Tango yelled at them.

Tyson surfaced, giggling. "Again!"

Rainbow and his buddy nickered and swam away. Hopefully they weren't going far.

Tango spotted a boat pulled up onto the sand. In it, he found a few supplies. Not many. But it meant that someone else was alive.

And probably about to be eaten.

They ran up the beach and onto a grassy area, where Tango froze. Those sheep looked nice. But almost everything that looked nice was actually evil and did not like letting demigods have happy fun time.

Tyson stopped next to him. "Are the sheepies mean?"

"I don't know," Tango answered. "But probably. Give them some space."

Instead, one wandered right up to them and nuzzled Tyson, completely ignoring Tango.

"What the heck?" Tango muttered.

Then he realized. Tyson was a Cyclops. The monster they had come to steal the Fleece from was also a Cyclops.

"Tyson," Tango said, bewildered. "They think you're Polyphemus."

He looked up the hill and saw a gimmer of gold in a tree. "Is that the Fleece?" he asked, pointing.

Tyson shrugged and pet the sheep.

"I think that's the Fleece," Tango said, and almost walked up the path before he remembered that the sheep were probably evil.

Maybe Tyson could go up... but Tango didn't want to risk the tree being booby-trapped. Tyson wouldn't know what to do then.

"Save the others first," he decided out loud. "Get sheep skin later."

Tyson nodded. "Bye, sheepies," he said, almost sadly, and led the way up the hill to the rope bridge.

Once they were on the rope bridge, Tango let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. The possibly evil sheep couldn't come out here. The planks were too far apart.

It was a little bit scary to be on the bridge. There were a bunch of rocks and water at the bottom of the ravine. Usually, that would make tango feel a little better than if it was just solid ground, but Percy had told him (despite falling out of the Gateway Arch and landing safely in a river) that water didn't work the same here as it did in Hermitcraft.

They were careful going across it. It kept swaying. It was terrifying.

Once on the other side, Tango breathed a sigh of relief.

And then he felt something grab his arm and pull him into some trees.

"What are you doing? A voice hissed. "Standing out in the open like that. He's gonna come back in a minute!"

Tango looked, startled, right at Zedaph.

"You're alive," he gasped.

"Of course I'm alive, what did you think I'd be?" Zed hissed.

"Dead," Tango supplied.

Tyson came into the small grove as well. "Zeddie!"

Tango snickered.

"I killed the sea monster and then found Clarisse and Ren," Zedaph explained. "Only they were just caught by Polyphemus. I figured Ren escaped since he's a guinea pig-"

"Wait, what?" Tango snorted.

"I have no idea," Zedaph replied. "But Clarisse is probably about to be eaten for dinner at Grover's wedding and I have no idea what to do about it alone."

"But you aren't alone, Zeddie," Tango teased.

Zedaph glared at him.

"What's the plan?" Tango asked, more seriously.

"I think... he just walked past here, talking about mangoes. He's going to get mangoes. Maybe we can head up the hill and try to find Clarisse."

"What about the Ren person?" Tyson asked. "Where is he?"

"He's a guinea pig at the moment," Zedaph said patiently. "We probably aren't going to be able to find him. He's going to have to find us. Preferably before Polyphemus does."

"Ideally, Polyphemus doesn't find us at all and we can get the Fleece and Grover and get out of here," Tango said.

"Not that easy," Tyson mumbled.

"Definitely not," Zedaph agreed. "The sheep are carnivorous. And there's Polyphemus himself to worry about too."

Tango fell into thought. They were just two redstoners and a Cyclops. What did they have on hand?

Well, nothing, really. Tango had lost his redstone shulker in the explosion of the CSS Birmingham.

Tyson had a small project that he was working on. A present for Percy, he had said. And Tango didn't want to take that apart, even if the stuff it was made out of could be useful.

And of course, they had their weapons. But Tango knew that none of them were... great at fighting. Except for maybe Zedaph, who had just went and murderficated a sea monster on his own while Tango and Tyson had run away screaming.

"Maybe we teleport to Hermitcraft-" Tango started.

"We don't have time for that," Zedaph interrupted.

Tango fell into thought again. What he needed was redstone, but he didn't have that. So either he had to find a way to get it, or he had to find an alternative.

And alternatives were looking pretty scarce.

"Our biggest strength is redstone," Tango argued. "Clarisse might not have much time, but it's still some. And we won't know what we're doing otherwise."

Tyson was looking at them curiously. "Hermit... craft?"

"Yeah," Tango said, deciding not to elaborate just yet, and turning back to Zedaph. "It shouldn't take long to teleport. I still have that communicator, somehow."

"Yeah..." Zedaph said. "But we can't get back without help from this world.

But they were so close...

Tango started thinking about how they teleported. It was with coordinates.

So if they entered the coordinates for here, four numbers instead of three...

That's IT.

"It's a risk," Tango said. "But I may have an idea."