Sea Green Eyes

Chapter 33

"Hazel!" he yelled. "That box! Open it!"

She hesitated, then saw the box he meant. The label read WARNING. DO NOT OPEN.

"Open it!" Leo yelled again. "Coach, take the wheel! Turn us toward the monster, or we'll capsize."

Annabeth's efforts to stab at the monster ceased when she heard Cressida start screaming. Tendrils had wrapped around her ankles and began dragging her over the side as she clawed at the deck, desperate for a handhold.

Despite everyone's efforts, the tentacles were just too numerous to fight. They seemed able to elongate as much as they wanted. Soon they'd have the Argo II completely entangled. Percy hadn't appeared from below. The others were fighting for their lives against nose hair.

"Frank!" Leo called as he ran toward Hazel. "Buy us some time! Can you turn into a shark or something?"

Frank glanced over, scowling; and in that moment a tentacle slammed into the big guy, knocking him overboard.

Hazel screamed. She'd opened the supply box and almost dropped the two glass vials she was holding. And Leo was lucky to catch the vials of Greek fire.

"Annabeth!" Cressida cried and Leo glanced over to where the daughter of Athena had hooked her feet onto one of the ropes from the mast, anchoring herself as she reached across the deck for Cressida's hands, the tendrils still pulling at the girl's feet, and they were much stronger than they girls were.

"I got you! I won't let go!" Annabeth promised but she didn't really have a choice.

And Cressida let out a scream as she was yanked free from Annabeth's grip and plunged into the water where she promptly blacked out.

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"Cressida? Cressida?! Can you hear me? Are you ok?!"

All she wanted to do was sleep, but she didn't have a choice once again as her eyes fluttered open.

She was floating, but not in air. She was floating in water that garbled Hazel's voice slightly and yet didn't sting her eyes. Cressida sat up, or drifted, upright as she realised they were in an underwater cave.

Phosphorescent moss covered the ceiling, bathing the room in a blue-and-green glow. The floor was a carpet of sea urchins, which would have been uncomfortable to walk on.

Cressida was a bit nervous about how she was breathing considering that there was no bubble around her head, no Percy and no air in sight - not that you could see air.

"Are you alright?" Hazel asked with a hand on her shoulder and Cressida registered that fact that asides from feeling a little sleepy, most of her earlier exhaustion and weakness was gone.

"I think so. But that shouldn't be possible. If Charleston was a few hours ago, I should still be unconscious."

"Actually, it is quite possible," came a new voice and Cressida saw a new creature enter their cave.

From the waist up, he was more or less human—a thin, bare-chested dude with a dagger in his belt and a band of seashells strapped across his chest like a bandolier. His skin was green, his beard scraggly brown, and his longish hair was tied back in a seaweed bandana. A pair of lobster claws stuck up from his head like horns, turning and snapping at random. From the waist down, the guy was more complicated. He had the forelegs of a blue-green horse, sort of like a centaur, but toward the back, his horse body morphed into a long fishy tail about ten feet long, with a rainbow-coloured, V-shaped tail fin.

Cressida gaped. She'd only read about such creatures. "You're an Ichthyocentaur," she said, and he gave her a kind smile.

"Indeed, Cressida Lynn. My name is Bythos and we are the half-brothers of Chiron."