Tidal Wave (Luke Castellan)

The Boat

 To say Percy was upset would be an understatement. But I also knew that wouldn't stop him from going to save Grover. It didn't seem to take him long to reach that same realization because that same night, he snuck out. A few minutes after he left, I went to follow him. Knowing my brother, he wouldn't want anyone to risk their lives coming with him. But I wasn't going to let him do this alone.

The closer I got to where he had gone, the louder a pair of voices got. Percy was one of them. It took me a little while to figure out, but eventually I realized who it was. Hermes. No, I wasn't going to go any closer. I didn't want to see him right now. After everything that happened with Luke, he was the last god that I wanted to see and that list included Zeus and Ares. If he was approaching Percy, I had a feeling that meant he knew something about Grover.

Something in the water caught my eye. A decently sized boat with its lights on. It wasn't close enough to be a threat to camp but it wasn't far enough to just be a blimp in the distance. Knowing Hermes would probably take up a while of Percy's time, I decided to investigate. I started walking out towards the beach and into the ocean. The water splashed at my knees. Just its touch amped my senses up to 10. Unfortunately, it did little to give me any more details about the mystery boat.

"Cass!" I heard Annabeth call out.

I turned around to see her and Tyson standing on shore. I walked back towards them, "What's up? Why are you guys out here?"

"You didn't hear Percy screaming for help?" She demanded.

"No?" Did I miss something? Did another monster enter camp and I didn't know about it?

"We came out here when we heard it. I thought you were Percy standing in the water."

"Last I heard he was- there he is, actually," I pointed to where my brother was. He was coming towards us with four yellow backpacks in his arms.

"What's going on? Tyson and I heard you calling for help," Annabeth demanded.

"I didn't call you guys. I'm fine," Percy said, putting the bags down.

"But then who-"

"Just listen. I just talked to Hermes and we don't have much time before the patrol harpies find us," Percy went on to tell us about his conversation with the god of thieves. He told us about how Hermes wanted us to go despite the quest not being ours and how we could possibly save more than one person during this. My heart dropped as I realized what he meant. Percy turned his full attention to me once he finished recapping, "Cass, I wasn't going to ask you to come with me since I knew who we're probably going to come across. But Hermes thinks that you might be the only one who can bring Luke to his senses."

"He might be right. I'm already trying to but I've made very little headway. The last time I talked to him, I think I gained some ground with him. I left him with some things to think about but I don't know how that's going," I admitted.

"You've seen him since he stabbed you?" Percy asked in shock.

Right, he didn't know about any of that, "Yeah, but I don't have enough time to explain before those harpies come."

He looked like he wanted to argue but Annabeth cut in, "Percy, we have to do the quest."

"We'll get expelled, you know. Trust me, I'm an expert at getting expelled," Percy said.

"I mean, you've been doing pretty good at avoiding it so far. Hopefully we'll get lucky," I tried to sound enthusiastic about it but the thought of seeing Luke in person again had me feeling a lot of different emotions.

"Thanks for that Cass."

"You're welcome Shrimp."

"If we fail, there won't be any camp to come back to," Annabeth reminded him, "I promised Chiron that I'd keep you from danger and that's what I intend to do. And I can only do that by coming with you. Cass has to come too like we just discussed. Tyson can stay behind and tell them-"