Three months had passed since the chimera attack and things had only gotten worse. Chiron and Argus had verified my suspicions about the barrier, proving that I hadn't summoned it. That should have been good news, but what they found just opened a whole new can of worms. Some venom that came from a monster deep in the underworld had been used to poison Thalia's tree. Her spirit was slowly dying, causing the border that had kept Camp Half-Blood completely monster fee for the last 7 years to be compromised.
The gods- mostly Zeus- were furious and demanded that someone had to be punished for what had happened to Thalia's thee. Of course, Mr. D decided to take any chance to avoid responsibility, shifting the blame onto Chiron and Argus. Argus was fired because he "failed as head of security" and Chiron was fired after being accused as the one to poison Thalia's tree.
We were sorely unprepared for a situation like this and monsters kept slipping through and attacking campers. We'd rallied every Half-Blood capable of fighting and created a sort of militia. Well, if a group of well-trained demigods counted as a militia. That's how I ended up fighting for my life on Half-Blood Hill with a dozen other demigods.
"Border Patrol, to me!" Clarisse's command was ignored by most of the group as two Colchis bulls charged. Colchis bulls are bronze bulls made by Hephaestus himself. They're the size of elephants with red eyes and silver horns that they could easily impale a half-blood with by charging with the force of a speeding truck. We were trying our best to keep the metallic beasts away from the camp grounds but it wasn't going too well.
Fire blazed all around us and most of our child hoplites were scattered around in panic. There were originally thirteen of us, but now only ten were left in somewhat fighting condition. Kids' armor and shields were charred or had begun melting- did I mention the bulls breathe fire? Why does everything have to breathe fire? A few of us had already been put out of commission with severe burns or broken limbs. Everyone was getting tired and we'd barely made a scratch on either of the mechanical cattle; if this went on any longer we'd end up a reverse barbeque.
Clarisse was still barking orders at the patrol in an attempt to get us into a phalanx formation. I and the few others who were listening got in line beside her to make a six-person wall with our shields, bracing as the bull winded itself up to charge.
I saw movement in my peripheral and turned my head expecting the other bull to be coming to flank us. Instead, it was chasing after someone with blond hair and a blue cap in their hand. Once the cap touched their head they disappeared.
'Annabeth?' I wasn't sure if it'd really been her. She'd left a few days ago to go find Percy. She insisted that he'd be able to help solve our tree problem, though I don't really know what Water Boy was gonna do to cure a poisoned tree.
"Hold the line!" Clarisse's command brought me back to the phalanx as we were hit with a stream of fire from the bull's mouth, the force of the blast alone almost knocking me right off my feet. The heat burned my face and in the back of my mind, I wondered if I still had eyebrows.
"Behind you!" A familiar voice yelled from somewhere nearby. "Look out!"
The unexpected voice did nothing but startle Clarisse next to me just as the bull crashed straight into her shield. The blow forced Clarisse off her feet and sent her maybe twenty feet back. The bull had clipped the side of my shield as well, flinging me to the side with a spinning move that I'm sure would impress any professional diver. But since I wasn't a professional diver and there wasn't any water below me, I slammed the back of my head into the ground with my neck at a painful angle.
I was flat on my back staring up at endless azure dotted with fluffy balls of white. My head was spinning as I struggled to turn over onto my stomach, pushing up onto my knees and coughing up phlegm and spit mixed with a bit of blood. Did I seriously bite my tongue again?
I shook my head and grabbed Copper, which was lying next to me. I took a second to breathe and looked over in the direction Clarisse had been thrown. The bull that had broken the phalanx continued with its charge but ran right past her. I unsteadily got to my feet, intending to make sure she was alright but saw the bull that had been chasing Annabeth had lost interest in its invisible target and was charging at Clarisse from her side.
Clarisse was barely beginning to sit up by now, she'd taken a way harder hit than anyone else in the phalanx, and there was no way she'd fully recovered yet. She was in a patch of smoldering grass and her shield had been knocked away after the impact; the bronze tip of the wooden spear shaft in her hand had been embedded in one of the bulls' shoulders at an earlier point in the battle and it'd be useless to defend herself against the oncoming threat. Time felt like it was slowing down as I realized the bull was barely ten feet away from her and closing the distance with impossible speed.
I didn't even feel my feet move until I'd somehow closed the distance between us in a flash. Everything still felt like it was moving in slow-motion and the bull was just inches away. I used the momentum left from the mad dash and grabbed the straps of her armor to half drag, half push her to her feet in front of me. My adrenaline rush began to wear off and I looked in the direction the bull was running, swiping blindly to my side, feeling Copper's blade trail along the bull's flank. The smell of burnt hair greeted the smokey air and realized that my arm was probably silky smooth now, completely free of hair from just the heat radiating from the bull.
A long gash now ran along the side of the bull's torso, but it had no effect on the bull's momentum as it began circling back toward us. I thought it was going to charge at us again, but then Aquaman made his dramatic appearance.
Percy leaped towards the bull while it was charging me and Clarisse, slashing straight into its face. To my surprise, the bull actually jumped into the kind of side-stop you see ice skaters make, sliding across the dirt just to turn and face him. It chased after him with more ferocity than I'd seen it have the entire time we'd been fighting on the hill. It seemed personal somehow but I didn't dwell on it, deciding to check on Clarisse.
I turned to face her and shakily exhaled now that she was out of danger. I looked her over but the worst thing I could see was an awful gash on her cheek. It didn't look like the gash was bothering her but she was staring at me, then glancing at my hand, which I realized was still holding up the strap of her armor with a death grip. I assumed that was her way of telling me to let go.
"Sorry," I quickly apologized, lossening my grip.
"Wait don-"I interrupted her by releasing the strap, causing her to slump down into a heap on the ground.
"OW!" Clarisse yelled, clutching her shoulder.
"Crap, sorry!" I quickly apologized again. It hadn't even occurred to me yet that I'd just been holding up her entire weight with one hand while slicing a bull with the other. I'd definitely be bragging about that later.
"Quit apologizing and help me up, dumbass! We've still got a job to do!" She snapped, exasperated by my antics.
I heard Annabeth yelling orders to the group as I helped Clarisse get stable on her feet again, now realizing my own legs were still shaking slightly as well. I wasn't sure if the numbness in my legs was from the bull ramming us, the horror of almost watching Clarisse get hit by that death machine, or from the twenty feet I'd just cleared in the blink of an eye.
Once we were both standing steady on our feet it was back to the battle. Annabeth had gotten the other campers to spread out and try to distract the bulls. I picked up a spear that another camper had abandoned on the ground and tossed it to Clarisse to replace the broken one at her feet.
While this was going on we'd heard Percy and Annabeth yelling at each other but didn't pay any attention until a noise like thunder shook the hillside. I glanced over and saw a big guy running towards Percy who was on the ground but my attention was drawn back to Clarisse as she pointed at something else.
We saw the bull Percy and I had slashed and it was now missing a new part of its face since we'd last seen it. It was swinging its head wildly and kicking in all directions, occasionally running into trees or tripping. Watching its sad attempts to find campers made it apparent it had been blinded, so Clarisse and I came up with a plan to lead it down the hill. Hopefully, we could throw it off balance with its own momentum and get it vulnerable.
Clarisse said that I had to be the bait for this plan, arguing that I'd used her as bait to get that hit on its flank. I told her that I'd actually saved her life so she actually owed me for that, but she finally convinced me that there was a better chance if I did the running and she did the hitting. Why do I keep letting her boss me around?
So within the next few minutes, I was running down the side of Half-Blood Hill and clanging Copper on a half-melted shield I'd found with a 7-ton blind bull on my ass. It later occurred to me that if I'd even stumbled a little, I'd likely have been trampled by the bull.
I saw Clarisse at the bottom of the hill and stopped bashing my sword against the shield. I tried to veer out of the bull's path and away from Clarisse but the bull was still following me, changing its course so that it'd still hit me if I slowed down.
This was bad, the bull was now listening to the sound of my shoes thumping on the grass and knew where I was without me hitting my sword on the shield. I may be fast but I was already exhausted from the rest of the battle up until now and the bull was catching up quickly. It looked like I was going to have to improvise a bit.
I threw the shield to the side and shrunk Copper into whistle form to clip it to my chain. I pushed myself to speed up so that I could have a little extra room between me and the silver horns behind me. I was maybe 10 feet away from Clarisse when I came to a sudden stop and turned around. I summoned the last of my energy and jumped as hard as I could when the bull's horns glinted barely a foot away from my face.
I got higher than I'd expected considering I had no running start and it was straight from the ground, but I was still barely peaking over the bull's shoulders. I placed my hands and feet on its neck and shoulders but immediately regretted it when I heard the sizzling sound of my flesh. My hands were pressed into the metal that made up the bull's "skin" and it was like touching a grill that ran on nuclear power.
I vaulted over the bull and tried to tuck into a shoulder roll to soften the landing but couldn't do it properly since my hands now looked and smelled like two burnt chicken breasts. My landing probably looked more like a pumpkin toadlet.
I flopped hard on my back and didn't get up this time. I was sprawled out like a starfish on my back, the exhaustion had finally caught up and I couldn't move or feel anything. I was actually grateful that I couldn't since I'm pretty sure I'd just charred my hands and melted the plastic off the bottoms of my shoes.
I could see in my peripheral vision that Clarisse had gotten the bull out of commission as we'd planned. She'd stuck the spear in its hind leg when it stumbled at the bottom of the hill. It was now going in circles like some weird, fiery merry-go-round; its metallic hooves thumped uncomfortably close to my head every time it completed a loop.
I expected Clarisse to come over to check if I was alright and realize that I had severe burns, couldn't move, and probably needed to be taken to the infirmary ASAP. Instead, she decided it was more important to go yell at Percy about how she'd had the situation under control and how he ruined everything, despite the fact he'd basically saved the day once again.
'That's fine,' I thought to myself sarcastically, 'I'll just chill here for a bit. I didn't want your concern or anything. It's cool."
This was a side of Clarisse that I didn't agree with most of the time. Her sense of pride and the intensity she had because of it could be very charming, but sometimes it got the better of her and she'd do things like leave her best friend paralyzed on the grass to go yell at someone because they helped her.
I knew that it was mostly because it was Percy specifically who'd come to our aid, but still. Just because they had bad blood didn't mean she couldn't have at least asked if I was alright before starting an argument with him. It honestly made me kinda jealous that she was paying so much attention to him. If she hated him so much why did she take every opportunity to talk to him?
By the time Clarisse finally stopped harassing Percy I was starting to feel my feet again, which wasn't pleasant because of the burns. After going around assessing the damage caused by the bulls, after putting the fires out, and after checking over every other person who'd been part of the patrol, I saw her looking around and I could barely hear her asking people where I was. She was finally looking for me, which was insulting since I was right there. Heck, I was within earshot!
"Classy!" I yelled as loud as I could in my partially paralyzed state. "You're more blind than the damn bull! I'm right here, idiot!" A few kids who weren't too banged up snickered at my remark.
She came down the hill and as she got closer to me I could see her face was bright red under the dirt. It was cute but I realized that she was pissed because I'd embarrassed her in front of the other campers.
I nervously started running my mouth as she got closer. "Classy? Wait, Clarisse, I can't move! You can't hit me while I'm defenseless! Isn't there like- warrior's honor or something? Wait, no don't kick me-!"
I actually wrote this as chapter as one back when 'Clifford's Ugly Cousin' was the prologue, so it's been sitting in the drafts for a while. Also, did you know that bull-leaping is a real sport that comes from the island of Crete in Greece? It's similar to bullfighting, but the bull is not harmed, and instead of dodging the bull on the ground, acrobats literally do flips over the charging bull? I only found out about it while I was researching some kind of refrence I could make in the name of this chapter.
I was also referencing pumpkin toadlets when I described Wren's landing after vaulting the bull and if you've never heard of them:
If there's any feedback you have, like a joke, writing tips, grammar corrections, or anything else please share! I'm new to writing and I want to not only have fun with this book but also to improve my writing and make it an enjoyable experience for those who read it!
Thanks for reading! Have a meme!