THANKS, CHIRON.
"One on one." Percy challenged Luke. "What are you afraid of?"
Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to kill them hesitated, waiting for his order.
Before he could say anything, Agrius, the bear-man, burst onto the deck leading a flying horse. It was the first pure-black pegasus Ariana ever seen, with wings like a giant raven.
The pegasus mare bucked and whinnied.
"Sir!" Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof.
"Your steed is ready!"
Luke kept his eyes on Percy. "I told you last summer, Percy." he said. "You can't bait me into a fight."
Had Ariana had the strength she would've summoned their own warriors to battle him.
"And you keep avoiding one." Percy noticed. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"
Luke glanced at his men, and he saw Percy had trapped him. If he backed down now, he would look weak. If he fought Percy, he'd lose valuable time chasing after Clarisse.
For their part, the best they could hope for was to distract him, giving their friends a chance to escape. If anybody could think of a plan to get them out of there, Annabeth could.
On the downside, Ariana knew how good Luke was at sword-fighting.
"I'll kill you quickly." he decided, and raised his weapon.
Backbiter was a foot longer than Percy's own sword. Its blade glinted with an evil grey-and-gold light where the human steel had been melded with celestial bronze.
Ariana could almost feel the blade fighting against itself, like two opposing magnets bound together.
She didn't know how the blade had been made, but she sensed a tragedy. Someone had died in the process.
Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him a round leather-and-bronze shield. He grinned at Percy wickedly.
"Luke," Annabeth said, "at least give him a shield."
"Sorry, Annabeth." he said. "You bring your own equipment to this party."
The shield was a problem. Fighting two-handed with just a sword gives you more power, but fighting one-handed with a shield gives you better defence and versatility.
Luke lunged and almost killed him on the first try. His sword went under his arm, slashing through his shirt and grazing my ribs.
Percy jumped back, then counter-attacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed his blade away with his shield.
"My, Percy." Luke chided. "You're out of practice."
Ariana tried to stand up but was pulled back down by Annabeth. "Don't you try anything Ariana. No powers, no sword fighting nothing." She hissed.
He came at Percy again with a swipe to the head. He parried, returned with a thrust. He sidestepped easily.
When Luke lunged again, he jumped backwards into the swimming pool. He spun underwater, creating a funnel cloud, and blasted out of the deep end, straight at Luke's face.
The force of the water knocked him down, spluttering and blinded. But before he could strike, he rolled aside and was on his feet again.
He attacked and sliced off the edge of his shield, but that didn't even faze him. He dropped to a crouch and jabbed at his legs.
Suddenly his thigh was on fire, with a pain so intense he collapsed. His jeans were ripped above the knee.
He was hurt. He didn't know how badly. Luke hacked downwards and he rolled behind a deckchair.
Ariana tried to get up again but this time Grover yanked her down.
"Ariana." Annabeth warned. "Your going to drain yourself even more."
"Perrrrrcy!" Grover bleated.
Percy rolled again as Luke's sword slashed the deckchair in half, metal pipes and all. He clawed towards the swimming pool, trying hard not to black out.
Percy would never make it. Luke knew it, too. He advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword was tinged with red.
"One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." He looked at the bear-man Oreius, who was holding Annabeth and Grover by the necks. Tyson stood in front of Ariana, protecting her. "You can eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appétit."
"He-he! He-he!" The bear-man lifted her friends and bared his teeth.
That's when all Hades broke loose.
Whish!
A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius's mouth. With a surprised look on his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck.
"Brother!" Agrius wailed. He let the pegasus's reins go slack just long enough for the black steed to kick him in the head and fly away free over Miami Bay.
For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything except watch the bear twins' bodies dissolve into smoke.
Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.
"Ponies!" Tyson cried with delight.
Ariana's mind had trouble processing everything she saw. Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him.
There were centaurs with black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses.
Some wore brightly coloured T-shirts with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER.
Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns. One had his face painted like a Comanche warrior and was waving a large orange Styrofoam hand making a big Number I.
Another was bare-chested and painted entirely green. A third had googly-eye glasses with the eyeballs bouncing around on Slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-can-and-straw attachments on either side.
They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and colour that for a moment even Luke was stunned. Ariana couldn't tell whether they had come to celebrate or attack.
Apparently both.
As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool.
His warriors scattered. Ariana couldn't blame them. Facing the hooves of a rearing stallion is scary enough, but when it's a centaur, armed with a bow and whooping it up in a soda-drinking hat, even the bravest warrior would retreat.
"Come get some!" yelled one of the party ponies.
They let loose with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded against Luke's warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe.
They tried to run, only to slip and fall.
Chiron galloped towards Annabeth and Grover, neatly plucked them off the deck, and deposited them on his back.
Ariana tried to get up, but she fell right back down onto the floor.
Luke was crawling out of the pool.
"Attack, you fools!" he ordered his troops.
Somewhere down below deck, a large alarm bell thrummed.
Ariana knew any second they would be swamped by Luke's reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn.
Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.
"Withdraw, brethren!" Chiron said as he galloped towards Ariana, who had given up and was laying face first onto the floor.
Annabeth and Grover hoisted her up onto his back.
"She's gone pale." Annabeth said, she sounded worried which didn't give Ariana much hope.
"You won't get away with this, horse man!" Luke shouted. He raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deckchair.
A palomino centaur hoisted Percy onto his back.
"Dude, get your big friend!"
"Tyson." Percy yelled. "Come on!"
Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after them. He jumped on the centaur's back.
"Dude!" the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. "Do the words 'low-carb diet' mean anything to You?"
Luke's warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten storeys above the ground.
Ariana was sure they were going to die. They plummeted towards the docks, but the centaurs hit the tarmac with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as they raced into the streets of downtown Miami.
Ariana had no idea what the Miamians thought as they galloped by. Streets and buildings began to blur as the centaurs picked up speed.
It felt as if space were compacting - as if each centaur step took them miles and miles. In no time, they had left the city behind.
They raced through marshy fields of high grass and ponds and stunted trees. Finally, they found themselves in a trailer park at the edge of a lake.
The trailers were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting. They were in a centaur camp.
"Dude!" said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. "Did you see that bear guy? He was all like, 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!' "
The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. "That was awesome! Head slam!"
The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with crazy grins on their faces.
Chiron sighed. He set Annabeth, Ariana and Grover down on a picnic blanket next to Percy. "I really wish my cousins wouldn't slam their heads together. They don't have the brain cells to spare."
"Chiron." Percy said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. "You saved us?"
He gave him a dry smile. "Well now, I couldn't very well let you die, especially since you've cleared my name."
"But how did you know where we were?" Annabeth asked, placing a hand on Ariana's head.
Ariana had her eyes closed, yet she couldn't bring herself to sleep.
"Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami."
"Gee, thanks." Grover mumbled.
"No, no." Chiron said. "I didn't mean ... Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you, my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Ariana's Iris-message and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans."
"So what now?" Percy asked Chiron. "We just let Luke sail away?"
"He's got Kronos." Ariana mumbled, opening her eyes. "Or parts of him anyway. Saw it in a dream."
Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat Percy's wounds.
"I'm afraid, Percy, that today has been something of a draw. We didn't have the strength of numbers to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won."
"But we got the Fleece!" Annabeth said.
"Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now."
Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. "You are all true heroes. And as soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs shall carry you."
"You're coming, too?" Percy asked.
"Oh yes, Percy. I'll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not appreciate Dean Martin's music. Besides, I must have some words with Mr D. There's the rest of the summer to plan. So much training to do. And I want to see ... I'm curious about the Fleece."
Ariana didn't know exactly what he meant, but it made her worried about what Luke had said: I was going to let you take the Fleece .. once I was done with it.
Had he just been lying? She has learned with Kronos there was usually a plan within a plan.
The titan lord wasn't called the Crooked One for nothing. He had ways of getting people to do what he wanted without them ever realizing his true intentions.
Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with his paintball gun. A blue projectile splattered against one of the centaurs, hurling him backwards into the lake.
The centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave Tyson two thumbs up.
"Annabeth, Percy," Chiron said, "perhaps you two and Grover would go supervise Tyson and my cousins before they, ah, teach each other too many bad habits?"
Annabeth met his eyes. Some kind of understanding passed between them.
"Sure, Chiron." Annabeth said. "Come on, goat boy, Seaweed Brain."
"But I don't like paintball."
"Yes, you do." She hoisted Grover to his hooves and led him off towards the campfire.
"Ariana, I had a talk with Annabeth on the way here whilst you were asleep. A talk about the prophecy."
Uh-oh, she thought.
"It wasn't her fault." She said tiredly. "I made her tell me."
His eyes flickered with irritation. She was sure he was going to chew her out, but then his look turned to weariness. "Suppose I could not expect to keep it secret forever."
"So am I the one in the prophecy?"
Chiron tucked his bandages back into his pouch. "I wish I knew, Ariana. You're not yet sixteen. For now we must simply train you as best we can, and leave the future to the Fates. First things first you must learn to control these powers of yours. Children of Hades powers always exhaust them at first but over time the more you practice.."
"That's what it meant." Ariana said.
Chiron frowned. "That's what what meant?"
"Last summer. The omen from the Fates, when I saw them snip somebody's life string. I thought it meant I was going to die right away, but it's worse than that. It's got something to do with your prophecy. The death they foretold - it's going to happen when I'm sixteen."
Chiron's tail whisked nervously in the grass. "My deae, you can't be sure of that We don't even know if the prophecy is about you."
"But apart from me and Percy there's no other children on the Big Three and let's be so for real, Percy will die long before I do."
"That we know of."
"And Kronos is rising. He's going to destroy Mount Olympus!"
"He will try." Chiron agreed. "And Western Civilization along with it, if we don't stop him. But we will stop him. You will not be alone in that fight."
Ariana knew he was trying to make her feel better, but she remembered what Annabeth had told her.
It would come down to one hero. One decision that would save or destroy the West. And she felt sure the Fates had been giving her some kind of warning about that.
Something terrible was going to happen, either to her or to somebody she was close to.
"I'm just a kid, Chiron." She said miserably.
"What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?"
Chiron managed a smile." 'What good is one lousy hero?' Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."
He pulled an arrow from his quiver and turned the razor-sharp tip so it glinted in the firelight. "Celestial bronze, Ariana. An immortal weapon. What would happen if you shot this at a human?"
"Nothing." She said. "It would pass right through."
'That's right." he said. "Humans don't exist on the same level as the immortals. They can't even be hurt by our weapons. But you, Ariana - you are part god, part human. You live in both worlds. You can be harmed by both, and you can affect both. That's what makes heroes so special. You carry the hopes of humanity into the realm of the eternal. Monsters never die. They are reborn from the chaos and barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization, the very stuff that makes Kronos stronger. They must be defeated again and again, kept at bay.
Heroes embody that struggle. You fight the battles humanity must win, every generation, in order to stay human. Do you understand?"
"I ... I don't know."
"You must try, Ariana. Because whether or not you are the child of the prophecy, Kronos thinks you might be. And, after today, he will finally despair of turning you to his side. That is the only reason he hasn't killed you yet, you know. As soon as he's sure he can't use you, he will destroy you."
"You talk like you know him."
Chiron pursed his lips. "I do know him."
Ariana stared at him. She sometimes forgot just how old Chiron was. "Is that why Mr D blamed you when the tree was poisoned? Why you said some people don't trust you?"
"Indeed."
"But Chiron ... I mean, come on! Why would they think you'd ever betray the camp for Kronos?"
Chiron's eyes were deep brown, full of thousands of years of sadness. Then she realised.
"He's your father."