"You'd think he'd run out of rocks," Percy muttered.
"Swim for it!" Y/N yelled. He and Clarisse plunged into the surf. Annabeth hung onto Y/N's neck and tried to paddle with one hand, the wet Fleece weighing her down. Grover tried to support her. But the monster's attention wasn't on the Fleece.
"You, young Cyclops!" Polyphemus roared. "Traitor to your kind!"
Tyson froze. "Don't listen to him!" Percy pleaded. "Come on." He pulled Tyson's arm, but he might as well have been pulling a mountain.
Tyson turned and faced the older Cyclops. "I am not a traitor." He frowned.
"You serve mortals!" Polyphemus shouted. "Thieving humans!"
Polyphemus threw his first boulder. Tyson swatted it aside with his fist. "Not a traitor," Tyson said. "And you are not my kind."
"Death or victory!" Polyphemus charged into the surf, but his foot was wounded. He immediately stumbled and fell on his face. Hehe started to get up again, spitting salt water and growling.
"Percy!" Y/N yelled. "Come on!" They were almost on the ship with the Fleece.
"Go," Tyson told him. "I will hold Big Ugly."
"No! He'll kill you." Percy said. "We'll fight him together."
"Together," Tyson agreed. Percy drew his sword. Polyphemus advanced carefully, limping worse than ever. But there was nothing wrong with his throwing arm. He chucked his second boulder. Percy dove to one side, but he still would've been squashed if Tyson's fist hadn't blasted the rock to rubble.
Percy willed the sea to rise. A twenty-foot wave surged up, lifting him on its crest. He rode toward the Cyclops and kicked him in the eye, leaping over his head as the water blasted him onto the beach.
"Destroy you!" Polyphemus spluttered. "Fleece stealer!"
"You stole the Fleece!" Percy yelled. "You've been using it to lure satyrs to their deaths!"
"So? Satyrs good eating!" The giant shouted.
"The Fleece should be used to heal! It belongs to the children of the gods!"
"I am a child of the gods!" Polyphemus swiped at him, but Percy sidestepped. "Father Poseidon, curse this thief!" He was blinking hard now, like he could barely see.
"Poseidon won't curse me," Percy said, backing up as the Cyclops grabbed air. "I'm his son, too. He won't play favorites."
Polyphemus roared. He ripped an olive tree out of the side of the cliff and smashed it where he'd been standing a moment before.
"Humans not the same! Nasty, tricky, lying!"
Y/N and Grover were helping Annabeth aboard the ship. Clarisse was waving frantically at Percy, telling him to come on. Tyson worked his way around Polyphemus, trying to get behind him.
"Young one!" the older Cyclops called. "Where are you? Help me!"
Tyson stopped. "You weren't raised right!"
Polyphemus wailed, shaking his olive tree club. "Poor orphaned brother! Help me!"
No one moved. No sound but the ocean and Percy's own heartbeat. Then Tyson stepped forward, raising his hands defensively. "Don't fight, Cyclops brother. Put down the..."
Polyphemus spun toward hiPs voice. "Tyson!" Percy shouted.
The tree struck him with such force it would've flattened anybody into a paper thin demigod pancake. Tyson flew backward, plowing a trench in the sand. Polyphemus charged after him, but percy shouted, "No!" and lunged as far as he could with Riptide.
"Blaaaaah!" Polyphemus bleated just like his sheep, and swung at Percy with his tree. He dove, but still got raked across the back by a dozen jagged branches. Polyphemus swung the tree again, but this time Percy was ready. He grabbed a branch as it passed, ignoring the pain in his hands asheI was jerked skyward, and let the Cyclops lift him into the air. At the top of the arc, Percy let go and fell straight against the giant's face, landing with both feet on his already damaged eye.
Polyphemus yowled in pain. Tyson tackled him, pulling him down. Percy landed next to them, sword in hand, within striking distance of the monster's heart. He locked eyes with Tyson.
"Let him go," Percy said. "Run."
With one last mighty effort, Tyson pushed the cursing older Cyclops away, and they sprinted for the surf. "I will smash you," Polyphemus yelled, doubling over in pain. His enormous hands cupped over his eye.
Tyson and Percy plunged into the waves. "Where are you?" Polyphemus screamed. He picked up his tree club and threw it into the water. It splashed off to our right.
Percy summoned up a current to carry them, and started gaining speed. Clarisse shouted from the deck, "Yeah, Jackson! In your face, Cyclops!"
'Shut up' Percy thought angrily.
"Rarrr!" Polyphemus picked up a boulder. He threw it toward the sound of Clarisse's voice, but it fell short, narrowly missing Tyson and Percy.
"Yeah, yeah!" Clarisse taunted. "You throw like a wimp! Teach you to try marrying me, you idiot!"
"Clarisse!" Y/N yelled. "Shhhhhh!"
Too late. Polyphemus threw another boulder, and this time Percy watched helplessly as it sailed over his head and crashed through the hull of the Queen Anne's Revenge. The Queen Anne's Revenge creaked and groaned and leaned forward like it was going down a playground slide.
Percy cursed, willing the sea to push him faster, but the ship's masts were already going under. "Dive!" Percy told Tyson.
.
.
.
They were sinking fast, trying to swim, without luck, in the bubbly trail of the ship's wreckage. Y/N and Clarisse were strong swimmers, but even they wasn't making any progress. Grover frantically kicked with his hooves. Annabeth was hanging on to the Fleece, which flashed in the water like a wave of new pennies.
Percy swam toward them, trying to pull them out. Worse, pieces of timber were swirling around them; none of his power with water would help if he got whacked on the head by a beam.
"We need help," Percy thought.
"Yes," Tyson's voice, loud and clear in his head.
Percy looked over at him, startled.
"Rainbow," Tyson said.
Percy nodded, then closed his eyes and concentrated, adding his voice to Tyson's:
RAINBOW! We need you!
Immediately, shapes shimmered in the darkness below. They looked like three horses with fishtails, galloping upward faster than dolphins. Rainbow and his friends glanced in their direction and seemed to read Percy and Tyson's thoughts. They whisked into the wreckage, and a moment later burst upward in a cloud of bubbles, with Grover, Annabeth, Y/N, and Clarisse each clinging to the neck of a hippocampus.
Rainbow, the largest, had Clarisse. He raced over and allowed Tyson to grab hold of his mane. His friend who bore Grover did the same for Percy. A larger Hippocampus carried Y/N and Annabeth, who still held the fleece.
They broke the surface of the water and raced away from Polyphemus's island. Behind them, the Cyclops roared in triumph, "I did it! I finally sank Nobody!"
They skimmed across the sea as the island shrank to a dot and then disappeared. "Did it," Annabeth muttered in exhaustion. "We..."
She slumped against the neck of the hippocampus and instantly fell asleep.
Y/N's body ached. He didn't know where they were going. He just propped up Annabeth so she wm
"You're a genius," he told Annabeth quietly. Then he put his head against the Fleece and fell asleep.