Finding their next ride - the one that finally took them out into the Sea of Monsters proper - ended up being surprisingly straightforward.
No, really.
It certainly could have gone worse, all things considered - but that didn't mean it was exactly a walk in the park, either.
Not after-
…
Well.
Not after the story about Evelyn Winchester's… everything came out to the one person in the world - worlds - who deserved and had more right to hear it than anybody else alive, and then some.
By the time that disaster of a conversation was over and done with, the air between the four of them wasn't just stifled with the weight of coiled, razor-sharp tension - it was actively choking on it and begging for the sweet release of death.
That, or cowering away from the threat of fiery immolation, which would have probably been on the table if Dan were any less restrained or even half as wild as someone looking from the outside in would have expected.
He wasn't, and Sairaorg would know, too.
Still, he had the good sense not to push when his best friend brushed past him and started marching down the far end of the port yard like he was trying to out-speedwalk his demons.
Or at least pretend to leave them in the dust.
Don't get him wrong here: he wanted to help, desperately, but he was smart enough to know that there was time and a place to press the issue... and smart to know this wasn't it, and to absolutely hate that fact, even when he was pretty much forced to roll with it.
"Right then."
Gleeson was clearly on the same page, because the satyr beat him to the punch by a split-second and put on a brave face - and by brave, Sairaorg meant hard-jawed and miserably stubborn.
That, and plain old miserable, but what else was new?
"Let's get this done."
He started off after Dan without another word, and Regulus snorted dryly at Sairaorg's side.
"Uppity little goat, isn't he? Or at least one that makes a good show of it - and would you look at that," His eyes tracked Dan lazily. "The sun-brat's finally shut up for once. Who knows which meddling god dolled out that miracle?"
Okay, no.
"Regulus?"
"What, other-brat?"
"Reg."
The living Longinus tilted his head his way, and Sairaorg gave him an even - and maybe slightly pleading - look.
"Don't, please." He glanced over at Dan and back. "Not now."
"..."
"..."
Regulus stared at him.
Sai matched it levelly and crossed his arms for good measure.
Sometimes, in between the spars and the poking and prodding here and there, it was easy to forget who Regulus was.
What he was.
The darndest thing was that, for having known him only a relatively short time all in all, he wasn't actually all that worried about the Nemean Lion being overly cruel when and where things could get messy.
Call it optimism, but from everything Sairaorg had seen and heard, being trapped in a sacred gear for a millennium or three had been one heck of an attitude adjustment - if he even needed one to begin with.
Plenty of apex predators out in the wild - magical or otherwise - weren't necessarily malicious.
They just existed, exactly as nature intended.
But that was way off point.
Eventually - a long second later, really - Regulus snorted and shook out his mane.
"Oh, spare me."
Then he up and padded away, but Sai had a feeling he'd gotten through to him anyway, and his lips almost curved up for a beat.
Good.
Now for the other thing they had to deal with: All the attention they were pulling in.
They weren't alone in the port yard, after all.
The satyrs were an obvious one.
Two dozen and change divided across the space around them, curly horns on full display and shaggy quarters underneath baggy, comfortable cargo shorts or whatever else they each felt like wearing, and all of them doing something or the other around the place.
Some were stacking crates off to the side. Others were fiddling with thick lines of rope and winding them into elaborate knots, and a handful were further up on the pier and mooring a few rickety row boats that looked like they'd been around since well before indoor plumbing was a thing.
There were even a couple more to his far right, playing a pair of mismatched reed pipes with some real skill and… apparently trying to serenade a potted plant.
Sairaorg blinked.
Was that a bonsai?
… Actually, never mind.
He wasn't going to ask. Not his circus
When he glanced off to his left, though, he saw another pair standing just a few feet away from the edge overlooking the water, arguing quietly - only these two weren't satyrs.
Not even close.
They looked like a pair of older girls at first, with hair that was both seafoam-white and blue-green in two different shades, eyes that glittered a little too brightly even with the sun as high in the sky as it was getting, and both of them radiated that vague, staticky feeling magic gave off when he wasn't looking too deep but still clocked onto it anyway.
Nymphs.
"East River - saltwater instead of freshwater," He heard Dan mutter under his breath up ahead, and he sounded about as emotive as talking roadkill - running on automatic and nothing else. "Nereids, not Naiads. Or maybe Oceanids?"
The two nymphs stopped arguing and looked over at them.
"I think they heard you."
Their brows furrowed in confusion, like they were staring at a jigsaw puzzle they didn't know what to do with - then they abruptly reared back and blanched dangerously.
"And we freaked them out."
"Did we?"
They did, clearly - or maybe the nymphs just spotted the giant golden lion standing somewhere off behind them, because one turned and leaped straight over the edge of the pier in one smooth dive, and the other dissolved into a salty breeze on the spot and drifted off into nothingness, right before their eyes.
…Honestly, fair.
It wasn't like they were the only ones getting all up in arms about them, either.
By the time he stepped up next to Dan, there was a whole crowd of satyrs beginning to form in a loose semi-circle around them.
Very loose, which wasn't all that surprising, because - again - Regulus but even Sairaorg was getting a double-take or three, coloured in with apprehension and all sorts of barely-leashed panic.
Some of them even brandished weapons their way: a club here, a pair of daggers there, a spear, an axe, and one particularly enterprising crusader was crouched at the knees and holding on to a pair of nunchucks like he meant business - clenched teeth, white knuckled grip and everything.
And then there were the whispers.
"Dear Pan-"
"It's looking at me-!"
"Demigod... and an Anathema-!?"
Frankly, it looked like the only reason they weren't either scattering or charging at them - for all the good that would do - was because of Gleeson, who was very deliberately standing about eight feet away from Dan and not looking anywhere in his direction.
Far enough not to press, but close enough to make it clear that he was with them
"Alright, enough."
Or that they were with him.
Dealer's choice.
"Gods, would you get a hold of yourselves?" the satyr grunted, crossing his arms and looking none too pleased to be in the spotlight. On the bright side, everyone else clammed right up in favor of staring at him incredulously. "And wipe those looks off your faces, you're embarrassing us all."
Oof.
Scathing.
Then a new voice piped up and broke the sudden silence.
"What's all this noise about!?"
The crowd of satyrs parted down the middle, and another one stepped up - he was a head taller than Gleeson but looking nearly the same age, with a scrappy beard, curving horns and a 'sunny day at the beach' type get-up just as unassumingly mortal-ish as the rest of them.
Right down to the beach shorts and the pretty, unrepentantly corny Hawaiian shirt.
"Hedge? That you?"
"Reed." Gleeson managed a smile - a grim, humorless one, but still. "Been a while."
"I'll say." Reed's eyes traced over him, and then they passed over to them, and he stilled like a deer in headlights. "And I'll ask."
"Thought you might."
"What in the Pit-!?"
"They're with me."
The other satyr's mouth snapped shut, and his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides erratically, but only for a moment.
"I figured," He grunted, in a tone so deadpan it was halfway buried in a shallow grave, "but that doesn't tell me anything, old friend."
"Isn't it obvious?" Gleeson tilted his head toward Dan, very pointedly. "Demigod, standing right there. I'll give you three guesses why, and the first two don't count."
Reed mulled over that answer for all of a second before his face scrunched up in distaste.
"Quest?"
"Quest."
"Damn."
"Like you wouldn't believe." Gleeson agreed dryly. "They need a ride. Passage, into the Sea Of Monsters."
"Come again?"
"You heard me."
"I'm not so sure I did."
Reed shook his head and briefly looked right at Sairaorg, before shifting his attention to Regulus, who 'yawned' lazily and flashed a maw of full teeth that could shave a decade off a human's lifespan with just a look.
Reed swallowed lightly, but credit where credit was due, because he didn't flinch back, and he didn't turn away too quickly.
"The demigod I understand, but the other two-"
"They're no trouble."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Do I look like I'm cracking a joke?"
"I wouldn't know. Looks were never your thing, Hedge. If you were any uglier, the gorgons would be out of a job."
"Oh, go eat a-" Gleeson cut himself off and inhaled deeply. "Not the time, Reed."
"I'm not playing around either." Reed shot back, dead serious all the way through.
"You're sailing that way yourself - another batch of fresh Searchers, I can tell-"
Searchers?
For Pan? Or other demigods?
"That's not the point, Hedge, and you know it. Quest or no, a monster with that kind of scent - whatever that is - and an Anathema-"
"If people keep calling him that to his face, I'm going to start getting offended." Dan cut in, almost conversationally, and everyone's attention snapped over to him - Sairaorg included. "And I'm self-aware enough to know that now is really not the time for anyone here to be ticking me off."
Crap.
He could've spoken up himself, but with how jumpy the company around him was, staying silent - for now - just seemed smarter.
The son of Apollon let that hang in the air for a minute, before smiling politely - which was a red flag if Sairaorg ever saw one - and shrugging.
"Just kidding." His friend held out a hand. "Daniel Winchester. Nice meeting you... whoever you are."
"...Reed Woodrow." The satyr took the offered hand and shook it gingerly. "And Winchester?"
He glanced at Gleeson, who was suddenly glaring at him urgently.
"As in-"
"Yes."
"-that Winchester."
"Yes."
Sai winced.
"Right then." Reed nodded and wisely moved right past that before turning back to Dan. "You keep dangerous company, kid."
Dan's smile got a little wider, and not even slightly more genuine.
"You have no idea." He threw a thumb over his shoulder. "That's Sairaorg. The lion is Regulus. Let's pretend they don't exist for a second and talk about that trip-"
The satyr took a step back.
"Hold your horses and hold 'em good, ankle-biter-"
"I'm taller than you. By over half a foot."
"-Yes, we're headed into the Sea of Monsters ourselves," Reed ignored the cheek. "But I haven't agreed to anything with you and yours yet."
"It's a quest, Reed." Gleeson cut in impatiently. "Are you going to turn away a demigod in need on a quest?"
"It's only smart to turn away trouble," Reed argued back, but the words suddenly sounded hesitant. "And even if we take you with us, we have to keep an eye on you- it's the principle of the thing - and we've got enough on our plates as it is."
"We can take care of ourselves."
"Can you?" Reed shifted back to Dan. "You're a half-blood, so I shouldn't have to talk to you about monsters and danger - and I'm not even going to mention your friends - but the Sea isn't like anything you've seen before."
"I've heard."
"Death has claws and teeth around every corner and under every wave there, and it only takes one wrong move-"
"It only takes one wrong move anywhere." Dan crossed his arms and stared, chin raised high. "We. Can take care. Of ourselves."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...Hedge?"
"...You heard him. They can take care of themselves-"
Damn straight.
"-and I'll even be there myself, just to make sure nothing goes off the rails."
And Sairaorg had figured that that was where things were going, even if he didn't particularly like it.
Needs must, and all that.
Dan must have already gotten on the same page, because he didn't say a word about it, and that was about as positive a reaction as Gleeson was likely to get for a good long while - and Reed?
That satyr was just as silent as he thought all of that over.
"…"
"…"
"...You're going to owe me for this. Big time."
"Just put it on my tab."
Frankly, Sai would have just offered to pay the man - they'd packed funds and emergency funds for a reason - but he wasn't sure they had to.
Not quite yet.
"And if anyone asks, I only let a demigod and an annoying old goat onboard the Gale. No one else, Hedge."
It was a demand, but it sounded wry, like he was digging his feet in just for the sake of it.
"You see anyone else around?"
"Hah. Fine." Reed straightened out slowly and sighed- like he was already preemptively regretting all his life choices - before clapping his hands together sharply. "I must be out of my mind, but fine. You're lucky it's a slow day today. Plenty of room on the ship."
Gleeson shot him a flat look.
"You're a Searcher and a dockworker, Reed. Every day's a slow day because there's never enough of us lining up to die stupid."
That actually got something close to half a laugh out of him.
"Ain't that the truth." Reed finally turned back to his dockworkers - who'd been watching the back and forth like a game of competitive ping-pong - and snapped his fingers impatiently. "Go on then. Back to work."
Some of them tried to protest, but he waved them off impatiently.
"But the monster and the-"
"Don't worry about them - if they were gonna eat us, they'd have started with Hedge, the ugly bleater."
Gleason rolled his eyes and huffed under his breath.
"There's still work to be done, even for those of you who aren't setting sail with the rest of us. We have a schedule to keep, and if we're not ready to hit the open water in a few hours, you'll all be in for a swim when I fling you overboard myself!"
That got some more grumbling, but they still ended up slowly dispersing, and then it was just the five of them left standing in place.
"And as for the rest of you," Reed tilted his head and gestured for them to follow him. "Come along then. I'll introduce you to the Gale."
Finally.
…
The Gale, as it turned out, was a sailboat.
Sairaorg didn't know what kind, exactly - caravel, galleon, something or the other closer or farther off from those marks - but it was large, about a hundred feet from bow to stern, with a wide oaken deck, two masts supporting its sails and the words 'The Brave Gale' painted around the back in deep blue with bronze accents.
The wood was scuffed and seastained here and there, the masts were a little weathered and there were a couple of spots that looked like they could have really used a fresh coat of paint or two, but for a ship that was probably two hundred years out of date and counting, it was almost pristine - and absolutely magical in some way.
He could effortlessly sense the faint hum of muted power coming off of it even before they stepped anywhere near it, subtle but deep-winding and undeniably there.
"A real beauty, isn't she?" Reed was proud as he led them up the creaking gangplank and onto the deck proper. "Not mine, of course - just borrowing her off a friend, but I'm still captain around these parts."
Gleeson raised a brow.
"A friend?"
Reed shrugged.
"A legacy - Her mother was a nereid, and her old man was a demigod who got it off his father on a quest a few decades back. Managed to hold on to it and pass it down when he was done, too."
That actually got Dan to blink and look back curiously.
"... An Olympian?"
Reed nodded.
"The Traveler."
"Ah."
Hermes, then - Sairaorg knew that much, easily.
"She doesn't need the Gale all that much herself, so she loans her out to me year-round. Helps out the Searchers who need it, and rakes in some nice drachma from all the passage and trade I run with her."
"Trade?"
"Sure, kid. Plenty of goods out in and across the sea that need finding and moving, and a lot of folks who pay fair and square to get their hands on it." Reed cracked a grin as Dan stared at him funny. "Surprised? Don't be - the world's a lot bigger than just Camp Half-Blood and the questing you god-born get up to."
Sai snorted, entirely on reflex, and Dan almost did the same.
"What?"
"Nothing." His friend looked away with a shrug. "I've just never been to Camp Half-Blood."
And that wasn't even the half of it.
"You've never..." Reed's brows furrowed in confusion, and he shot a quick look at Gleeson, who grunted and pinched the bridge of his nose in answer. "What? Then why-?"
"Don't ask. You won't get a straight answer anyway."
See, he wasn't wrong.
"...I'll take your word for it," Reed finally said, but he still gave Dan's back a long, considering look before shrugging it off. "We'll be ready to set sail in a couple of hours. There's not much any of you can help with there, so find a spot to sit tight and do just that - oh, and I hope you've got some way to keep yourselves entertained, because it'll take us at least a day and half to get to where we're going, and that's only if the wind spirits play nice and give us a push."
What?
"Seriously?" Sairaorg couldn't help it - he blurted the instinctive question out before he could even think it through. "That long?"
It was the first time he'd addressed Reed directly since he'd shown up, and the satyr startled back a step and half, which was telling even when he got ahold of himself quickly and answered back in a tone that was just a little wary and steady where it counted.
"Them's the breaks. It might even be worse than that, if the Fates will it, so keep your fingers crossed and hope for their mercy."
And that was that, apparently, because Reed wasted no more time talking to them after that.
He gave Sai and Dan another confused, careful look, nodded at Gleeson, skirted around Regulus like he was desperately focused on pretending he wasn't even there to begin with, and walked right back off the ship, barking orders at his crew and kicking up a racket before his hooves made it even halfway down the gangplank.
A moment passed - long and quiet and awkward in the worst, most uncomfortable way to date.
"....Fates and Mercy." Dan eventually huffed humorlessly, "There's a morbid joke somewhere in there - or a whole book's worth of'em."
The words were just this side of bitter.
"Dan..."
"What, Sai?"
"....Nothing." It wasn't the time to push that button yet. "A day and a half till we get there. Anything we can do to work around that?"
He was just making conversation - the answer was already obvious.
Dan didn't disappoint.
"No." He shot back, short and clipped. "We need to get to the edge of the Sea of Monsters at least before I can work my magic. I can try before that, but it might not work... and it might get attention, and you know what kind I mean."
The godly kind.
Sairaorg pulled a face.
"Yeah."
"Great. Glad we got that out of the way." Dan nodded and turned away again before marching off quietly. "If anyone needs me, I'll be there, doing... whatever."
The implied 'Leave me the hell alone' was so loud it was borderline deafening, and for a second, they all just watched him stalk off.
...
... This feeling?
This was the worst.
Surprisingly, it was Regulus that followed suit.
"I'm going to go take a nap." He declared and padded away in the opposite direction, mane fluttering in the breeze. "Wake me up when this quest gets interesting."
In the end, it was just Sairaorg and Gleeson left to mind their own business, and even he tapped out quickly, offering Sai something that might have generously been called a distracted nod before he followed Reed off the ship and back onto the dockyard proper.
Sairaorg was pretty much left to mind his own business, and that was about exactly as much fun as it sounded.
Less than three hours since they'd left Chiron, and this was where they were at.
...Yeah.
This quest was off to a wonderful start.
...
Casting off was... anticlimactic.
There was no big fuss about it - the troupe of Styrs setting out boarded after they were done stocking the cargo hold with crates and supplies out the wazoo, and a few hours before the sun went down, Reed's voice finally bellowed out again.
This time, it was a command.
"Clear the decks and man the sails, boys! Prepare to set sail!"
Fwoosh.
Instantly, the Gale's magic shifted.
Not sharply or dangerously, - Really, Sairaorg had to focus to feel it at all - but the change was there as the sails were unfurled and immediately filled with a pressurizing thump, the force of it making the lines go taut and the rigging creak in sync with them.
The deck groaned some more and the hull tilted to one side as the wind finished grabbing hold, and by the time the vibrations settled into a steady rhythm, they were already cutting forward through the water and leaving the pier behind.
Soon, it was just a quickly shrinking dot in the distance.
It was no surprise at all, but the Gale moved a lot faster than an ordinary sailboat of its size would have had any right to.
Nothing really impressive by their standards - not even halfway close - but it was worth mentioning.
Sairaorg sighed and took a deep breath, inhaling the salty air and letting the breeze blow his hair back a little.
Then, he settled in for the wait - and it was a wait worth mentioning.
The next couple of hours were a special kind of drag.
The Gale's crew ignored him and steered well clear of the spot Regulus had commandeered for his nap, Gleeson was below deck and keeping to himself, and Dan was...
On his mind.
Still, he put it off at first.
Tried to keep a distance, just to give him space.
Then the nagging in his head and the feeling of... not helplessness, exactly, but anxious concern in his gut started getting worse.
And worse.
And worse.
Listening to the satyrs chatter above and below deck didn't help, and the sound of the waves breaking against the Gale's bow started off soothing, and then turned round and round in his head until it was about as irritating as the ticking of a cuckoo clock just waiting to go off.
Swish, swash, shwish, swash, shwish, swash.
On and on it went.
He tried to distract himself with the book he'd pulled out of his storage band earlier in the morning and spent the better part of the afternoon trying to get through, just to pass the time, but that got increasingly more impossible with every page until he started outright considering the pros and cons of chucking the thing into the sea and being done with all the trouble.
Eventually, by the time the sun finally began to dip below the railing and darkness started seeping in across the horizon, Sairaorg was through waiting.
"Budge over."
Finding Dan wouldn't have been hard even if the ship were a hundred miles long and folded in on itself like an origami crane, because he was just about simmering with that distinctive brand of tightly leashed, sun-themed divinity.
It was a strange feeling.
Hard to describe, too. Not quite like magic - if magic was static, divinity was like... white noise.
Lots of stuff crammed into one package, and you couldn't truly tell what any of it was until all of it was practically exploding in your face.
He'd asked Chiron about it once, and the best he'd gotten was a sudden lecture that made some sort of sense... and also didn't, without the right experience.
"Demigods are not a species, Sairaorg - they are a phenomenon. Divine context filtered through a mortal perspective. No two are alike, and their place in the natural order you can feel through senjutsu is... significantly more 'negotiable' and 'spur of the moment' than that of ordinary mortals."
At the time, Sairaorg had just the vaguest idea - maybe - of what that was supposed to mean, and Chiron had just laughed and told him to read up on the topic and figure out the rest on his own time.
Helpful, that.
The important point was that sensing Dan with Senjutsu could get weird, sometimes.
That was why, after plopping down and bracing back along the stretch of railing he'd been hogging to himself, the first thing Sairaorg did was nudge him none too gently in the ribs with the edge of his book.
"Urgh." He snapped out of whatever trace he'd been drifting off into and glared at him in irritation. "Seriously?"
"Yep." Sai grinned unrepentantly before tapping his temple with his freed hand meaningfully. "Might want to tone that down. It's not too bad now, but if you leak any more power, you'll start freaking out the satyrs."
"I'm not leaking any power."
"Dude."
"What? I'm not."
"Your eyes are glowing."
That got him to blink.
"They are?"
They were - a faint gold shimmer, but they were hard to miss even in the orange glow of the fading sunlight.
"Yep."
"Crap."
He looked away and took a long, steadying breath, and the light dimmed, but it didn't die out entirely.
Sairaorg supposed that was the best either of them could hope for, given the circumstances.
At least they weren't purple, this time.
He went to say something else - start any kind of conversation, really, but Dan beat him to it.
"What's with the book?"
Sairaorg paused.
Dan didn't look at him - his gaze was focused on some spot just over the opposite railing, and he was very intently focused on it.
Which was... fine, he guessed.
"I picked it up from home, the last time I visited." He showed him the cover - an almost blank, drab red. "It's a history of my House and the rest of my kind, but with a lot less propaganda than you'd expect and a lot more of what I think is supposed to be philosophy on the margins of it all."
In between the propaganda it did include, of course.
"... Huh. Is it a good read?"
"More like a desperate one. I was bored." The devil shrugged and cracked another grin. "Now I'm even more bored."
"Fair." Was that a hint of amusement there? Progress! "Why do that to yourself anyway?"
Sai shrugged again.
"Told you - I picked it up from home on a whim. It's an old birthday gift, from Cousin Sirzechs."
"'Cousin Sir-?'" Dan stopped, and finally whipped around to look at him. "Seriously?"
Sairaorg raised a brow.
"What?"
"That Sirzechs."
"You know it."
"'The Destruction Of The Underworld' - That dude."
"The one and only."
It wasn't like this was supposed to be new information or anything - the two of them had talked about their extended family members before, even if only briefly, and for all that Sai could understand why name-dropping a Satan Super Devil could be a big deal, at this point it shouldn't be any more shocking than Dan's dad being Phoebus Apollon.
Or anything else about his literally otherworldly origins, really.
Everything was relative, in the end.
"I... okay." Dan ran a hand through his hair and blinked a couple more times. "Sometimes I forget... he gave you a book about philosophy?"
"It was an official gift - the kind nobles are expected to give and receive."
"Ah. So thoughtful, sophisticated, and high-class... and therefore about as fun as a pet rock with googly eyes glued onto one side."
"You're kidding, right?" Sairaorg scoffed in disbelief. "I'd take the rock any day."
Who wouldn't?
"...Touché."
"You bet."
The two managed to keep straight faces for another beat... and then they both started snickering under their breath.
Success!
By the time that petered out, Dan's shoulders had relaxed a fraction, and he tipped his back a little further against the railing as the Gale bobbed and swayed underneath them.
"Man, it's been a day."
That was one way to put it.
"It sure has."
"We took a detour spiced up with existential danger, met the King Of Knights and a wild hound, and then we hitched a ride with the geriatric street racers of doom." He counted each absurd milestone off on a finger. "Oh, and there was that bit where we accidentally invaded the home of an old man who might have also been a part-alien vampire of relatively unfathomable power... or something like that, at least."
"..."
"..."
"...I'm sorry, part what now?"
Dan actually laughed when he caught the bewildered look on his face.
"Yeah, I don't get any of it myself, and I don't have the bandwidth to try to explain the parts I can guess at. I told you that the place is bad news and that the city is about to be a hot spot for danger because of the you-know-what-"
That ritualistic war, he explained - the one with the wishing monkey's paw gizmo.
"- so let's keep it at that."
...Okay then.
"Ignoring that for now... how much danger are we talking about?" He asked, curious despite himself. "And are the mortals there going to be alright?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Dan was staring at him silently.
"What?"
He smiled.
"Nothing."
"Really, what?"
He smiled some more - and Sairaorg belatedly realized that it was the first genuine one he'd gotten from him in hours.
"I just think it's good of you to ask about the mortals to begin with, that's all. It's good of you. Very humane."
Oh.
"Ah..." He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I was just asking. It's not... a big thing."
That got Dan to grin.
"I know it isn't. It never is, but you do it anyway. That doesn't surprise me, because I know what kind of person you are, but considering where and what you come from... a lot of naysayers would be in for a surprise, if they cared enough to get to know you."
...
...Huh.
"I guess, maybe."
Naysayers?
That was a funny thought.
There was no shortage of people, forces, and even gods back home that despised devils on principle, and it wasn't as if the hate was undeserved.
Far from it, unfortunately.
His ancestors really had it coming.
"I still don't think it's a big deal, and it's not like it'll get me far with our biggest enemy." He smirked good-naturedly when Dan looked at him askance, pointed a finger up towards the darkening sky. "You know. Him. The One upstairs, with all the pigeons."
Angels.
And then something strange happened.
He was expecting a snort, and maybe a joke or two with that kind of opening.
Instead, Dan gave him another wry smile.
"What, like He's in any state to be making judgments about you?"
The devil took that in slowly... and frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Why was Dan saying that like Sairaorg was missing something obvious?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean?" Dan gave him an incredulous. "He's-"
And then, just like that, he froze.
Completely.
Absolute stillness
"Dan?"
"..."
"Dan?" Sairaorg pressed. "What's wrong?"
"...I never told you." His friend whispered quietly, then, louder, "Holy Olympus, I never told you! I never even told Chi- our teacher!"
His brows furrowed almost violently, and his eyes flickered with confusion and mounting incredulity.
"That doesn't make sense. Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why didn't I tell you? Why wouldn't I tell you? How even-!?"
And now Sairaorg was officially concerned.
"Tell us what?"
"I-" He cut himself off before he could even begin, and this time, it sounded like it took genuine effort not to finish the thought. "I'll explain later. It's just... not a conversation to be had away from home."
Whatever it was... it still had him reeling.
...And that wasn't concerning at all, was it?
That something about Him could get that sort of reaction out of Dan.
"I'll take your word for it."
Another impulse occurred to him right about then, and Sairaorg cleared his throat.
"And if you want... you can talk to me about anything else, too."
That got Dan's jaw to snap shut again, and his mind to snap back from whatever place it had cartwheeled off to.
The meaning behind the words was obvious, after all.
"You don't have to," Sai said quickly, resisting the urge to throw his hands up in surrender. "But... I'm here."
You're not alone, is what he meant to say.
The Sleeping Disease wasn't true death, but for a subjective eternity, it might as well have been.
Comparing suffering only compounds it... but still.
Losing a mother...
Sairaorg understood that pain, even if that might... no, would be coming to an end soon.
"I'm here." He strangled the phantom sensation of guilt welling up inside of him at once. "Whenever you need me to be."
"…"
"…"
"...Yeah. Thanks, Sai."
"...Anytime, Dan."
And then they let the long, carefully loaded - but not uncomfortable - silence stretch on.
...
That night and the day after it passed like the calm before the storm -all too literally, as it turned out, but they didn't know that going on.
Instead, Sairaorg and Dan spent the rest of the time on the Gale reading up on whatever material they'd thought to store up on while they were packing, and dozing off in shifts to let the hours fly by faster.
What?
It's not like they were swimming in options to banish the boredom, and you could only walk up and down the same deck a couple dozen times before you started to go stir-crazy.
The sea shanty's the other satyrs whipped out were fun, though.
At least at first.
Their quest mates didn't have it any better, from the looks of things.
Gleeson just kept to himself for the rest of the trip, and Regulus flat out hadn't woken up since he'd gone under a day and a half ago, except for the occasional warning growl he let rip whenever one of the satyrs strayed a little too close to his patch of the deck.
The last poor schmuck jumped so far up in bleating terror he actually wound up tipping overboard, and then they had to fish him out with a coil of rope and a lot of yelling.
To absolutely no one's surprise, that little fiasco didn't exactly endear them to the rest of the crew... even if a couple of them were definitely sniggering after the fact.
Dan was low-key convinced Regulus had done it on purpose, just for the laughs, and Sairaorg… had no comments.
Mostly.
"Really, Reg?"
"Grrr."
"I know you're not asleep. buddy."
"Grrrrrr."
"Yeah, yeah. You big old cat."
"Grrrrrrrrr."
All in all?
It wasn't a terrible trip.
And then the third day dawned bright and early - or just early, actually.
Bright?
Not so much.
The sky started off cloudy, fighting off the sunlight right from the start.
"A few hours left." Reed's voice sounded out from somewhere up on the quarterdeck, and Sai and Dan exchanged a careful look. "Keep your eyes peeled and your arms ready, boys. I don't like this weather!"
He was right not to.
The longer they kept to their course, the darker the cover got, all low and rolling and heavy in a downright glacial way.
The air cooled down to match, and the wind picked up piece by piece, slowly at first, just enough to ripple the surface of the ocean and give the hissing waves an extra kick, but it ramped up over time until it felt like the Gale was rocking back and forth with every icy, sail-flapping gust - and there were plenty of them to go around.
The crew tightened lines until the masts started creaking ominously, but it only helped in degrees, and the smell of salt from the increasingly wild sea-spray was slowly tinted with something that was one part ozone, and one part...
...
Well, he didn't know what, but it was sharp and sickly sweet, like rotten fruit that had been left to bake out in the sun.
Nasty.
That wasn't the worst of it, of course.
They heard it, before they saw them - a grinding, deafening rupture of a sound that seemed to tear the air in half and do its level best to pop their collective eardrums from the inside out, like the burst of a hundred furious rockslides going off all at once.
"There!" One of the satyrs cried out. "Dead ahead!"
They emerged out in the distance, jutting high out above a cloud of low-hanging mist that was suddenly just there - two colossal, jagged faces of brutally weathered stone hundreds of feet tall and even wider at the base, with enormous patches of colored moss and what looked like deeply encrusted barnacles running up and down their surfaces without rhyme or any kind of reason at all.
And those were on the tamer side - As far as his eyes could see, there were entire veins of strange, cancerous growths and mottled black reeds criss-crossing across them in every other direction, pulsing and quivering like they were following the rhythm of a beating heart, and one look at them was enough to make Sai's skin crawl.
They all felt and moved like they were alive - and they almost certainly were in some way - but a part of it was a trick, almost.
It wasn't just the growths moving in real time: the cliffs were too.
Not dramatically - not even very quickly, right that second - but once you clocked the unnerving, shuddering tremors, they were impossible to miss.
And so was the narrow, shadowed passage nestled in between them.
"The Symplegades," Dan muttered at his side, standing just as straight and ready as he was. "The clashing rocks. So named because they do just that."
Symplegades.
'Do look out for our brother'
They had talked about the witches' warning, yesterday, but only briefly.
"Any guesses who-?"
"That's our way in!" Reed's yell cut him off before he could finish getting the question out. "And believe me, you don't want to see what'll happen to us if we mess it up, so stand ready! On my command!"
They didn't have to wait for long.
A minute passed, and the rhythm of the Sympeglades' shuddering changed.
At first, it seemed to falter, like they were losing their stride... and then it kicked right back up again with an abrupt, violent lurch that had both ridiculous structures heaving in full view of the Gale, and in a way that almost hurt to look at.
"Ready!"
If the word had come even a second later, it would have been drowned out by the cataclysmic shriek of noise that sounded out as the cliffs began to tip into one another at speed, the water surging in between them right until the moment of impact came.
CRRRAAAKKK.
Air parted, pressure burst like bone-rattling thunder, and a spray of water launched up and out for hundreds of feet - enough that the Gale heaved back on the surging waves, Sai had to brace on instinct and Dan was forced to leap up and intercept one of the satyrs before he could go flying off the ship entirely.
It might have even been the same guy from before.
"NOW!" Reed roared. "FULL SPEED AHEAD!"
Nobody argued the point - The Gale was sailing full-tilt ahead even before the Sympeglades started parting again, the towering spires splitting with another shower of murky water and an eerie, torture exhaled of foul-smelling air.
In less than thirty seconds, they shot into the yawning gap as fast as the sea would allow.
The sound went dull at once, and the mist seemed to close in behind them. Someone gagged right from the start, and Sairaorg couldn't blame them - in the dark between the rock faces, the scent of rot was overwhelmingly worse than before, and it only grew sharper and more foul by the nerve-wracking second until it just about burned, all on its own.
The pressure followed its lead, spiraling up when the hull scraped against fanged barnacles and the rigging bounced off jagged stone shelves, sending broken pebbles and debris raining down onto the deck. The rubbery growths kept writhing on either side of the Gale, too, like they could feel them passing through and were trying to reach out.
It was....
Stomach-turning didn't do it justice, but Sai didn't even think about turning away.
All of his senses were razor-sharp, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Keep going!" Reed kept at it, and his voice echoed oddly over the mist. "We've almost crossed through! Row harder!"
The end of the tunnel was closer now, light seeping in from a spot just a little ways away, and...
And....
CREEEE...
The Sympeglades shifted, preparing to slam shut again... but this time, it was only mildly horrifying, on account of the fact that they'd already passed through.
The Gale had sailed right past the hulking stone arch where the two spires met and shadows underneath them, and passed right back out into open water and shrouded sunlight.
A wave of... not quite magic, but something washed over the ship as it did, directionless and non-threatening, and that was that.
No last-minute scramble, and no sudden twists.
Nothing.
They'd officially made it into the Sea of Monsters.
...
...
...
Sairaorg didn't buy it.
"Okay, there's no way it was that easy." Dan beat him to it by a second and scoffed on the spot."Not a chance. We aren't that lucky."
"Nope."
Life was never that easy.
Neither of them lowered their guards, even when the rest of the crew deflated in relief around them.
Someone even laughed, and Sairaorg spotted Reed and Gleeson finally stepping off the quarterdeck and making their way over.
"That attitude won't get any of you far, not around these parts. Plenty of danger around, so just thank the gods-"
Regulus stirred.
"HOLD ON!" "LOOK OUT!"
They felt it coming a split-second before it hit - danger, sharp and blaring.
The warning was instinctive, but it didn't help as something fast and furious and absolutely enormous suddenly just... popped into existence somewhere beneath the Gale, and came howling right up.
THOOM.
The ship jumped.
There was no other word for it - Over a hundred fifty metric tons of creaking oak and cargo achieved sudden lift-off, rising twenty feet up and off the roiling surface with an impact that was almost painfully cartoonish and absolutely terrifying for people who couldn't fly.
On the bright side, they came back down again.
Somehow.
On the not-so-bright side, they came back down again.
The Gale fell.
Satyrs howled.
Reed screamed.
Gleeson cursed like a professional sailor, and he was one of the few people here who very distinctly wasn't.
The landing rocked them all, and relentless, merciless saltwater rushed in as the ship dipped low and got doused by the oncoming tide.
Sairaorg didn't flinch, wings unfurled an instant before impact.
"A hundred bucks says that was the brother."
Dan snorted, holding onto the rigging with one hand and raising Serpent's Downfall in the other, the tip sizzling as the heat evaporated stray water droplets on contact.
"Suckers bet."
"Someone," Regulus growled from his spot behind them - he hadn't even moved, despite the water getting to him too. "Is going to die horribly for this."
Sairaorg heartily agreed.
"We'll get right on it."
He could sense the monster under the waves - something utterly enormous and bigger than the ship to the point of absurdity, acting up far below them.
He could also feel its presence seeping out like a storm, stirring up the waves, charging up the air, and darkening even the clouds in the sky until they started sparking and rumbling with nascent thunder.
"Dan? You feel that?"
"I taste that."
Fair enough.
The ship rocked again as the growing hurricane raged.
"What the hell is this thing?"
"The Graeae called it a brother."
"So?"
"They are the daughters of the Tyrant of the Sea and the Krataiis, and even though those two spawned enough monsters to fill a football stadium, there's only two male beasts I can name off the top of my head. It's either Skolopendra - an enormous monster shrimp-"
The thing under the ship shifted and finally began to move up.
"Or?"
Dan laughed, in that special way people do when things go so far off the rails they just can't help but find them hilarious.
In his hand, Serpent's Downfall seemed to burn with fiery anticipation.
"Cetus."
The thing erupted out there in the distance, and roared like the horn that sounds at the end of the world.
"The Beast of Andromeda, and the first and oldest of all Greek Sea Dragons."
...
...
...
...
...
...
He laughed too - he couldn't help it either.
Even when the Sympeglades clashed again, and the resulting surge nearly capsized the Gale, he couldn't stop himself.
This was just their speed.
Even at a distance, Cetus towered over and out-scaled the ship by at least a factor of five, and waves broke against his scaled, serpentine hide like polite suggestions.
His head was long and skeletal, horned and shaped almost like a crocodile's, but stretched disproportionately, with two titanic slitted eyes on either side of it and about half a dozen smaller ones surrounding each of them like the little numbers on a clock's dial.
Two flat, bloated arms stuck out unevenly from his coils, tipped with claws taller than Sairaorg and Dan put together, and more sinuous tentacles than anybody would care to count, all of them lancing out and thrashing wildly through both air and water like they had a mind of their own.
To cap the horror show off, when he turned to glare at the Gale - at them, standing on the deck - all of his eyes gleamed with murderous malice, and he unhinged a maw that was just endless teeth stacked between two uneven jaws and filled with brine and bubbling, oozing slime.
The second roar, of course, didn't even warrant mentioning, even though it could have stripped the skin of lesser mortals at range.
Most of the satyrs stopped breathing.
Reed and Gleeson went deathly quiet and stayed that way.
Somebody might have even started crying.
"Weak." Was Regulus's disgusted contribution "Dragons, honestly."
Sai didn't respond - he was still laughing, right up and until Dan jumped in next to him.
Even then, it took a couple seconds for them to bell themselves together, right as the storm howling around them seemed to reach its zenith.
"Shall we?"
"Let's. I have some stuff I need to work through."
A burst of light, and both of their armors materialized around them.
Then-
Boom.
One second, they were on the Gale.
On next, Sairaorg had grabbed his friend by the strap of his chest-plate and hurled them both off the ship with a single flap of his wings, so fast that the air distorted and cracked like thunder behind them.
After all, Dan couldn't fly without his divine thaumaturgy - the flashy kind, at least.
No problem.
Sairaorg reared back in mid-air, and then he flung the son of Apollon forward like a ballistic golden comet.
Cetus's frame seemed to pull back in something that might have been confused shock, but the dragon didn't have anything more than a beat to acknowledge the insect of a demigod flying towards it before Dan was already there, soaring over some thirty grasping tentacles and slamming right up on top of his head in an impact he actually felt.
Half a dozen eyes rolled up to glare at him, and the Beast of Andromeda rumbled in scorned outrage - right up until Dan barred his teeth, twirled Serpent's Downfall in his grip, and savagely spiked it halfway down through bone plate and the first layer of his scales.
By size alone, it should have been as effective as a mosquito bite - if even that.
Unfortunately, Serpent's Downfall wasn't just a spear.
It was a conceptual dragon-slaying armament, and the moment the tip of the blade pierced into flesh, Cetus howled.
His colossal body surged up, trying to dislodge the gnat bringing him pain, and the growing hurricane kicked up twenty notches as fire blazed through his skull and half the scales across it, lighting them up with a golden-orange glow.
As though he were burning from the inside out.
Tentacles distended from his lower body, warping upwards to try and rip the demigod off his head, but Sairaorg was having none of that.
After all, his gauntlets had anti-dragon properties, too.
"I don't think so!"
He drove into the dragon's chest with the full force of his armored, Touki-clad fist, tipping the monster back from the collision, and - with a screech like the sound of reinforced steel caving inwards - buried his entire arm into its hide, right up past the elbow.
Then he detonated the power he'd charged up in his fist.
Whoom.
Cetus didn't snarl, this time.
Instead, his lower body seized, buckling from the sheer force despite its outrageous size. A good chunk of its scales just blasted off, and the wound Sairaorg had made into it exploded with black sludge and liquified gore, splattering him from head to toe.
Disgusting, but he could be grossed out later, because the dragon wasn't out for the count yet.
Instead, it went berserk.
The winds roared with his rage, stirring up cataclysmic waves with every wild surge. Lightning danced across the thunder clouds, louder and louder with every burst, before striking out at everything - even them.
Light momentarily blinded him, and Sairaorg tasted ozone...
Then it happened again.
And again.
And again.
Four bolts struck him in quick succession...and felt nothing.
He might not be fast enough to see them coming - yet - but between the touki and the armor, they didn't so much as phase him.
Dan was the same.
His friend hadn't even flinched, gleefully driving his spear down even as its flames billowed up and outwards, scorching any stray tentacles trying to swipe him off Cetus's head.
The dragon didn't give up.
It kept at it, bucking and howling bloody vengeance, simultaneously trying to swat them out of the air and slicing forwards, aiming for the bucking Gale - or at least it tried to.
A glint of a different shade of gold in the distance was its own warning.
Their only warning, too.
Then Regulus unhinged his maw and roared.
Sound exploded out, and a wave of all-mighty pressure slapped the dragon, Sairaorg, and Dan away like the hand of an angry god.
Even the storm was partly blown away, and them with it.
"YOU DAMNED KILL-STEALER!" Dan yelled, careening off Cetus's head from the force of it. "I'ma kill him!"
Sairaorg grabbed him before a tentacle could wrap around him, and swung a palm out to sever it with a blade of razor-sharp air, ignoring the explosion shower of mangled flesh and black ichor that followed.
"Kill the dragon first!"
"I'm getting to it! Throw me!"
He swung him into the air, and Dan sailed up, right back up to Cetus's head.
Then he surged for his spear, yanked it out brutally and leaped right back up again, soaring higher and higher until he was a flickering dot above the cloud cover.
Sai's was a split-second thing, and then Dan yelled down at him, even as he kept rising.
Even the endless thunder couldn't drown out the words.
"Now or never! We're doing the thing!"
...
...Oh.
Oh, hell yes.
"Ready!"
That was all it took.
Fwoosh.
Fire seared across the heavens, and a ghostly, fiery figure formed out of it - great billowing wings, a serpentine body with four crimson-scaled limbs, and a tail long enough to wrap around the Gale four times over.
"Remember what you are,"
Dan's voice thundered out again, and a second sun lit up in the heart of the storm above.
Sairaorg, for his part, just threw his arms up and focused, pouring crackling Touki out and up above in a furious, lancing stream that had the figment of a dragon slowly taking shape and swelling in size, by orders of magnitude.
In no time flat, it was bigger than even Cetus, and in mere seconds, the heat it gave off enough to burn all the moisture out of the air.
On the Gale, breaths seized, jaws dropped, and worldview shattered... all while a lion yawned in boredom.
The Beast of Andromeda saw all of this, and finally began to radiate something other than malicious hate.
Fear.
Good.
This was it - the one 'spell' Sai and Dan could both perform together, using his spear's nature as a base.
And they'd only figured it out in training, a couple of weeks ago, by accident.
Funny how life works out.
"And slay the foul serpent!"
It took the form of an enormous draconic avatar, with a glowing white-blue heart at its core.
Dan, with Serpent's downfall in his grip.
Time to finish this.
Down below, Cetus let rip its last battle cry, and hurled itself up with all the strength it could muster.
Up above, the devil and the demigod - the damned and the divine - did the same, swung down their arms, and a second dragon descended.
""DRAGON'S DOWNFALL!""
The world dissolved into flame and fury, the air itself ignited, and a bellowing death throe echoed out over the burning horizon.
...
Somewhere, well out in the distance, a pair of eyes shrouded in Mist snapped open, and narrowed incredulously.
"What the Tartarus was that?"
...
Cetus, a monster of mythological monstrosity and barbarity: Exists
Dan and Sai: LESSSS GOOOOO!
The Satyrs, watching it all go down:
As always, leave your comments and ideas, and if you don't like it, please be courteous.