When people spoke of Kassandra in the future to come, she hoped that they mentioned the crap show that was this quest, hoped that they spoke of the fourteen-year-olds that had everything and nothing to lose as they went to face a legendary cyclops in order to retrieve the golden fleece.

She hoped that they didn't forget the demigod that she was from the beginning in replacement of the demigod that she was going to become -- because Kassandra was going to be one of the best, spoken of for years to come like both Shakespear and Achilles alike, by mortal, god, and everything in between.

That, or she was going to disappear off the face of the earth on purpose or by accident and they were going to wonder what happened to her, what could have been, and mourn her gods-damned loss

That, however, had nothing to say about the anxious sort of antsy feeling that came over her as they got to the island. (They were at the right island for sure, Percy had confirmed, sharing with her his ability to know these things while at sea and the details of dreams that he was able to tell her. It had proven insightful as she began to create a mental image in her mind of what they would be up against.)

In the meadow at the base of the ravine, several dozen sheep were milling around. They looked peaceful enough, but they were huge -- the size of hippos. Just past them was a path that led up into the hills. At the top of the path, near the edge of the canyon, was the massive oak tree Percy had described from his dreams. Something gold glittered in its branches.

Her breath caught at the sight of the Fleece.

"This is too easy," Percy said. "We could just hike up there and take it?"

That's when a deer emerged from the bushes. It trotted into the meadow, probably looking for grass to eat, when the sheep all bleated at once and rushed the animal. It happened so fast that the deer stumbled and was lost in a sea of wool and trampling hooves.

Grass and tufts of fur flew into the air.

A second later the sheep all moved away, back to their regular peaceful wanderings. Where the deer had been was a pile of clean white bones.

"You jinxed it," Kass muttered bitterly, trying to calculate the odds of getting there and grabbing it before she was caught. "You think they'll make much noise if I just pick them off one at a time?"

"I think there would be some kind of warning," Annabeth said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't risk it or waste the arrows."

"Oh, the arrows come back after a bit. Chiron told me that it just belongs to the Apollo cabin for whoever needs it most."

"I've seen it displayed at the Big House," Annabeth comments, nodding to the weapon appreciatively. "I'm not surprised that he would sneak it out and bring it to you."

Kass blinks. "How did he sneak it out?" she questions.

Annabeth freezes.

"Not the time to ask questions. Let's go," Percy says, motioning to the lifeboat.

Together, they collect themselves and climb aboard, rowing to the cliff face that was about the same difficulty as the lava wall.

They went one at a time, Kassandra pulling up the rear with ease, knowing that she had the upper body strength to hold on for as long as she needed to.

They only died nearly six or seven times, more if you counted each individual moment when one would slip and cause a trickle effect like Percy nearly falling and kicking her off the cliff face (or when Annabeth caught him in the face and he slipped soon after bringing her nearly fall down).

Kassandra had, of course, been stepped on many times that her fingers were beginning to protest bringing her to grab onto Percy's leg a few times as she began to slip. He didn't seem to mind that much.

Finally, when they managed to crawl their way to the top, she sprawls across the rock.

"Ugh," Percy said.

"Ouch," moaned Annabeth.

"My fingers," Kassandra whined.

"Garrr!" bellowed another voice.

She flinched, nearly jumping out of her skin as she short into a sitting position only to realize how narrow a ledge they were on and nearly topple off the side once more. "Oh Hades," she muttered.

The ledge dropped off on the opposite side, falling sharply to the cyclops lair.

"You're a feisty one!" A deep voice spoke.

"Challenge me!" Clarisse cried out, there was no doubt that is was her. Kassandra finds herself moving as close to the edge as she dared. "Give me back my sword and I'll fight you!"

The monster roared with laughter.

Below stood Polyphemus and a satyr, Grover she suspected, in a wedding dress. Clarisse was tied up, hanging upside down, over a pot of boiling water. If she could find a way to move the water, she would be able to cut Clarisse down.

"From how far can you control water?" she asks Percy, pointing to the pot.

He looks over, squinting. "It's no use just yet. We're too far to do anything else after and it'll only make him angry."

"Even if we scald him?" She breathes, a dark sort of glee bubbling in her chest.

"Hmm," Polyphemus pondered. "Eat loudmouth girl now or wait for wedding feast? What does bride think?"

He turned to Grover who backed up and almost tripped over his bridal train. "Oh, um, I'm not hungry right now, dear. Perhaps—"

"Did you say bride?" Clarisse demanded. "Who— Grover?"

Annabeth jerked, muttering, "Shut up. She has to shut up."

Polyphemus glowered. "What 'Grover'?"

Her flute is shoved into her hands, Annabeth motioning desperately, and her answering nod is shaky as she agrees — following along with the hasty plan even if it might drain her a bit before the actual fight (maybe she could sneak a bit of ambrosia, just a crumb, to get her up to top form. It might not kill her if it's just a taste). 

Kassandra plays a soft whistling tune, a gentle thing as if she's whispering the start of the song. She works to block out the sound of Clarisse's voice, to keep her dangerous words silent with the same song that she had played for them on that first day. Debussy's Syrinx is haunting, barely-there as she controls the noise, and she tries to keep from getting out of control.

Lose control and the music would whisk her away and Kassandra didn't want to play with emotion, she didn't want to play to feel or hurt with a flute made from celestial bronze, forged into a weapon that drained her energy and harmed others — she wanted to silence and silence she did.

She couldn't hear Annabeth or Percy as they told her to stop, shaking her until they had to pull the instrument from her hands.

Kassandra swore that she wasn't going to try that again so soon. (She'll just go all-natural affinity for sound for now. Wouldn't it be funny to kill monsters with a song on her tongue, a tune pulling from her throat as she cut through them with arrow point and a sharp twist of a dagger?)

(Wouldn't it be fun to explain to her siblings that she blew up a couple of sirens and then nearly swayed herself off a cliff while trying to deceive a cyclops? That the beauty of music, the dazzling songs that she could play, were a danger to fear?)

(Wouldn't it be better to learn to fight with a deadly whistle as Will could, a sharp breath that had people dazed and stunned instead of relying on a flute?

Even if that flute oddly made her feel like Orpheus, an extension of herself just as her bow and arrow wet?)

Blinking the daze away, she glanced down to the cave below. Clarisse was quiet as Grover tried to persuade the cyclops from eating her still.

"Did it work?" She asks.

"Yeah, it was amazing," Percy breathes. "She just stopped talking but it was clear that she was trying to make some sort of sound. You should do that more often."

She scowls at the boy.

"We're pretty sure that she stopped trying to talk all at once when she heard the music playing toward the end," Annabeth told her. "We had to stop you before Polyphemus noticed as well."

"What's happening then?" she asks as they back away. 

"Grover convinced him to roast her instead of boil. He had him go out in search of mangoes."

"Mangoes?" she deadpanned.

"Don't worry about it," Annabeth tells her. "We should try and find a way to get in there."

"There's no way that we're moving that boulder," she comments, judging the inside wall of the cave that she could still see. "And I wouldn't suggest climbing down as a first option."

"Trickery," Annabeth decided. "We can't beat him by force, so we'll have to use trickery."

"Okay," Percy said. "What trick?'

"I haven't figured that part out yet."

"Great."

"Polyphemus will have to move the rock to let the sheep inside," Annabeth says, thinking aloud.

"At sunset," Percy drawls, anxious energy making Kass antsy. "When he'll marry Grover."

"And eat Clarisse," she tacks on instinctively. A beat later, she adds, "It's almost sunset."

It's almost shocking that she knows that little detail so well, that it's instinctual that she would know the position of the sun. She would deny that vehemently.

"I could get inside," Annabeth said, "invisibly."

"What about us?" she asks, glancing at Percy.

"The sheep," Annabeth mused. She gave then a sly look that made her stomach drop. "How much do you like sheep?"

Kassandra did not, in fact, like sheep. She hated them if she was being honest and would swear never to touch wool again after this because she was going to be traumatized.

The underside of sheep smelled terrible like a wet sweater that dragged through the mud and dried in the sun a couple of times over just to ensure that the scent was stuck there forever.

"Daughter of Athena my ass," she mutters bitterly, head tilted to the side with eyes clenched tight. "This is the worst idea."

"It's not that bad," Annabeth whispers near her and had it not been for the way her fists were curled into the wool and legs locked, she might have accidentally let go. "You would have had us scale down the other side of the ledge."

"Yes!" she hissed. "We could have slipped in, freed everyone, and then wait for him to move the boulder and slip out."

"That- that might have worked actually," she muttered. "Why didn't you mention it earlier?"

"Because I trusted in your plan," she quips back, pleased with her half-truth as she was, she still adds, "And because it would have been difficult to make the climb down. My fingers are still kinda sore."

Unable to spot Annabeth, the only she had was the girl shushing her loudly before the cyclops was calling the sheep into motion and she was clinging for dear life as it waddled along, hanging just enough that her bow was few inches off the path.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to stay in place the longer that they went up the hill, praying that her strength held long enough for her to at least make it into the cave before she had to slip away -- and had she thought to mention it sooner, she could have just scaled down the cliff and had been inside already with the same sort of pain in her arms, even if it was a much more perilous climb.

Head turned to the side, she spotted Percy as she passed, the boy pulling the same disgusted expression that she probably sported, as she made her way, the sheep doing a little extra bounce as it passed the cyclops as if it was happy, but the monster only laughed in greeting. Apparently, her sheep was named Cornelius.

Polyphemus patted Percy's sheep and Kassandra strained her neck back to watch as he's nearly knocked to the ground. "Putting on some extra mutton there? Go on, fatty! Soon Polyphemus will eat you for breakfast!"

His sheep was propelled forward, shooting passed her as the animal stumbled forward.

And just like that they were inside the cave, the cyclops turning to roll the stone back into place. She dropped to the ground, rolling over quickly as she made her way through the main room, between the sheep until she found a tiny hidden ridge of a vantage point that would provide limit cover but would have to make due. 

Thankful for having been at Camp so long that she was a fierce climber, she made her way up to her ridge as Annabeth ran about taunting the Cyclops as a distraction.

"You're too stupid to remember anybody," Annabeth taunted. "Much less Nobody."

"I'll catch Nobody this time!" Polyphemus declared, wildly swinging rocks about. One crashed into the wall were Annabeth's voice sounded from, shattering into pieces.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Percy dart somewhere further into the cave.

Propping herself crouched on one knee, she drew her bow and tracked their movements, searching out where Annabeth really was in the room.

Annabeth shouted, "You haven't learned to throw any better, either!"

Swivelling, she swung her attention to where Annabeth was hidden off to the side of the cave, the sound of her voice pinning through her. For an impossible moment, she wanted to thank Apollo as she concentrated on throwing off the sound, sending it so that it was at least a meter or two away from the real girl.

Kassandra hummed under her breath, using the noise to keep her focus as she worked in the background. There was nothing to shoot here no matter how badly she wanted to bring down the cyclops, nothing that her music could destroy -- not with an enemy of this size -- and Kassandra despised that she could only do so little, but it was a distraction that they were hoping for, such an enemy too big for a couple of demigods (oh, but how wonderful it would be to destroy him, to tear apart a cyclops victoriously).

Her concentration is broken when a boulder comes hurtling her way, shattering against the wall beside her forcing her to dive back to the slip of cover to avoid the shards.

Polyphemus howled. "Come here! Let me kill you, Nobody!"

"You can't kill Nobody, you stupid oaf," she taunts. "Come find me!"

Pushing herself to the feet with a gasp, she hissed as she brushed away the shards that littered her skin and looked at the tiny cuts that covered her. She shook her hair, rising to her feet to watch as Polyphemus chased in the direction of the real Annabeth.

Rolling to her feet,she threw herself over the side to land with an oof the back of a sheep. She slipped to the side, onto her feet and took off after them. Always a fast runner, she caught up quick and launched an arrow at the back of his ugly head, not staying still long enough to see it land.

"Nobody will beat you and take away your eye for good," Annabeth taunts from the other side of the cyclops.

"Nobody will die!" Polyphemus bellows, ripping a boulder from the ground -- Kassandra puts an arrow into the back of his hand, darting out of the way immediately.

Annabeth's movements are in tandem with her own, as she moves, she can hear as much, even as the cyclops yelps and drops the boulder to look at the back of his hand as if he was bit by a particularly nasty bug.

"You can't kill Nobody, buffoon. Are you too stupid to remember?" Annabeth taunts. 

Polyphemus growls, stomping his feet as he whirls around searching for the voice.

With his face turning toward her direction, she lets out arrow after arrow as quickly as she could, aiming for his eye before a fist comes smashing down toward her. Kassandra yelps, scrambling away as quickly as she could with Polyphemus focused on her with his apparently terrible vision.

He cries out, hands going to his face as she puts as much distance that she could between them.

The ground is swept from underneath her as he lashes out, wacking her through the air flying. Shrieking, her vision blurs as she goes flying, crashing to the ground with a thud that knocks the air from her lungs and leaves her panting as her bow tumbles from her hand and her head cracks back.

Sounds blur into one, the world blurring in a daze as she stares blankly at the sky. It was so bright, the sun glowing, and she hated how pretty the sight was -- or, well, she thinks she hated how pretty it was but she wasn't entirely sure.

The ground shakes again and she thinks she hears an explosion, and there's a screaming in her head that she 'has to get up now! She has to move!'

It takes a moment of her listening to the incessant voice before she coughs, rolling to her side with a groan as a hand automatically rushed out for her bow.

Kassandra watched as the monster shook his fist, and a baseball cap fluttered to the ground. There was Annabeth, hanging upside down by her legs.

☼ ☼ ☼

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might seem odd because fight scenes are hard to write but also because Kass doesn't know Percy and Annabeth's fighting style yet. She doesn't click with them right away when she is used to working alone, being stealthy, or just straight-up violence.

unedited

written: 2021-01-25

posted: 2021-03-01