Arianna's day was majorly sucking - even before she almost died.
Her morning started out normally enough; she got out of bed around five a.m. and changed into a pair of tattered overalls with some questionable stains on the legs from numerous mishaps involving Red the bull and Lucy the cow. Arianna plodded wearily to the barn that housed Red, Lucy, the other two cows, Bossy and Su, and the chickens. Even though she did her chores as quickly as she possibly could, it was six fifteen before she finally set aside her pitchfork and ran back to the house. Crap! I only have fifteen minutes left to get ready for school, Arianna thought. She shuddered at the thought of missing the bus again; the last time it had happened, her father had driven her to school in a tractor. Some kids still teased her about that. After somehow managing to break her record for fastest shower (three minutes! Maybe she would have time to grab some food after all), Arianna dug in her dresser frantically and came up with a pair of jeans and a light blue t-shirt. She put them on and rushed into the kitchen, where she began to rummage in the cabinet for something she could eat on the bus. It was then that she realized something strange was going on. "Hey Dad, we're out of cereal," she called over her shoulder to her father, who was sitting at the kitchen table, as she snatched a granola bar, picked up her backpack, and staggered out the door without stopping to see his reaction.
Just as Arianna slammed the door behind her, the large yellow school bus ground to a halt at the end of her driveway. She scampered inside before the driver could leave without her (it had happened before) and sat down in the first empty seat she came to. Sitting through the forty-five minute bus ride with nothing to do was absolute torture. Normally, Arianna did her homework on the way to school every morning when it finally sank into her head that the assignments were due, but she had done most of her work during the previous day's study hall during an extreme fit of boredom. Although she usually carried at least one book with her at all times, she had managed to forget the one she was reading in her locker. That left her two options: study for her US History test (like that would ever happen), or sleep.
Almost immediately after she fell asleep, she started dreaming. She saw what was obviously a palace of some sort, though it looked like it had seen better days; the crumbling black walls and a few maimed statues were the only things that were still standing. Two women were walking around. From a distance they looked normal enough, but when Arianna got a closer look at them she noticed that they were around seven feet tall and, even weirder, they were glowing. One of them looked like she'd been touched by King Midas; her hair, eyes, clothing, everything except her skin was golden. The other woman had brown hair and gray eyes; except for the silvery glow around her she looked like a scientist. "Look at this place, Phoebe." Goldie gestured to a few headless statues and a collapsed archway. "Hyperion and Krios worked so hard to restore it and now it's a ruin again."
"Yeah. Awful," Phoebe muttered. "Theia, can you focus for a few minutes? We're only here to salvage some things. Then we leave to seek out our lost brothers; you-"
Theia cut her off. "I know, I know, find him, kill some demigods, restore his memories, blah, blah, blah. Should be easy."
Phoebe shrugged. "Close enough. I must find where my husband is imprisoned." She finished clearing a blocked passageway, then stepped inside another room, which, unlike the rest of the palace, was fully intact. The center of the room was dominated by a jet black stone table that, like the rest of the room, showed traces of blood. One corner of the room had a pile of bones - human bones - stacked up against the walls. "The solstice is coming. Do it then, Theia. For now, it would be more helpful to gather an army. The camps must be destroyed before we can accomplish our goal."
Arianna woke with a start as the bus turned into the school parking lot. Had she really slept through the entire ride? Hastily wolfing down her granola bar, she shouldered her backpack and stepped off of the bus, thinking about her dream. She dismissed it as the result of watching too many horror movies the night before and hurried to get into the school building out of the cold November wind.
Once she made it safely inside, Arianna immediately headed to her locker, dropped off all of the textbooks in her backpack, and picked up her Biology book and notebook. Ducking and swerving to avoid the sudden rush of people in the hallway due to the arrival of another bus, she walked to the cafeteria, which was the students' main before school gathering place. Before going into the cafeteria, she stopped in a nearby bathroom to make sure nobody had drawn on her face while she was sleeping. Fortunately, no one had, so she attempted to fix her hair (she had forgotten to brush it), gave up, and went back to the cafeteria. She scanned the crowded tables, and was soon rewarded by a glimpse of the motorized wheelchair that belonged to her friend Melody. Arianna waded through the tangle of backpacks and book bags to the end of the table where Melody had parked. As usual, she was calmly reading a book while the people around her goofed off. Her shoulder length black hair was in two braids, which whipped around when she turned to call a greeting. "Hey, Arianna. Ready for your two mile run today?"
"Ugh, don't remind me," she groaned. "I know I ran cross country, but come on, seriously? Two miles in this weather?" Arianna plopped down in the empty seat next to Melody.
Laughing, she responded, "This weather? It's supposed to be clear and sunny all day!"
"Don't say that out loud!" Arianna quickly glanced out all of the windows, as if she was afraid that the weather would overhear them. "We're in Wisconsin. It could start pouring in ten minutes!"
"True. Did you finish your homework for today?" Melody asked, somewhat sternly.
"No, I threw it all down the rabbit hole in Wonderland." Seeing the look on her friend's face, she added, "Just kidding. I was really bored yesterday, so I did it then."
"You did your homework? It's a miracle!"
They continued to joke around and discuss the day's classes until their conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the bell. "See you in Biology, Melody!" Arianna said as she picked up her backpack and plodded off to Band. She made it in the door of the band room just after the bell rang to signal the starting of class. Fortunately, the director was too busy yelling at a trumpet player who had somehow lost his instrument that never left the school building to notice that she was late.
"Hey, freshman, hurry up and get over here!" one of the senior percussionists snapped at her. Arianna hurried to obey. Ticking off the seniors was never a good thing to do. "Here. Play this." The senior thrust a jingle bell shaker into her hands. For the next forty minutes, the band director coached the brass and woodwind sections through various parts of the piece they were supposed to play, which was an easy version of "Deck the Halls" that split the melody between the trumpets, flutes, and clarinets. Once the percussionists finally got to play, they barely made it through the song twice before the class ended.
Leaving all of her band stuff where it was, Arianna left for Art 101 and spent the class period trying to make a soap sculpture of a rabbit. The stupid soap kept breaking when she tried to carve the rabbit's legs, so after smashing it on the floor, she turned it in as roadkill and got an F. Muttering "Hypocritical art teachers," under her breath (apparently all of that "Anything can be a work of art" and "Your work won't be judged on how good your project looks" stuff didn't apply to making soap animals. Either that or it was a load of crap to make students feel better about their [lack of] art skills. Probably both.) as she stomped out of the classroom, heading towards the Biology room.
On her way there, she was stopped in the hallway by a boy named Elijah Nelson. He reminded her of a cow, with wide brown eyes that seemed too big for his head. "Hey, Parker, wanna hear a blonde joke?" Every head in the hallway seemed to turn towards Elijah. Feeling uncomfortable and angry at the same time, Arianna wanted to yell at the kid. Didn't he realize that more than half of the people in the school were blonde? So was she, for that matter. The genius didn't seem to notice the fact that their school was located in a Norwegian community. Elijah seemed to take her silence as a "yes" and launched into his joke.
"Okay, so there's a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, and they're all running from the cops. They're looking for a place to hide, and they find this potato farm so they all crawl in some potato sacks. The cops make it to the farm, and one of them pokes the bag that the brunette is hiding in, so she says, 'Meow', and the police ignore her and think it's just a cat. Then a cop pokes the bag the redhead is hiding in and she says, 'Woof', so they think it's just a dog. When they poke the bag the blonde is hiding in, she says 'Potato!' Isn't that hilarious?"
Arianna started to edge away, noticing some of the other students' angry looks. "Uh, sure. Hey, don't you have Algebra next? You don't wanna be late for that." Rushing past him, she looked at her watch. One minute left. She walked faster, breaking into a run. If she was late for class, Ms. Greene would probably kill her.
The bell rang, thirty seconds before she made it into the Biology classroom. A few of the other kids giggled; probably the juniors. Ms. Greene shot her a murderous glare down her thin, pointed nose. Arianna froze; she'd seen that glare before, and it was never a good sign. "I'll sssee you after classss, Missss Parker," the teacher snarled. For some reason, she added an extra hiss on the letter "s" when she spoke, but no one dared to laugh or whisper about it. "Sssit down now, you're wasssting time." Arianna darted to her seat next to Melody in the back corner of the room. Ms. Greene's cold, serpentine gaze never left her as she gave the class instructions. "Today we are blood typing. At each table, there ssshould be two indicator cardsss, two four-pronged applicatorsss, and two sssterile -" she seemed to put particular emphasis on the word " - needlesss. Alssso, there isss a dropper of dissstilled water to prepare your cardsss with. You ssshould know what to do by now, asss we dissscussssed thisss lab yesssterday. Now get to it!"
Melody squeezed four drops of water on each of the indicator cards. "We need to get out of here before the end of class. Any ideas?" she asked, lowering her voice.
"Not that I want to stay after class, but since when do you play hooky?"
"Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just tell me you know how we can leave after we finish the lab," Melody pleaded. That was unlike her.
Arianna frowned. Her friend was serious about this. "We could always pretend to feel nauseous at the sight of blood, after we get it on the cards." She picked up her needle and inspected the tip. It looked kind of wet, but there was an earlier class so it was probably just water or antiseptic. Screwing her eyes shut (it was easier to prick herself if she didn't watch), she plunged the needle into the tip of her middle finger. Catching the teacher's gaze as she reopened her eyes, she noticed a change in Ms. Greene's normally stern expression. She was smiling, in her own sinister way. A second later her face looked normal again, and Arianna figured that she had just imagined it.
"That... is the worst plan I've ever heard. It sounds like chapter 6 of Twilight except dumber," came the reply.
"You read Twilight?"
Melody sighed. "Stop changing the subject!"
"Fine. For most teachers, there are three magic words: 'I'm gonna puke'. Unfortunately, Ms. Greene isn't normal-"
"You've got that right," Melody interrupted.
Arianna paused to glare at her. "So we need a distraction, after we get done with this." She looked at her applicator as if she had just noticed that it was there, and slowly finished up the lab. Her arms felt heavier, somehow, like they were weighed down with bricks. She pulled out her chair - was it always that heavy? - and sat down. For once she didn't feel the need to move around.
"Are you okay?" Melody asked, probably because Arianna was sitting still, something she almost never did.
"No. I'll go call Dad after class and see if he can come get me. I don't feel so good."
"You should go to the nurse's office. Hurry, before the -"
The bell rang, cutting her off, and the teacher got up from her desk. "I am coming around to collect your resssultsss. Asss sssoon asss I take your card, you may leave."
Ms. Greene made her way around the room, collecting indicator cards. Soon, everyone had left except for Melody and Arianna. When Arianna drowsily stood up, the room seemed to spin. It was almost like she had a pair of those drunk goggles on, except she wasn't seeing double. At least, not yet. She decided to get the lecture on promptness over with so she could go home and shuffled to the back of the classroom, trying not to trip over anything. The teacher was back at her desk again, talking to Melody. As she got closer, she heard some of their conversation.
"Missss Brunner, you will leave at onccce! There isss no reassson for you to ssstay here."
"I'm on to you, dracaena. No way am I leaving you alone with her." Melody's voice trembled slightly.
Ms. Greene quickly replied, "Of courssse you are. I jussst want to talk with her about sssomething. If I wasss going to kill her, I would have usssed a lethal poissson. If I get my anssswersss, I'll leave." Arianna got the feeling that she was the "her" in the conversation, which was seriously creepy. One thing really bothered her - she thought she'd heard her teacher say that she'd somehow poisoned her. While she tried to figure out how the heck that could've happened, Melody finally noticed her.
"How much of that did you overhear?" she asked.
"Enough. What's going on?"
Melody looked like she was trying to decide how much she should tell Arianna. "It's complicated, and we don't have much time, so I'll give you the basics: That," she said, pointing to the Biology teacher, "is a monster. It's called a dracaena. Usually, monsters want to kill demigods like you, and I'm pretty sure this one does too, but for some reason she seems to want you alive. This is a bad thing. Now, you can - "
"Whoa, slow down. What's a dracaena and what's a demigod?" Arianna interrupted.
"Ssshe doesssn't know? And here I thought you told her... Well, thisss changesss thingsss," Ms. Greene hissed. She slithered out from behind the desk on twin snake tails that didn't belong to any species Arianna recognized. That could've been because her eyesight was now so blurry that she could barely tell the difference between Melody and her soon to be former teacher. She cried out as she felt something poke her in the arm, leaving two identical red holes, which she soon realized were fang marks.
An object was pressed into her hand. It looked like a knife or a dagger of some sort. "I want that back, by the way," Melody muttered as she pulled a crossbow out from under her lap robe. Arianna gave up trying to understand anything and decided to just go with it. Sure, it made perfect sense that her Biology teacher turned into a snake monster and her best friend apparently had a stockpile of weapons. There were other things for her to deal with at the moment. Like the fact that she just couldn't seem to make her legs move the way she wanted them to.
Almost without realizing it, she crashed into the teacher's desk, hitting her head in the process, which didn't help things at all. "Arianna!" Melody turned for a moment to see what had happened. It was a moment too long. The dracaena pulled out a spear - seriously, where were all the weapons coming from? - and thrust it through the bow string and into the spokes of one of the wheels on Melody's chair, effectively stopping it where it was. Melody cursed in another language, but Arianna could understand some of what she was saying; she told the dracaena exactly where she was gonna put that spear when she pulled it out of the floor and what she could go do with some guy named Narcissus. Either that or she had just complimented Ms. Greene's nonexistent hat.
While Melody was distracted, the dracaena turned her attention to Arianna. "Now it'sss your turn. Your mother'sss ssso-called blessssing won't sssave you thisss time. I'll jussst have to kill you more creatively." Arianna heard the sound of steel on leather and guessed that she had just pulled out another weapon. She couldn't even see the monster from her position half on and half off the desk; that just made it scarier.
The first thing she saw was the flash of bronze above her chest. Instinctively, she held up the knife Melody had given her to try and block it. Lesson learned: when it's knife versus sword, sword always wins. Even though she couldn't see the damage the sword had done, Arianna was pretty sure it did more to her t-shirt than her. Either her block had gone better than she thought it had or Ms. Greene wasn't trying that hard. There was a third reason that she didn't want to think about, but seemed pretty likely: she was being toyed with. The dracaena could kill her whenever she felt like it, and probably would when Melody freed herself. Before attacking again, Ms. Greene put duct tape over Arianna's mouth. "Ssso no one will hear you ssscream," she explained unnecessarily. "Let'sss wrap thisss up sssoon. I have a classss next hour."
Author's Note: Yeah, that whole once-a-month thing didn't work out. I'll take this story off of hiatus soon, but it really needed to be rewritten, especially after Mark of Athena *insert obligatory rant about the cliffhanger here*. Hopefully it's slightly better now. I won't rewrite the whole story again, no matter what Rick Riordan puts in House of Hades. So I'm only keeping with continuity up until the end of Mark of Athena. Anything in this that happens after the cliffhanger (like, the whole story) is not canon. Yes, some of the main characters from the Heroes of Olympus series will show up. Eventually. They'll still be important and all, but I'm not making any of this from their points of view.
I don't own the Percy Jackson series or anything else I choose to reference. - the one and only disclaimer I'll ever put in. I shouldn't have to repeat that every chapter. Now to rewrite chapter two!
