HAZEL'S POV
Hazel scanned the battlefield as she flew towards it. Now, living in a world of monsters and magic, this might have been a normal thing for demigods to experience, but Hazel Levesque was sitting on her boyfriends back. Okay, so maybe this was a somewhat everyday occurrence for certain people, like Piper, who sometimes was supported in the air by her boyfriend, Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter, but unlike Piper, Hazel's boyfriend was a dragon. For now, anyway. Frank Zhang was a shape-shifter, so to speak, and could change into pretty much any animal he wanted with a bit of concentration, a feat which still confused and slightly freaked Hazel out. He could become a lion, or a rhinoceros, and had recently existed as a swarm of bees, much to the bemusement of Hazel and the rest of the Seven.
Hazel shook her head to clear her mind. She had to focus. Frank the dragon wobbled through the sky.
"Frank, can you land down there?" she yelled against the screaming wind, pointing to the biggest clump in the group of demigods they had seen from Half-Blood Hill. Frank nodded his head, the silvery scales glinting as he dove towards the ground. Hazel squeezed her eyes shut; she hated this feeling, when her stomach dropped and her eyes streamed with the air flying through her hair until they landed rather ungracefully back on the dirt and Frank stumbled back into his usual self, an apologetic look on his face.
Hazel felt like dropping to her knees and kissing the ground, but she was still surprised when the ground reached up to hug her back. She tried to pull away, horrified, but the earth pulled harder and she fell onto her side. She looked towards Frank for assistance, but Frank seemed as stuck as she was. Hazel might have laughed at the look on his face if it hadn't have been so terrifying. Suddenly, hands wrapped under her arms and there was a squelching noise as she was ripped free. She looked up towards the demigod who had pulled her out, but of course she didn't recognise the face. Most of the campers fighting in this area were Greek.
"Um, thanks," Hazel mumbled, staring at the girl, who was moving from side to side, never quite staying still. She had stringy brown hair, and a menacing look on her face, with slashes oozing blood all over her arms and torso .The girl grunted and stood up, cut a few monsters into dust, then tugged her head in the direction of a rather large bulldog that was struggling to dig itself out of the ground.
"Frank? Is that you?" Hazel almost snorted as she recognised the dog who had almost succeeded in digging its way out. She reached towards it and helped the other two campers who had only managed to get pawed in the face a few times, let alone move Frank. Hazel closed her eyes, imagining him safely out of the ground and felt that odd swirling feeling as a faint mist settled around her. She squeezed her eyelids shut further, trying to concentrate, but a cold feeling rushed past her, and her instincts took over, pushing her towards the ground again. She rolled over, and jumped up, trying to get as far away from the dirt as possible. All of a sudden, there was a second squelching noise followed by a sharp twang and a final screech as the harpy that had swooped down behind her disintegrated at the touch of Frank's arrow.
"Hazel! Are you alright?" Frank panted, relaxing his bow, "that harpy came way too close to you."
"I'm fine, thanks," Hazel replied, blowing a stray strand of hair from her face, "how did you move that fast, Frank? One moment you were a bulldog, the next you're upright and in your normal form, shooting harpies in less than a second?" Frank gave her an embarrassed look and shuffled his feet.
"I just didn't want you getting hurt," he muttered, blushing slightly. Hazel felt herself turn slightly pink. For a tall, strong teenager like him you wouldn't expect him to be so shy. Gods, she loved him.
"Oi, love-birds, when you're done staring into each other's eyes, we've got a lot of monsters to kill!" said a loud voice somewhere off to Hazel's left. That brought her back to reality with a harsh bump. The battle still raged all around her. The group of campers had managed to close the gap in their defences, but their numbers were slowly decreasing, and the circle of fighting that had taken place around them was tightening. For a moment, Frank met Hazels eyes, and the months of pain she saw in them seemed like an eternity. She reached out and squeezed his hand, before drawing her blade and storming into war.
FRANK'S POV
Frank didn't notice much whilst he was fighting. He wasn't ADHD like most other demigods, just lactose intolerant, but that didn't stop his mind from wandering. It's not that the battle was boring, it was anything but that: with surges of monsters appearing for every one he bested, constantly freaking out about Hazel and worrying that she might get hurt and he wouldn't realise and the fact that Frank never stayed in one form for more than ten seconds meant that his brain was whirring every single second just trying to stay alive. So a lot of the finer details got a little, blurred. And that was exactly the problem.
But the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to remember. Frank had never seen anything so scary, and he was almost glad for the huge swarm of monsters attacking him because it prevented him from seeing the horrors happening every where else.
The way Frank saw it, the battlefield was a map in his head. He could see himself fighting a group of monsters, but it felt like the fight wasn't really happening to him, he was just watching from the sidelines, and the map was so tiny that he couldn't quite make out the details. The mass of demons advancing towards him seemed to blend into one big monster, and Frank was just one tiny Roman demigod, dodging and slicing and shifting his form to keep himself living. Sometimes, the enemy seemed to retreat, and Frank's mind could relax enough for him to catch glimpses of Hazel, bloody and bruised, but Frank knew better than to rush over and help. Hazel was perfectly capable of keeping the monsters at bay.
Hazel was fought like a tornado. As she slashed and deflected with her sword, white mist swirled and settled on the ground around her, stopping Gaea from pulling her down, and creating magic so powerful it pushed back the swarms of monsters advancing towards her. Through the short bursts of yellow dust that the creatures left behind as Frank ripped through them, he could tell that Hazel was fighting better than she ever had before.
But it was draining her. Although he tried not to look at her too much, as it only broke his concentration, Frank could see that she was losing energy, slowly, but the expression on her face told him that she was more tired than she was letting on. With each new monster, the mist that sat around her seemed to float away, and with each wisp of smoke that escaped, Hazel's shoulders only drooped more. As if sensing his eyes on her, Hazel turned towards Frank and smiled; a feeble attempt at reassuring him, but, seeing he wasn't convinced, she nodded, stood up a little straighter and seemed to fight with more power than before. Although Frank didn't like it, but he turned way from her. He had to let her do this herself, and anyway, he was close enough to run over if there was a problem.
For what seemed like days, Frank fought. Not many people came near him, which he expected was probably caused by the fact he was both Roman, and didn't really have a form. Frank was now changing shape so quickly, he had lost track of what he was, and was sure that he was never really any one specific animal – he was more a mixture of two or three at a time. But, like Hazel, he couldn't go on forever. He hadn't felt it at first, but now a blanket seemed to sit over him, warming him and making his eyes droop and his senses duller by the minute. He suspected that it wasn't just his powers draining him, and that Gaea had a part in his sudden feeling of fatigue. Maybe it was the fact that Frank hadn't had a good night's sleep since climbing aboard the Argo II. Whatever the reason, he knew he wouldn't last much longer. He started to slowly edge his way towards Hazel, hoping to grab her and find somewhere safe to rest for a while, just until they felt better.
He almost reached her before she collapsed. Abandoning all cares for defending himself, Frank rushed towards her, cursing himself for letting them get so far away from each other. As he ran, he could see her slowly being swallowed by the earth again, and he was reminded of the time on their quest to Alaska, when she and Percy had almost drowned in the muskeg. He felt like that again: helpless, unsure whether or not she was still alive, and time seemed to slow down, like he was walking through the muskeg himself. He had heard from Percy about the presence of Saturn, Lord of Time, and how he could slow time down, until all your limbs were frozen and all you could do was watch on, horrified. Frank knew that Saturn had been reduced to nothing but ashes; not even capable of forming a conscience again, but why did time still feel like it was going slower than usual? He knew of the feeling that everything seems to slow down just before someone dies, and his heart raced in his chest, thinking of Hazel.
That was when the claws raked through his back.
Sorry for leaving this story for so long, I kept saying I would finish it but this took a lot longer than I expected! Sorry (not really) for the massive cliffhanger, but hopefully that will motivate me to write some more, haha :) If I do disappear for a while, I'm sorry, but I have a lot of exams coming up so obviously they get priority but I will try to update as often as possible! (For all you Jiper fans, expect a POV from them soon) Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a review and tell me what you think!
