Percy Jackson and the Dragon Riders: The Journey

I can't decide whether or not I should call this chapter "The Assassin" or "The Journey." Please review!

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Percy

I can't believe we were lost.

"I told you we should have turned left!" Nico yelled at Thalia.

"No, we should have turned right at the fork!" Thalia yelled back.

"How about we just go straight!" I yelled at both of them.

Nico and Thalia crossed their arms and frowned.

We walked straight at the fork and came across a large amount of mist.

We went into our triple awesome battle formation x3g62. (XD)

I instinctively went for riptide, while Nico with his Stygian iron sword and Thalia with her Hunter bow.

"Who's there?" I called into the cold mist. No answer.

Then a shadow appeared beneath our feet.

"Um… Was it just me, or did our shadows get bigger?" Thalia asked.

Then it struck.

"Ah!!!!" Nico cried when it came. I slashed it with riptide, but with no effect. It seemed that it was invincible. We separated from our formation and ran in different directions.

Thalia

I stopped and looked around. Percy and Nico were gone. They must have run in a different direction than me. Then a figure walked up to me.

"Thalia!" it called.

"Percy!" I called back. I put my bow back and greeted him.

He smiled. "Bad mistake," Before I could understand what he said, he morphed into the creature and attacked me.

Nico

"Ah!!!!!" I spun around. Thalia was in trouble! I ran toward the noise.

Once I got there, Thalia was standing over a body on the ground.

"Thalia!" I went up to her and looked at the body.

It was Thalia.

"What?" I managed to say before being knocked ten feet in the air.

If Nico had been conscious, he would have heard the silent chuckle. "Heh Heh… Two down, one to go."

Percy

Oh great. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and I lost Nico and Thalia. And we weren't even to Camp-Half Blood yet. I missed Grover and Annabeth.

I heard Thalia scream, so I ran toward her. Then I saw Nico. I crouched down in the bushes and waited.

The creature glanced around, as if smelling my presence. I held my breath. Maybe he wouldn't notice?

He spun my way and started walking toward me.

I ran.

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Jumping through the bushes, I quickly lost the creature. At least that's what I thought.

I slowly scanned the area around me. The creature was around here somewhere.

Then I got a smart idea. (For once)

I summoned a stream of water and made it spin around me. Now I was protected by the creature's attacks. I walked back to Thalia and Nico and shook them. Thalia woke up immediately. However, Nico took some time to wake up.

"Mmm…?" Nico said groggily. "Stop…I want one of those cookies…May I have one…?"

I shrugged and shook him harder.

"Ah!" Nico sat up and looked around quickly. When he realized it was safe, he sighed.

I smiled. "Time to go!" I said. "And don't worry Nico, we'll stop for cookies on the way."

Thalia laughed while Nico looked confused.

We got up and headed for Camp Half-Blood.

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We got bored while walking, so we decided to randomly play extreme tag while walking. Or, in this case, running.

Nico tagged me after I tagged Thalia, who retagged me, in which I tagged Nico and ran. Nico tagged Thalia who tagged me again after stopping for cookies. A couple miles later, we lost track of who was it, so we decided to stop.

"There it is!" I called.

"Finally," Nico gasped. "It'll be good to be back to Camp again. Can't wait to see what the new Hades cabin looks like."

We stumbled to Camp and were greeted by everyone there. Then we told them about the dragons and how Kronos stole the last one.

"This is bad," Chiron said. If Kronos hatches the last egg, destruction will reign. We cannot let him hatch that egg."

"What do we do?" Nico asked.

"You go on a quest, of course," Chiron replied. "Now you must go upstairs to the Oracle and get the prophecy thing."

"Don't we have to go to Percy's school to get the prophecy?" Nico asked. "Isn't Rachel the Oracle now?"

"Oh yeah," Chiron said. "Well, be off then!"

Nico summoned his dragon and we flew to my school. "Hey," I asked. "How come we get to ride a dragon to my school, but we can't ride it to Camp Half-Blood?"

Nico thought a moment. "Uh… Exercise is good for you?"

Once we got to the school, Nico instructed his dragon to go fly and get out of sight. Got it.

We walked eight blocks down until we got to Rachel's house. When she opened the door, she immediately started calling out a prophecy.

Eight shall go,

To the land snow,

Son off Three,

Will be the key,

Beware of assist,

There is a traitor amiss.

Beware the dragon's fiery breath,

There will be a crushing death.

A couple moments passed before Nico spoke. "Well, that was a happy thought, wasn't it?"

He was right. I didn't like the idea of a traitor or a crushing death. Especially after the traitor Kronos had.

Rachel shook her head and said: "Where am I? I thought I was just in my room. Oh, hey guys. Do you want to come in?"

"No, we're fine," I said. "We have to go now anyway."

"Okay," Rachel replied. I could hear her disappointment. I guessed she was lonely in her eight story mansion.

We all hopped on Nico's dragon and flew off.

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Hold on! Ambraxas said as we dived down.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" I shouted to Nico.

"No!" he yelled back. "But flying is fun, don't you think?"

"No!" Thalia shouted and threw up.

Then I saw it - A fierce snowstorm, raging right ahead. We spun around for a long time before finally ending up and flying east. Then we found Camp Half-Blood.

"What?" Nico said. "This isn't right. We were heading the opposite direction when we were flying. And we couldn't even see Camp from there."

"At least we can get Annabeth and Grover," I said.

Nico shrugged and instructed Ambraxas to land near Camp.

We got off and went to Chiron. We then explained the prophecy.

"Hm…. This is bad. According to the last two lines, it means that if Kronos hatches the last egg, one of you will definitely die."

"What a happy thought," Nico muttered.

"You already said that. Ah, well, it doesn't matter…at the moment. I guess you have to take five other campers and go."

I was stunned. The most campers any quest had was five. Eight would be a lot.

"However," Chiron broke in. "Dragons count as quest members, so you must subtract two more from your quest."

I counted on my fingers. Eight meant that, if everyone present went, we could only bring three other campers.

We left the Big House and took a walk around the cabin. "I'm guessing you want Grover and Annabeth to come, huh?" Thalia said.

I nodded.

"Well, we need to pick the last camper. Who's it going to be?"

I shrugged. "Why don't we just randomly walk around, advertising a quest and whoever comes up first gets to come?"

"Okay," Thalia said.

We started yelling the quest out to everyone who was nearby. "We have a free space on a quest! Anyone who wants to come, please gather right here!

There were a lot more people than I thought.

"You just had to yell," Nico muttered.

"What?" I said back. "I thought nobody wanted to go."

"Everyone at camp is a bit more than nobody."

I frowned. "Fine, I got an idea! We'll host a lottery! Whoever wins gets to come!"

"Percy, there's about a 90 in a million chance of someone here to win. We'd have to wait ten years before even one person won." Nico retorted.

"Oh," I said. "Then why don't we just do eenie meenie minie moe?"

Nico shrugged. Why not?

We eventually came out with a new Half-Blood, Zach. He was a son of Hephaestus, so he also would be helpful if we found something to build with.

"Jeez, Percy," Thalia said. "We spent three days just picking someone to come with us."

"We have plenty of time," I shrugged. "Kronos isn't getting someone anytime soon, is he?"

"Yes!" Thalia responded. "He could have hatched the egg already! I knew something was wrong with your head when I zapped you!"

"What?" I said. "I thought a bunny was there a second ago."

Thalia groaned and hopped on Ambraxas.

Where to? He asked.

"The snowstorm!" Nico commanded. "That's the land of snow from the prophecy!"

Got it! Ambraxas said and dived.

Our flight wasn't really that pleasant. Thalia threw up twice, screamed loudly whenever there was a dip, and muttered constantly about how she got into this mess. I happened to be in front of her.

When we finally got there, we all jumped off and scanned the endless snow around us.

"Where now?" I asked Nico.

"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe something will come to us."

As if his words were magic, there was a rumbling noise from the ground.

There standing in the dust, was a door. It had many markings on it, which glowed when I looked at them. We approached it, and it opened.

"Should we go in?" Grover asked nervously.

"Of course we should," Thalia said. "Now let's go!"

We slowly entered the door. It closed behind us, leaving us to the darkness inside.

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Hooray for chapter four!