Chapter 20,
My Worst Dream and a New Look,
Thalia POV
We had a pretty much peaceful journey while flying, no monsters or lightning strikes or ominous music that played in the background. The sun started to set around the same time my stomach started begging me for food, so we made a group decision to set down and continue on tomorrow. We set up our sleeping bags and got out some supplies for cooking I decided to make hamburgers since I was pretty tired even after that long nap I had in the air. The thought of the dream made a small blush creep to my cheeks, but I put my mind back to cooking the food. I reached for the cooler and got out a Dr. Pepper to help me wake up a little bit, I had volunteered to take the first watch since I was asleep most of the way here. Amora got out the condiments while Cassandra started cutting lettuce, onion, and cheese for anyone who wanted that. We fixed up two burgers per member and chowed down but not before giving some food to the gods, I slid in a small prayer to Poseidon hoping that his only child was okay.
Nothing puts you to sleep as fast as food but I drank two more Dr. Peppers to keep my energy up and wished the others a goodnight. I wasted my time jabbing the air with my spear and shooting arrows into trees. Amora started tossing and turning in her sleep but was smiling so I assumed it was a good dream at least and decided not to wake her.
Hours passed and my energy slowly ebbed away leaving me tired and lazy. I was slowly nodding off before I heard a peculiar sound. It reminded me of a dog sniffing for food except it was much deeper and louder. I blinked a few times trying to have my eyes adjust to the dark, and saw trees shaking a little ways away. I stood up and pulled out my bow carefully and pulled the string back, holding a caution position just in case it was just a large animal. As the sound got louder and louder, my nerves started to get more and more tense. I was just about ready to start firing at what ever it was when a large brown bear came lumbering into our campsite. It was massive larger than any other bear I had seen before, I kept my bow drawn just in case it happened to be magical but my nerves had calmed down at least. I started laughing out of relief and started reaching out to even stroke the bears neck when a huge black shadow crashed down for the case and stole the bear out from under my hand. It happened so fast that I was left there with my mouth hanging open. It took a while to fully process it but I made a mad sprint over to the campfire to wake up my friend, but the bears dead carcass dropped right in front me, in response I let out a loud scream, partly because of the mangled and bloody corpse and partly because of the gods awful smell. The shadow appeared on the other side of me, so our order was it, me, and its food. Not particularly the order I wanted...
The good thing was that my scream was able to stir Cassandra from her sleep, she groggily sat up and looked around, probably wondering what all the commotion was.
"Cassandra, get your ass up, right, now." I said in the most even voice as I could muster. She swayed a little as if she still was in a dream-like state, but seemed to at least recognize my voice and looked my direction. What greeted her was an enormous dead bear, which really woke her up, and she screamed much louder than I did. This caused Amora to shoot up in her sleeping bag and look towards the situation. She acted much faster than Cassandra and grabbed her bag and pulled out her gauntlet and slipped it on, and then she ran over to Cassandra to get her to calm down and check for any injuries. Then she grabbed her bow and handed it to her along with her arrows. This whole time I had just been having a staring eye contest with this huge beast in front of me. I had been able to at least determine it was a dragon of some sort. It had a large wingspan, and four legs, and bright yellow eyes with little slits for pupils. Whether or not it had fire-breathing capabilities had yet to be seen.
"Amora I think what we need right now is some light to see, can you do that?"
"Well I could set the land on fire and kill us all, would that make you happy?"
"No obviously not. Can't you just summon some fire balls and suspend them in air or something?"
"What am I, a video game character? Something like that would take almost all of my energy and I would be absolutely defenseless if that thing tried and attacked me."
"We can protect you! I'll have Cassandra stay by your side at all times and keep you safe. But please I am begging you to cast some light on this place!"
"Fine!" she closed her eyes and crouched low to the ground. She put her free hand over her gauntlet one and with in a few seconds bright balls of fire began to fly out, hovering over the terrain in a large enough circle so that almost everything was visible. The dragon slowly came into view; it had pale brown scales and a long narrow neck. Its body was sleek, with four sharp-clawed feet extending from the sides so it could stay very low to the ground. Its tail was swinging around its back and if it didn't like it lips quickly I would think that it was ready to play a game. Its tongue was bright pink and darted in and out of it's mouth as it watched me carefully tilting its head left in right every minute or so. I was still standing in the same position as I wasn't sure if it would attack me if I didn't move, Cassandra had her bow aimed at it's head and was ready to fire on a moments notice, and Amora looked about ready to pass out as she continued to hold the spell.
I didn't feel like letting my friend suffer any longer so I raised my shield and advanced slowly forward, looking for any sign of reaction of the dragon, but there was non other than the twitching of it's head. I was starting to wonder whether this was even a threat to us at all when rapidly ascended into the air and made a dive-bomb at me with it's mouth wide open and hundreds of razor sharp teeth ready to impale me. Fear clouded my brain and I almost didn't move, but a blunt cry of 'move dumbass!' was enough to make roll to the left before the dragon crashed into the ground and got a mouth full of dirt, which it just spat out to the side and looked a little irritated. I charged it and jabbed at it a little, just trying to get a feel for my enemy, it was quick it would dodge everything rather than just taking blows, so I assumed that it was intelligent and didn't have heavy armor to cancel out any attacks.
"Cassandra just start shooting arrows trying to find the weakest points, it shouldn't have that heavy of armor it mainly relies on speed!"
Cassandra listened and started carefully lining up arrow after arrow as I distracted it, but it just kept on dancing around them. I was getting angry as it continued to toy with us and traded my spear and shield for my hunting knives then I sprinted up and drove my knife right in its gut. I actually struck it so my hopes raised but were crushed when my blade shattered against its hard skin. I rolled back and
"What the hell! How can it be so fast when its skin so freaking hard! This doesn't make sense, not to mention that I just broke my dagger…"
"Thalia calm down, now is not the time to go all berserk, focus on the task at hand and figure out how to beat this thing!" Cassandra called from over by Amora.
I slowly stopped my anger from progressing by taking deep, in…out… in… out… in… okay screw the breaths I'm just going to strike it with lightning. "Cassandra, draw the dragon towards me!"
"How?"
"I don't know just do it!" I focused and the familiar strain that comes from my power came over me. Cassandra had drawn a sword and was just having it dodge its way towards me. It took much longer than I wanted because the dragon wasn't dodging in a straight line, more of a zigzag or circular pattern. I could barely see because of the strain but I caught glimpses of Cassandra and Amora. Amora looked about ready to pass out; panting hard, she had fallen to her knees and was struggling to sustain the spell that allowed us to see, not to mention that her body guard, a.k.a Cassandra, was now gone and busy wit another job. Cassandra was just keeping the dragon busy and making sure that she wasn't clawed, eaten, or crushed to death. I myself was feeling sick as the pressure built up in my body I had already aimed it at the ground in front of me and was forcefully holding back the lightning to ensure that we hit our target.
"Listen up guys!" I called while under the burden of my task, "when this thing gets close to me I want you to all to do whatever will cause the most damage to it!"
"That works both ways doesn't it? If we use our strongest moves then we'll be totally wiped out afterwards, we'll be easy targets for something like a dragon!" Cassandra responded.
"Just do it, and hope that we can take it down quickly okay?"
The tension of the situation intensified, because what Cassandra said wasn't wrong. If we gave it our all in my attack and it happened to dodge it or survive it then we were toast; no saving Percy, no returning to camp, no celebrations, no future… no nothing. Cassandra continued to push the dragon back as my vision began to tunnel under the agonizing pain in my body, I could only imagine what Amora was feeling. Finally it backed into a spot where I felt a hit was guaranteed and cried out, "Now!"
I let loose all the lighting I was holding back as Cassandra did a back flip while shooting three arrows one created a toxic cloud, the next set it all on fire, and the finally created a small mushroom cloud. Amora collapsed the balls of flame in on the dragon and created an effect that to me looked like waves crashing into each other and swirling around in something I could only call mesmerizing. Unfortunately all of this power was converged pretty close to me and I received a strong impact of power that sent me soaring backwards. The world was spinning so fast, all the images I saw blurred together into a mesh of color. I felt a sharp pain on my shoulder and let out a little yelp, before rolling for a very long time, and coming to a rest somewhere far away. I steadily got up and gripped my shoulder, which was throbbing with immense pain, and started walking back to where I believed was the campsite, praying that the monster was dead.
I knew I got back to the campsite when instead of walking on flat ground I fell into an enormous, cone shaped hole. I let out of string of profanity and some other colorful words that I had no idea what they meant but they sounded bad. When I reached the center, I was moaning for hitting my weak shoulder so many times, and was greeted by the large golden eye of the beast we had just killed. Now as this would terrify anyone, my heart caught in my chest and I jumped backwards but it made no move to do anything. I released my shield and held it up to the face of the dragon, the glow was fainter than Percy's sword but I could still see the general scenery.
The dragon was most definitely dead; most of its skin had turned to ash and blown away in the wind. Other parts of it were sizzling from either lightning fire or Cassandra's arrows. The eye was stuck open, staring straight out although how it was till okay I have no idea.
I let out a sigh of relief, even though the sight was disgusting, and turned and started making my way back up the hill to check on my friends. When I finally did reach the top I saw the outline of one girl sitting down with another lying down with her head layer down in her lap. I walked over and saw that Amora was unconscious and her head was on Cassandra's lap.
"Is she alright?" I asked as I sat down next to her. Cassandra's hand was lightly glowing so I figured she had been checking her vitals with all that Apollo magic or whatever.
"Yeah, she's just extremely worn out , she'll be fine as soon as she wakes up and eats something." She looked up to me and her eyes widened. "Gods, you aren't though! What in the world happened?"
"I was sent flying after the attack but I feel fine no worries."
"Oh, I'm definitely going to worry. I'm positive shoulders aren't supposed to look like that, and you got small cuts bleeding all over you!" She turned her hand towards me and I felt small relief over where ever her hand was causing me to sigh but pain quickly came back after she would move her hand.
"Well done children, defeating the infamous Cychreides dragon is no small task." My head shot up at the new voice, I swear I hadn't seen anyone there before but sitting down on a log by our campfire was Lady Hestia. She was tenderly prodding the flames with a metal poker.
"Is that what that thing was? Is it special in some way?" I asked.
Cassandra took a break from healing my wounds and decided to explain. "A sun of Poseidon named Cychreus raised the dragon from when it was young, but when he became king of the land, he didn't have much time to play and spend time with it. The dragon became enraged and started terrorizing the land and Cychreus was forced to kill it. Of course there are other stories that differ in what occurred like in one Cychrues was the dragon and he was exiled and was found by Demeter and she took him in."
"How in the world do you remember all of that…" I muttered. Cassandra chuckled and started to go back to healing me before Hestia stopped her.
"It is alright daughter of Apollo, it was my job to protect you while you were at camp, and I have done a poor job of that tonight. Let me tend to the wounded while you all return to Morpheus' domain." She held out her hand and I felt a wave of warm come over me. All my strength returned, then a felt a quick pop in my shoulder, that really hurt, but I bit my lip to stop myself from screaming. As the pain dulled I was able to breathe again, my senses returned, and my stomach began to growl, causing me to blush.
"Here Thalia, some food as compensation for all the hard work you did tonight." A Mexican style meal appeared in front of me and I thanked Hestia for the food before chowing down. I hadn't had Mexican food in a while but I hadn't forgotten how good it was, after I had finished all of the food the plate vanished and Hestia stood to leave.
"Hestia before you leave, may I have a quick word?" she nodded and sat back down on the log/bench. I sat down next to her and held out my hands to the fire. "Well you have done so much for this quest and I'm wondering why. You would have had to receive some backlash for all your 'interference'. So why do you continue to support this quest?"
Hestia was silent for a moment and her fiery eyes seemed to be a little intimidating rather than warm and welcoming. "Thalia I have no children of my own, I hardly talk to any demigods myself and hardly any of them recognize me. But I talked to Percy and he has given me Pandora's treasure for safekeeping. He has given me offerings of food on multiple occasions and sometimes I visit him just for a small chat when I feel lonely or forgotten. It's not like the goddess of home to feel abandoned but I do at times and Percy has always supported me, in a way I feel like he is my own child and I will protect him as such."
"Oh I see… I never knew, I'm sorry Lady Hestia."
"Everything will be alright, just make sure Percy comes home safe and all debts will be forgiven." She smiled and disappeared into flame, leaving me alone next to a warm fire. Cassandra walked over snacking on some tortilla chips, and sat down next to me. She said something unintelligible before she held up a finger and swallowed.
"What did you want to talk about with Lady Hestia?"
"I wanted to ask her why she was so intent on helping us."
"Oh, what did she say?"
"Just that Percy was like a son to her."
"Aw, that's cute, but I think we better rest until morning it's going to be a ruff day tomorrow."
"Cassandra what if we can't win…"
"What?"
"It took all of our strength to take down that dragon, there have been griffons, bears, and all sorts of other challenges all sent by whatever we are facing. How could we possibly win against something that can control of that…"
"Well the bear wasn't sent by our enemy, and although what you say does hold truth how will we be able to win if our leader has lost hope in victory. If you don't appear calm and confident I don't know how I would be able to be. We need you just as much as Percy does, I know you will lead us in the right direction."
I smiled and ruffled her hair with my hand. "Percy knows how to pick good friends." This caused her to blush, "now help me carry Amora over to her sleeping bag, I have a feeling that she doesn't want to sleep in the grass." We each grabbed her arms and legs and laid her down, Cassandra made sure she was comfortable and covered her with the fabric to make sure she stayed warm. Amora smiled in her sleep and we wondered back over to our sleeping areas and wished each other a goodnight. Cassandra was like an older sister, which was a nice feeling since I had only been an older sister figure. I fell asleep feeling grateful and confident for tomorrow