Chapter 22 - The Lightning Empress

The world had been torn asunder, brought to its knees by the purest expression of power being released. The Dragon God had fallen into the gargantuan jaws of Leviathan, releasing all of his divine power in a last ditch effort to kill the beast from the inside.

It had been nearly ten minutes since Kareah had changed into her human form and dived under the waves in a desperate attempt to find Percy after that insane explosion.

She was reaching her limit, unsure of how much longer she was going to be able to remain under the waves. She couldn't see him or feel his otherwise unique presence anywhere. The waters had been permanently altered, scattered with chunks of Dragon flesh ranging from small tid-bits to massive pieces of meat, bones, and organs that were strewn around, tainting the once clear waters with a murky green and pale blood.

Right before she was about to relinquish her search and rise for air, she was enshrouded by a bubble of air that appeared from nowhere. Within a few seconds, the older brother had appeared, stepping into the air pockets. His tail had changed to form legs from the threshold of the bubble, stepping around the floor of the nothingness with grace and ease.

"He's a few miles away from us now… I'm not entirely sure that there's life in his body but the waves are respecting his otherwise resting form none the less." Triton explained, casually pointing to a location behind Kareah. It looked to her just like a scattered field of dead Leviathan.

"What does that mean, exactly?" Kareah asked, following Triton's path as he started to walk. As the older brother walked towards the place he'd been pointing so too did the bubble move.

"As much as he's been a pain in the backside for me for many, many years, I do respect him, more than he thinks I do. Enough for me to acknowledge that the sea runs in his veins, and that he's… Ew, royalty." Triton almost visibly cringed as he had to say it.

He noticed that Kareah wasn't quite following how it was all relevant. "My point is that if he was or IS dead, then the waves would be acting… Different. The sea would fall into a unanimous mourning if a Prince were to die, regardless as to whether or not he's now something else in nature." Triton quickly explained.

"When we get him, you're going to need to take him away from this place. The seas themselves are about to cleanse this abomination from it's waters, and while he's a Prince, he's changed just enough that he might be swept along and his condition could worsen. Take him to the islands not far from here and lay him in the shallow waters, he will heal much faster." Triton ordered. It didn't take them long before they were finally approaching the place where Percy's body lay motionless in the water.

"I should take it from here then. I'll take him away to heal. He's got a thing about collecting trophies from the Ancient Dragons, if you can get an intact chunk of it's skull or something like that, I'm sure he'd appreciate it." Kareah motioned to the destruction around them, unsure if there was ever going to find a decent sized piece of bone that wasn't riddled with shattering cracks.

Kareah took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold of the air pocket, moving fast to collect Percy and start pushing forwards towards the surface, unsure of exactly where those islands were but it wasn't going to be too difficult to get over to them.

Line Break

The Dragon Hunters had washed up on the shores of a beautiful sandy beach. The island was adorned with tall palm trees all bearing healthy batches of coconuts. The skies were clear and blue, a perfect reflection of the clear waters they'd left behind. In any other circumstance this might have been quite a nice place to be, but today it was no less stressful to Kareah than if it'd happened literally anywhere else.

There she was, sitting in damp sand that occasionally got a renewal of moisture with the waves that rolled in, engulfing her lower half. In her lap was the lying unconscious form of the Dragon Hunter that had come to mean something to her in such a short amount of time.

It was ridiculous to think of the effect he had on her, it was only days ago that he'd been announced in their world, the fact that he was exactly like her, the second Dragon Hunter to have ever been cursed by that stupid box.

"Who are you?" His rasping voice broke her out of her reverie. The colour was still absent from his face. She couldn't even begin to wonder how much strength he'd used taking down Leviathan.

She'd felt the explosion rattle her bones despite the distance that had been between them.

"Percy, it's me, Kareah." She told him, looking down at the almost unconscious form of the Prince of the Sea cradled in her lap. It certainly didn't help that the only thing remaining of his clothes were his hunting trousers and even those had seen much better days.

She could clearly see the fresh claw marks over his chest, partly imbued with the pendant that held the collected Dragon souls. Behind all of that was the once clear image of a trident now torn asunder by the various different bits of lasting damage that he'd received.

"I know who you are on the surface, but that wasn't what I asked." He clarified through long strained breaths. His internal organs had no doubt suffered quite a lot of damage as well. He was slowly bit by bit rebuilding himself at a cellular level. She had no doubt in her mind that from this act he was no doubt going to become stronger.

"You… You want to know who I am?" Kareah asked, looking down at his peaceful form through surprised eyes.

Nobody had cared enough to know who she was. Those who did know, those that she'd been around when she was younger all shared the darker side of her bloodline, and they didn't care for her existence as it was. She wasn't used to anyone showing any interest or stock in her as a person.

"A Dragon Hunter, the first of our kind, the near last of the Ancient Dragons. I finally know who I am, but who are you?" He asked. His breathing was slowly becoming more stable as time went on with him bathing in the waters.

"I am… Me, I suppose. My world, or what WAS my world, and your world don't really ever mix, the results would be incomprehensible in the sense that our sides wouldn't really ever understand what was going on. If I hadn't been cursed by Pandora's Box then just meeting you wouldn't have been possible." Kareah explained. She tried to keep her words slow so that the healing Dragon God wouldn't struggle or miss pace.

"And that brings you to the here and now. A Dragon Hunter, lost and forgotten to a pantheon that never earned your loyalty, or else you wouldn't have been looking for Pandora's Pithos in the first place." Percy almost laughed at the end of his sentence but was quickly cut short by the rumbling pain around his rib cage.

Kareah had been about to respond with something before the skies turned black. "Oh that is SO not good." She whispered, looking up at the swirling masses of clouds that were drawing nearer to the point in the sky right above them.

"Do you feel that?" Kareah asked, desperately looking around to find the source of the disturbance.

"Holy shit. I can TASTE that." Percy grumbled, forcing his way out of her lap and onto his knees. He was still far too damaged to do much other than hoist himself into a single knee, a hand still clutching at his mostly obliterated ribs. He'd been melded with Mirroth's soul from Icewyre's ray of bastard light in Sanctuary and since then his bones had slowly been changing, morphing into the same metal that she'd been made out of, her skeleton was pretty much indestructible, but he hadn't finished forming and a self destructive power releasing like he'd done against Leviathan had been more than enough to splinter nearly all of them.

"That's the same thing that destroyed the entire coven's nest when I was in Africa. I didn't know what it was at the time but I think I've figured it out now." Kareah told him grimly. They both spun around, looking inland when a massive bolt of lightning crashed against the sands.

"I'm guessing it's fairly redundant to say it, but…" Percy began, managing a sarcastic smile, mostly at his own humour.

"Yeah, that'd be it. The Lightning Empress, Lavalleri." Kareah looking on, all too aware of the fact that all of her instincts had immediately gone into battle mode.

She had not come in peace.

Standing less than a dozen feet away from the Dragon Hunters was the image of a woman that was far more befitting that of a Goddess. She looked like a far sexier, far more powerful version of Zeus, standing majestically in the sand.

Everything about her irradiated pure power, despite the fact that she was entirely in her human form. She had tanned skin the same shade as Percy's own and was even wearing a thin white toga that barely covered the Dragon's dignity. She was slender but with curves where it mattered. Her eyes were a striking mix of platinum and blue that seemed to constantly swirl. There was a similar mixture of pallet to her long hair that swept around her head and down her back, pale blue with streaks of silver. There were buzzes of electricity that scattered around her body, each one following a pattern as if chasing another, touching down on her skin where they could.

Pure. Power.

If Kareah known better then she would have said that the new arrival had been Greek, just as much as Percy was, if not more. They looked like the same race, Dragons aside.

"You know who I am?" She asked in an elegant voice that managed to bring a promise of pain hidden beneath her tone of peace.

"The Lightning Empress." Kareah announced, not able to calm herself or her instincts in this other woman's presence. She was overwhelmingly powerful.

"And you?" She asked, looking directly at Percy who managed to halt himself to his feet with a pained grunt. "You must know that I have come to establish where you and I stand, Dragon Hunter." She explained, slowly moving towards them, one foot at a time.

This wasn't a fantastically ideal situation to be in, he couldn't even stand up straight, let alone fight someone who was emanating so much pure power that it was making his visions way. Or that might have just been the exhaustion, he wasn't sure and it didn't really matter at that point.

"Well, that's all well and good, but she's the Dragon Hunter." Percy announced, managing to finally stand straight and bring his arms up. "I am the Dragon God!" He bellowed, trying his best to project the Law of the Dragon God into his voice. His hands and arms became ablazened with hellfire in one side and Azazel's green flames in the others. It was a show of power that he wasn't even confident that he could pull off.

"Oh? Well, as grand as titles go you certainly take the cake, but answer me this, MY GOD. What is a God to a non-believer?" Lavalleri asked with a sadistic smile before she'd moved so fast that her body was a blur even to the likes of them. The next thing either of them knew, the Lightning Empress had firmly planted a fist into each of their abdomens, rocking their world at it's very foundations.

They both slowly fell to the sand, fleetingly conscious of the fact that they'd both just been taken down with a single punch. All that she'd issued them with had been her raw strength, there was no element to her Dragon power behind it.

There was nothing else for the Lightning Empress to say to them, she'd initiated herself in their world, and hopefully gave them a scope of how far they needed to still go in order to get to the top of the food chain where she so comfortably sat alongside Ddraig.

A lightning strike told them both that she'd left them behind, for good. "Hello darkness my old friend." Percy managed through ragged breaths before his vision faded to black and the island was no more.

A/N: Sorry this one took a couple of days, I wanted to get it just right. Enjoy and as always, please review. I love seeing the feedback, even if it's something small. Reviews are what show us authors that we're writing things that you like, and it often keeps us going and motivated. Keep it up!

Stay safe. #FuckCoronavirus