A/N: I own nothing. Enjoy!
"Could...could you stay?"
Annabeth held her breath. Percy paused. In the darkness, Annabeth couldn't see Percy's expression. It only made her hate the darkness even more, and she couldn't bear asking Jason and Piper for the expense of extra candles to be lit at night while Annabeth slept.
"Never mind," Annabeth retracted. "You must be tired-"
The straw mattress sank a little with the addition of Percy's weight as he slid under the covers. Annabeth scooted over a few more inches until he was fully settled.
"Are you cold?" He asked in a murmur.
With the addition of Percy's body heat and the blankets piled around them, Annabeth was quite warm on the outside, but the nightmares had chilled her insides and mind. She couldn't help but shiver as she recalled how she had felt, trapped and unable to move.
Mistaking her shivering as being cold, Percy slowly drew her into his embrace. She was startled but her body was relaxed as his arms wrapped around her.
"Is this all right?"
Annabeth could hear the drowsiness in his voice. He had already had a few nights of restless sleep when they were hiding out in the woods, and now she had disrupted his sleep again. She swallowed the feelings of remorse and resolved to heal him quicker next time.
"It's fine," she murmured back.
Despite being a water mage knight with ice abilities, he was warm. Annabeth also controlled herself from accidentally firing off a spell as she felt the immense amounts of mana wavering off of him. He was fast on the road to mending.
Perhaps by chance, her head ended up being near his chest. Listening to his slow and steady heartbeat, Annabeth finally drifted off onto the waters of dreamless sleep.
When Percy woke up, he immediately discerned the presence of a soft being in his arms. Something soft brushed against his nose. As he opened his eyes, he was greeted by golden hair just below his chin.
Annabeth was still curled into his side, reminding him of a cat just like Mrs. O' Leary sleeping comfortably. Gently, he brushed a stray strand of hair from her face in case it bothered her.
The witch murmured something incomprehensible and wiggled in his arms. He found the corner of his lips lifting up as her eyebrows scrunched up together. Percy poked her gently in the forehead, trying to unknit the wrinkles in her brow. It was still a miracle to him that he could be so near to someone without ice encasing them.
But unfortunately, he found that another part of his body was also lifting up. Annabeth was leaning her whole body against him, and as much as he could pretend to, Percy could feel every inch of her curves pressed against him.
Grimacing, Percy willed his mind to conquer his body. In all his twenty plus years of his life, he had not experienced such an embarrassing situation like this. He scolded himself for his body's reaction. You're not an animal, Percy thought. Annabeth was his savior, and he shouldn't be acting like this to her.
He tried to carefully extricate himself from her limbs, but Annabeth, perhaps sensing that her comfortable body warmer was moving away, suddenly pulled on his arm so Percy was back in his original position.
Turning his head to the window to see how early in the morning was, Percy's gaze met the amber eyes of Mrs. O' Leary, who had been perched on the windowsill.
"..."
Closing his eyes, Percy slowly breathed in and out, concentrating on one of the mana gathering techniques he was taught. Slowly, his body relaxed as mana began filling his empty reservoirs. Thankfully, by the time Annabeth was stirring, Percy had managed to get his body under control.
He wasn't sure if Mrs. O' Leary had some way to communicate with Annabeth, seeing as the cat was a magical beast, so Percy slipped Mrs. O' Leary some extra pieces of chicken at breakfast as a bribe. Mrs. O' Leary looked up at him, twitched her whiskers in amusement and accepted the chicken.
When night fell, Percy and Annabeth donned on dark clothes with hoods and masks.
"How do I look?" Annabeth asked, twirling around in front of the mirror.
She was wearing pants with her dark shirt instead of her usual dress. Her dark hair was gathered in one braid and then pinned securely in a bun. Perhaps it was because Annabeth had been hiding in the Forest of Illusions for so long that she was eager to be on an adventure.
Annabeth turned to smile at Percy, whose expression froze slightly before he turned away.
"Looks good," he said quietly.
Annabeth didn't notice the tips of his ears turning a light shade of pink, not knowing that Percy had just recalled what had happened that morning.
"Is everyone ready?" Jason called.
He and Piper were similarly dressed in dark clothing meant to blend in at night. These pieces of clothing were similar enough to pass for the guard uniforms of the men patrolling the warehouse.
The plan was to first start with Piper and a few other helpers who would put sleeping potions into the guards' food, with the sleeping potions concocted by Annabeth. Jason and his people had spied on the guards for several days, getting a sense of their schedules and where they often ate. While they could not hope for all the guards to be induced with the sleeping potions, many would be incapacitated. Then, the soldiers would attempt to head into the warehouse and remove as many explosives as possible and then use the explosives to trace their origins.
The festival went on as planned. With the buzzing noise and the cover of cloudy night skies, no one noticed the silent descent of dark-clothed people heading towards a warehouse in the outskirts of the town where there were fewer festival-goers.
There were two guards right outside the door. One yawned while the other leaned against the doorway sleepily. Annabeth had specially created this potion to not act quickly but to induce sleepiness slowly so the guards would not be alarmed if a guard happened to faint earlier than planned.
They watched for a few tense moments before the guards were on the border between the realms of sleep and awake. Before anyone could notice, Annabeth carefully sent two green vines creeping along the wall towards the guards' feet. The tendrils crept along the guard's legs, careful only to encircle around the limbs but not alert the unsuspecting guards. With a flick of her wrist, Annabeth caused the vines to tighten, snatching the guards right off the streets and into an alleyway where they were waiting.
Piper shoved two cloths into the guards' mouths, preventing them from shouting. The full effect of sleeping potion effects kicked in, and the men fainted. Jason's men took off the guard's uniforms before slipping them on and replacing the guards at the warehouse door to fake a pretense that everything was going on as normal.
During this time Mrs. O' Leary had slipped in the doorway.
"Shit, what do we do about the cat?" Jason questioned.
Annabeth was unconcerned. "Everything will be alright. Mrs. O' Leary will let us know what the situation is like inside."
Jason looked at Percy who just calmly looked back, who unlike Jason, knew what Mrs. O' Leary was capable of.
"Ah right, that's a witch's cat. I should have expected that the cat wasn't normal." Jason muttered.
In a few moments, the form of a black cat peeked out from the doorway. Mrs. O' Leary's tail flicked a few times, as though beckoning them to come in.
"Let's move in," Jason said.
The wind mage summoned a gentle breeze that would not have been out of place at night. This breeze blew the hairs of the various people hiding in the shadows and alleyways as a signal. Other people were stationed watching every window, some with crossbows aimed as insurance.
Annabeth and Percy followed Jason's men through the front door. There were guards' collapsed here and there in the hallway. One stirred before Piper knocked him out with the handle of her dagger. Another managed to struggle to his feet before Percy froze the man to the ceiling.
Annabeth tugged at Percy's arm as she noticed Mrs. O' Leary's shadow flicker by. The cat went behind a woven tapestry as though there was no wall there. As the cloth moved, Annabeth saw a flight of stairs going down.
One soldier went up to Jason and whispered, "Sir, the explosives are not there."
"What?" Jason frowned. "We've been watching them for days and didn't see them remove anything from the warehouse. Are you sure?"
"Yes, the rooms are empty." The soldier confirmed.
"Why don't we check the basement?" Annabeth asked. "If you didn't see them transfer the explosives, they must still be somewhere in the warehouse."
She moved the tapestry where Eclipse had vanished and exposed the stairs.
"Good find." Jason praised.
"Sir."
Another person came up to Jason and muttered something in his ear.
Jason swore. "That's not good. We're seeing movement from Octavian's men into this town. We're going to have to move even more swiftly."
They headed down the stairs which led to an earthen wall where Mrs. O' Leary was sitting patiently before, waiting for the slower humans to catch up. A few collapsed guards were on the floor, snoring away.
Annabeth felt her skin crawl. The warehouse basement reminded her of the dark, enclosed spaces in the magic tower that she had been locked into by her father. Her steps faltered as she stood looking at the dusty and cobwebby walls. As if sensing that the mood was not right, Percy laced his fingers with hers comfortingly.
Jason knocked on the wall ahead of them. A hollow sound reverberated, indicating that another room was behind it. An earth mage was called from the soldiers in the Third Battalion. She carefully brought down the wall, for fear that any vibrations could set off the precarious explosives.
As the room was revealed, everyone was shocked as the scene was revealed. Wooden boxes were piled high on the floor, ceiling to ceiling. Percy carefully pried the lid off of one of the boxes and sucked in a breath. They were full of the metal explosives that Piper had sneaked away last night. Annabeth took a peek in another. Still full of bombs. It was as if this room was stockpiling for a war.
"There's enough bombs to blow up the town and more," Piper said in horror.
Here and there, small red triangles were painted on the sides of the bombs.
"I've seen this mark before, and not just from when I was attacked by Octavian. But where?" Percy murmured.
His voice had been so quiet that Annabeth seemed to be the only one who heard him.
"Let's move these boxes and get them out of here," Jason decided. "I don't know why Prince Octavian is heading this way, but I don't want to risk a fight with him with all these bombs lying about."
Stealthily but nimbly, everyone worked to transport the bombs out of the warehouse's basement. They were going to be carried into a secluded part of the woods before they could be defused one by one.
Annabeth felt sweat drip down her forehead as she used her magic to float some boxes up the stairs. There was hardly any mana in the town, and she constantly had to ask Percy to send some mana through her system. Still, it was safer to use her magic to carry out the bombs than to have two people carry the boxes up the stairs and risk a spill.
"Watch out!" A sharp cry alerted everyone and brought chills to Annabeth's neck.
One of the guards had awoken earlier than expected, his hand reaching towards the remaining boxes of explosives. In that split moment, Annabeth could see the determination in his eyes. He was not trying to escape, but to bring down the boxes of explosives and take down everyone in the warehouse.
Just before anyone could react, the topmost wooden box began to fall.
A/N: And kaboom!
In response to the guest review about modern bombs appearing in a medieval setting, these explosives are not we may think of bombs in the modern time like grenades or larger bombs. Bombs have been historically used since the 11th century starting in East Asia where gunpowder was first invented in China a couple hundred years earlier, but I assume they were more like firecrackers. So you can imagine those in the story as low grade hand bombs. How these bombs were made is going to explained in the next arc of this story, actually! But I'm not going to fully explain how even a small bomb is made in a fanfiction story...that's dangerous and this is also a story set in magic, so magic is involved, too! :D I would also say it's not really a medieval setting, more of a vaguely historical setting?
I'm actually feeling a little dissatisfied with Taming of a Beast (probably ranked 3rd or 4th favorite from the stories I've written so far), so once the PJO version catches up with the original version, I'm going to take a little time off so I can rework the future chapters.
This Wednesday 6/30 will be the debut of "Pampered by the Villainous Tyrant King" (title in progress but most likely I'll settle on this, and guess who's the villainous tyrant king lol). I did a reincarnation story for Revenge of the Duchess, so this new story is a transmigrator (isekai) versus reincarnator story. I have 16 chapters stockpiled so far, but I want to get a little bit more in before school starts. As to exactly what time I'll release it, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe late evening EST/PST?
Also, woot, woot, we're almost 100 favorites on this story! I believe we actually hit 100 a few days ago, and then someone unfavorited, lmao. But that's okay. I'm feeling unsatisfied with this story, too. It's probably because it's a little wonky to fit PJO characters' personalities to original characters who are completely different.
As always, I'll see you lovelies next chapter and on 6/30!