I recommend knowing what drakons look like before you read this chapter, there's an image on this page: wiki/Drakon
Chapter 7: Where's My Epic Background Music
Aura had three long-term goals for her life. To take on a drakon, to live to attend Will and Nico's wedding (it'll be the cutest thing in the universe, hands down), and to end up on Buzzfeed Unsolved somehow.
She was about to get her first wish.
The problem was, it wasn't really a serious wish.
When she had learned about monsters at Camp Half-Blood, drakons seemed like the best of the bunch. They were basically dragons! In terms of coolness, dragons were hard to beat. She had immediately thought that she wanted to take one on at least once in her life.
Aura wouldn't say she regretted it exactly, but when you're looking at a thirty feet long serpent as thick as a school bus with rows of sharp teeth, bright green scales, and eyes like search lights running through the streets of Midtown like a deranged chicken snake, it brings into question what brought you to that point.
Thankfully, it was an Aethiopian drakon, and a decently small one at that.
It turned towards her and roared wildly, narrowing its eyes and starting to stalk towards her.
She was about to make a run for it and hope she could get to a less populated area before it reached her when she realized that its attention was refocusing.
Aura's stomach dropped when she saw what it was looking at. A girl, probably around 13, standing on the sidewalk and staring up at it.
She took off in that direction, dodging cars and confused pedestrians.
Drakons weren't smart, but they weren't exactly stupid either. As the drakon gave Aura an annoyed glance and then looked back at the kid, it seemed to be running statistics on whether it should kill the kid and lose an advantage in a fight against the bigger demigod or go after Aura first and hope the kid was still in the area later.
Aura didn't give it the chance to make the decision. "Over here, kid!"
The girl turned to Aura, gave the drakon a wide-eyed glance, and started running to Aura.
Once they reached each other, Aura grabbed the girl's arm and started pulling her away from the drakon, slowing her pace a bit to match the girl's.
"My name's Aura Davis. You're going to be okay. Listen to me, this is important. Once you get somewhere safer, I'm going to turn around and attack that thing. You need to keep running, okay? I'll be fine. Don't go back for me."
The girl looked at Aura.
The drakon was slowly falling behind. Drakons aren't very fast, and it had to keep dodging cars and confused pedestrians.
Aura used her free hand to pull her phone out of her pocket and hand it to the girl.
"My passcode is 4362. Can you remember that?"
"4362," the demigod repeated firmly.
"Once you get as far as you can from the drakon, call Will Solace. If he doesn't answer, call Kayla Knowles. If she doesn't answer, call anyone on my contact list. Okay? Anyone on my contact list will be able to get you help. Tell them your location, and do whatever they tell you to do."
"I understand," the girl said.
She was already calming down and taking stock of the situation, putting survival first. Aura had acted similarly when she had first been plunged into the godly world.
Aura didn't know where the safest place for the girl would be. It depended on whether Aura was going to survive the fight with the drakon or not. If Aura did survive, it would be much better if the girl was closer, on a rooftop or something. If Aura didn't survive, the girl should be as far as possible, on a subway train to Long Island. But it was possible the kid would be attacked on her way to Long Island, with no one around to defend her. Using Aura's phone would be a necessity, but the use of technology would amplify her demigod aura.
If Aura didn't think she would be able to survive the fight, her best chances were to take the subway along with the girl. But Aura's demigod aura was way bigger than the girl's, so them staying together would only put the kid in danger.
When Aura looked behind her to check how far the drakon was, she saw something that really threw a wrench in things.
"Metrokoites!" She muttered tiredly. Beside her, the kid paused, mouth open.
Spiderman was standing on top of a light pole about twenty feet behind them, watching the drakon. He noticed the girls' interest and swung over to them.
"Hey, do you guys know what that thing is?" He sounded younger than Aura had thought he would be, about Aura's age. Huh.
"Not really. Bye, have a good day," Aura said, tugging on the kid's arm and increasing her pace, aware of the angry drakon barreling towards them.
"Not really? What does that mean?" Spiderman asked, keeping pace.
"It means stay away from the thing," Aura said tightly. The girl clutching Aura's arm was struggling to keep up, even with the adrenaline that came with fearing for one's life.
A few pedestrians nearby had noticed Spiderman's presence and worried demeanor, and, like mortal minds tended to do, vaguely connected the dots that the drakon (whatever it looked like to mortals) was a threat. The confusion and panic quickly spread.
Aura's mind was still racing, trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly, she realized something.
"You know what?" She said, coming to a stop. "Here. Take her, and swing up to a rooftop or something," She moved closer to spiderman, the girl following, and gave the girl's arm to Spiderman. "Don't let the thing near her, whatever it takes."
She leaned down a little to look the girl in the eye. "You have my phone. Everything I told you still applies. If I don't make it, ditch him."
The younger demigod nodded solemnly. Aura didn't know why she felt that the girl would be able to handle herself, but something in the girl's eyes told Aura that she would be alright.
"If you don't make it? Wai- what are you going to do?" Spiderman asked. He was still holding the girl's arm protectively, glancing worriedly at the drakon only a block away that was moving as fast as it could towards them.
Aura gauged the distance between her and the drakon. She took a deep breath.
"What I do best."
And she started running.
That may sound like an arrogant move, or maybe a brave one, but mostly Aura was just trying to ignore the panic-inducing fear and anxiety building inside of her.
Aura knew that she was going to die young and painfully. And she had accepted it. It wasn't worth worrying about. All she could do was focus her energy on improving her skills and enjoying life while she could.
But when it came down to it, dying was terrifying. The human mind is very good at discouraging dangerous and scary situations by flooding the body with instinctive distress and anxiety. Even experienced fighters can't really get rid of it, they just get better at ignoring it.
Sprinting towards a drakon with just a kopis and her powers made ignoring it pretty hard. As far as stupid went, this might be the stupidest thing Aura had ever done. Assuming she didn't do anything even stupider in the future. The way her life was going, that wasn't a safe assumption.
Aura reached the drakon within seconds. The drakon sloppily lunged towards her, unhinging its massive jaw and showing off row after row of razor sharp teeth. She dodged, lurching sideways.
Aura didn't remember much about how to kill a drakon. Their scales were basically impenetrable, but the eyes were weak spots.
Aura wove inbetween the legs, darting in front of it occasionally, trying to draw it closer to one of the buildings.
As soon as the drakon was within ten feet of the building, Aura ran for the fire escape. It was about six feet above the ground, high enough to be uncomfortable. Aura leaped up, barely managing to grab onto the platform.
The drakon was unfortunately still right behind her. It tried to bite her legs off, and Aura was able to kick it hard in the nose as she grabbed onto the railing and pulled one knee onto the platform. The drakon tried to lift itself onto the fire escape to get a better reach. It lifted a massive front arm with sharp claws onto the tiny edge of the platform. The drakon either wasn't paying attention to where it puts it arm or it didn't have good aim, because one of the claws slid into the edge of Aura's hanging leg, cutting a deep gash in her thigh.
Aura muttered a stream of things in English and Ancient Greek that are better left unrepeated (and were mostly incomprehensible anyway) as she quickly pulled her injured leg onto the platform and shoved herself up and over the railing, landing somewhat clumsily on the main part of the fire escape.
She hauled herself up one level of stairs, heavily limping and trying not to let it slow her down.
The second level of the fire escape was just high enough that Aura was a little above the drakon, which was still snuffling around the first level. Aura pulled herself over the railing again, balancing unsteadily on the edge of the platform, and leaped onto the drakon's neck.
Which was a pretty good blind spot, though hard to hold onto. Aura clumsily but quickly manueveered herself around to reach the side of its head. Panting heavily, she unsheathed her sword as she waited for it to stop swinging its head around for a second. Holding onto its horn, she leaned forward and stabbed her kopis into its eye.
The drakon roared wildly and shook its head around, knocking Aura to the ground.
She instinctively tried to land in a parkour roll but her injured thigh got in the way and she fell hard on her hands. She scrambled to her feet shakily as the drakon burst into gold dust, her kopis clattering to the ground.
She limped over to pick it up, almost bursting into tears when she had to lean down.
She needed ambrosia and a good nap, but there were still matters to attend to. Where had Spiderman and the kid gone?
Yes, Peter Parker is now part of the story because he can be. I know that having a lot of important characters involved is just digging myself into a bit of a hole plot-wise but oh well, I'll figure it out. I don't think he's going to be very involved, he has his own things going on, but he's a fun character and I like him being around. Anyway I decided that I may as well put this on Wattpad too so if you want to check it out over there, you can. Thanks for reading, if you have any critiques or suggestions I would love to hear them. Also if you think anything warrants extra explanation (Aura's backstory, my demigod ocs, anything I may have missed) please tell me. I've thought everything through in my head so it's easy to forget what I have and haven't talked about.