A/N: Not counting author's notes, this chapter is 2,701 words long. I hope you guys are impressed. XD Also, I feel I should apologize (AGAIN) for how obscenely late this chapter is. Curse my stupid home computer! Finally, I'm sorry if this story is a bit slow, but that's just my writing style. I'll try and speed up though. Thank you times a million for your continued support and reviews. You guys are the only reason I'm still writing this (instead, I don't know, doing my math homework *coughcough*).
Chapter 8
-Annabeth
A man I didn't know kicked me awake about an hour after the sun rose. He had bizarre dark purplish hair, but I was too exhausted to be surprised. I felt like I'd barely slept at all between nightmares.
I wondered if they'd make me walk again today, but instead the man was leading/dragging me over to the second wagon, where Red and Hugo were waiting. Red smiled nastily at me. "How was your night, love?"
I summoned just enough energy to coat my response in infamous, teenage sarcasm. "Positively wonderful."
Hugo looked surprised at my boldness – I hadn't said a single word the entire time I'd traveled with him – but didn't comment. Red just laughed, and gestured to the purple-haired man. "First things first. Tie her to the wagon wheel here, then go fetch the hawk out of the crate with the green and red marks in the third wagon." The man complied, tying my hands loosely enough that I could move a bit but not actually go anywhere, then slouched off towards the third wagon.
Another man was passing out breakfast, a simple ration of bread with a bit of rubbery cheese. I wolfed mine down – I was still hungry from my two-day hike, though my bonds made it somewhat difficult.
"The hawk" turned out to be a middle-aged man with black hair, tan skin, and two enormous wings extended behind him. I stared. So that was a sub-human. Immediately, questions flooded my mind (Could he fly? Were the tiger, the cat and the crow I'd seen also races of sub-human? What would a cat-man look like? Could he talk?), but they would have to wait. I was sure that whatever was about to happen to the poor hawk-man, Red was having me watch it for a reason. He fought the guards holding his arms, but he was out-numbered. He wore an iron collar around his neck – not tight enough to leave a scar but still very close to the skin. Red stepped forward, holding a clear glass bottle of greenish liquid in one hand and a much larger iron collar in the other. Four men pinned the hawk-man down, and Red switched the collars and poured the liquid down his throat.
For a minute, then two, the hawk-man seemed unaffected. Then a glow surrounded him, and he transformed into a giant hawk, with talons the size of daggers and a dangerous-looking beak, and I understood why Red had switched the collars. The hawk-man's old collar would have choked him if he'd turned into a hawk while wearing it. He shrieked and Red swiftly clipped a metal chain onto the collar. The bird ignored him, and after a long moment, he became a hawk-man once more. Three more men followed Red's example while the hawk-man lay gasping on the ground, clipping iron leads to the collar. When the hawk-man shifted again, he showed far more interest in the surrounding men, and his eyes gleamed with the bloodlust I'd seen last night. The four men held their leads tight, preventing the hawk from killing its captors. The hawk shifted several more times, each time shrieking louder and louder and becoming more and more wild, until the shifting stopped, and there in the center of the clearing was a blood-crazed, feathery monster. A Feral One.
I closed my eyes, sickened, as the men dragged the Feral One away to a brand-new, iron-enforced cage. Red laughed at the expression on my face, and I bit my tongue – hard. I was essentially helpless, and trying to kill him now would do no good at all. I just had to keep telling myself that…
"And now it's time to get going, boys. Put the girl in with the little kitty in the first wagon." Red tilted his head, placing a hand on his chin in a mockery of deep thought. "I know she's no sub-human, but I don't think a collar would go amiss, do you, Dergo?"
Dergo, the man with weird purple hair, shook his head and grinned stupidly. "Naw, boss, nawt at awl." He had an absolutely horrendous accent, and inwardly I wrinkled my nose in disgust. "Awl git wawn fur 'er."
Um, what?
Of course, his meaning became much clearer when he trotted off and returned with an iron collar like the one the hawk-man had been wearing. "Awl git wawn fur 'er," must mean "I'll get one for her." Where in the name of Athena did he learn to talk like that?
It seemed pointless to struggle, but there were limits to my patience. And having a purple-haired imbecile with all the obvious brainpower and eloquence of a fruit fly put a collar around my neck – especially when there was absolutely no logical reason beyond that of Red's sick sense of humor to do so – was just a bit much. When Dergo reached for my neck, I dodged easily enough, and despite the fact that both of my hands were tied to a wagon wheel with less than six inches of loose rope, I actually managed to avoid the moron for a solid minute. It was hilarious, to tell the truth, until Red grew impatient and put the razor-sharp head of an arrow to my collarbone and told his little minion to get a move on. Dergo was bright red with embarrassment – the color clashed horribly with his hair – and locked the collar in place with a number of completely incomprehensible but probably obscene comments muttered under his breath.
Just wait until you try to stick me in a crate, you pathetic excuses for sentient creatures, I thought mutinously. The morning's display had put me in a decidedly rebellious mood, and I was going to make things as difficult for Red as I could without actually goading him into killing me. I didn't want to die yet, not while Purk and Red were still drawing breath.
They wouldn't die today, but neither would I. I would have pitied them if I didn't already hate them so much. No one made a worse enemy than a child of Athena.
I did have a purpose behind needling Red. I sensed that he truly would not hesitate to feed me to the Feral Ones – he'd probably even enjoy it, the sadist –, but he also seemed to like my "spunk", as he'd put it when he'd first bought me from Hugo. Therefore, it was probably safer for me to keep things… interesting. So long as I was careful, that is. As I was constantly telling Percy, Athena always has plan.
Taking no chances, Dergo pinned my shoulders to the side of the wagon with one of his broad, muscled arms while he untied my hands from the wheel. I rolled my eyes. Did the moron actually think I'd be stupid enough to run, even if I was unbound?
But the pressure of his upper arm against my chest made me think of an entirely different issue, and I decided I'd have to be even more careful. I wanted to be interesting enough for Red to not feed me to psychopathic animals, but I really, really didn't want to attract too much attention from these men. From the looks of things, I was the only female around (Though, granted, I wasn't sure about the sub-humans) and with my luck, it wouldn't be long before these greasy behemoths realized it. Could I rely on Red wanting to preserve my virtue? Er… maybe. Probably not.
Great. More complications.
Pulling my hands behind me but not bothering to secure them with the rope, Dergo pushed me towards the first wagon in the train. Another man, this one with dirty greenish brown hair, held my arms while Dergo carefully unfastened a large wooden crate from the wagon. Actually, the word crate would be kind of misleading. The sizes varied, but most were at least five feet tall. The one Dergo had unloaded was just a few inches taller than me and under five feet wide. A bright yellow X marked the top, but the other crates on that wagon were mostly marked with blue. One had two blue marks, and another, the biggest, was blue and green.
I figured Red had come up with some kind of color code so that his charges wouldn't have to know how to read to know what was inside. I wondered what they meant, but Dergo was already prying the top from the crate and menacing the contents with a nasty-looking battle ax. Whatever was inside hissed angrily, but obviously didn't want to take its chances with the ax. Before I could say a word, the man holding my arms was lifting me bodily into the crate. I managed to kick him a few times before he dropped me inside and slammed the lid down.
The darkness was instant. Light filtered dimly through tiny gaps in the wood that probably also doubled as air holes, but my eyes took their time adjusting. I tried to untangle myself from the crate's inhabitant, whom I had landed on when I was unceremoniously tossed in there, but the floor of my prison shifted suddenly as Dergo and his friend fit the crate back onto the wagon.
My cellmate was small, but wiry and agile, slithering out from under me with ease once the world was level once more. I blinked a few times, bringing my surroundings into sharper focus. The floor of the crate was padded with straw, but other than that and my cellmate, the crate was completely bare. But my eyes were mostly drawn to the young woman crouching a foot or two away from me. A pair of mismatched, glowing eyes regarded me with interest, one a dark pine needle green, the other a vivid purple. Her features were pert and catlike, and her hair was a pale icy blue, spiky and short. A pale blue tail whipped back and forth behind her, and matching cat ears stood at attention on top of her head.
A sub-human. I was so screwed.
-Thalia
Who was the idiot who came up with "Look on the bright side"?, I wondered grumpily. Because right now I really want to smack him.
There is no freaking bright side to being kidnapped by a dragon.
I mean, not only was I in serious pain (broken arm, at least three bruised ribs, blood all over me) and Nico was passed out on his own in the middle of nowhere (in a freaking video game world!), and I still had no idea if Percy and Annabeth were okay (I didn't even know if they were alive), but it was so stereotypical.
I was really starting to hate Tellius.
At least you're alive, my optimistic side told me.
Shut up, responded my inner pessimist.
The dragon had come out of nowhere, screeching bloody murder and knocking Nico into a tree before I could grab my spear. I'm better with a bow, really, but arrows aren't much good against scales, so I snatched my spear and shield and had about half a second to try and hit the darned thing before it turned around and slapped me with its tail. Naturally, I missed.
Long story short, the dragon decided I'd make a great lunch if it carried me off to its ridiculously high-up lair. Because, of course, I couldn't get kidnapped by a dragon that lived in a ground-level cave. No, this dragon had to carve its cave into a bloody cliff. That sucked. A lot.
As a Hunter of Artemis, I healed incredibly fast, but not fast enough to get out of the cave before the dragon woke up from its nap. Yes, its nap. What kind of dragon just drops its prey on the ground and starts snoring? Granted, I wasn't much of a threat in this condition, and yeah, I probably wasn't going anywhere, but still! It was so… snobbish. Condescending. Arrogant. I really hated arrogant people. Or dragons. Whatever.
I put the leather strap that held my quiver to my back between my teeth and carefully (and painfully) set the broken bone in my arm, using an arrow shaft and my heavy, leather belt as a makeshift splint. It was pretty rough, but better than nothing. And it only had to hold the bone in place long enough for me to get out of there. After that… well, I'd figure something out. Most of my arrows had fallen out or broken during the wild flight in the dragon's claws, but miraculously I still had all my weapons. My bow was strapped firmly to my back and reinforced with Hunter magic, I'd kept a death grip on my spear and my shield had somehow gotten jammed into a gap between two of the ridged scales on the dragon's chest and my bow. It wasn't like I could actually use any of them with my right arm broken, but it was still a good thing.
I had two choices. One, try and explore the pitch-black, probably endless cavern behind the dragon until it woke up and ate me. Two, try and climb the cliff face with a broken arm and fall to my death so the dragon would be spared the effort of killing me itself. I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath. I was going to die. And Dad was a world away.
Suddenly, a desperate plan began to form in the back of my mind. It was horrible and suicidal and utterly stupid (in other words, it was plan that Percy could have come up with), but, sadly enough, it was probably my best option. My only one, really.
Half an hour later, I was ready. I gripped my spear in my left hand and charged. Sparks flew wildly around the spearhead as I leapt onto the dragon's back and wedged it in between two armored scales. The dragon roared in shock and lunged forward, tumbling us both into the abyss.
Oh gods, I thought with my eyes shut tight. This was the best plan I could come up with?
Sadly, yes, it was.
(A/N: I thought about stopping the chapter here, but I figured that would just be mean. XD)
Our terrifying freefall stopped with a painful-sounding snap as the dragon spread its wings too fast in its panic. The sudden change in velocity slammed my head into the dragon's back, but I didn't let go of my spear. The dragon screamed as its wings were jerked upward painfully by the wind, but kept flying, if slower than before. A stream of fire-hot blood burned my hands, and I realized the momentum of our stop had driven my spear into the base of the dragon's neck. Never one to miss a golden opportunity, I settled my legs tightly against the dragon's side and pushed with all my might. I willed more sparks to fly from the spearhead, and the dragon's high-pitched roar told me it'd probably worked.
Its flight path became low and erratic, and I guessed I'd hit some kind of major artery. Clinging desperately to the dragon's side with my legs, I kept pushing the spear deeper into the base of the dragon's neck.
Then, in a single, heart-stopping moment, the dragon shuddered and died. And we fell. The jarring impact sent me flying from the dragon's back and snapped my makeshift splint into pieces. I didn't even have time to scream before I blacked out.