Chapter 2: The discovery of the Gateway, or; The first fight and the first flight
"Well, this is boring as hell." Will remarked as the group trudged through a particularly dark pit, only lit by the large fires coming from the holes in the pit wall.
"No shit sherlock." Lou responded as she mumbled to herself about dark caves, and crappy adventures. "This is the worst cave ever."
"Lou, you say that about every cave. Literally." Silena remarked as she gracefully walked beside Beckendorf, who quietly nodded and added "She's right".
Lou rolled her eyes before trudging on ahead into the darkness, her staff lighting the way for her friends. They were walking through a previously uncharted cave system, one much deeper than those the average team went through. But this was not the average group, and they were ready for anything.
Or, well, almost everything, which did not include a hydra that somehow hid in a small burrow, and surprised everyone. And spat a ton of acid over everything, melting both the walls of the pit, and the few torches on the wall, which Lou immediately ran over to relight. Without light, they were totally screwed.
"Crap!" Yelled Percy as he ducked under a flaming ball of venom before turning around and running towards the hydra, with the intent on cutting it's head off. "Beckendorf!"
"You got it Percy!" Beckendorf yelled as he sprinted, alongside Will, straight towards the head Percy was aiming to sever. "Standard hydra procedure-" Percy began, before a huge fireball almost burned his face off, and the hydra, being the smart ass it was, started biting it's own heads off to grow more. "Never mind, we need advanced procedure!"
Will swerved about 20 meters away from the hydra before running up a short ledge, and preparing to fire burning and sonic arrows at the hydras eyes, mouths and limbs. Percy and Beckendorf both ran at the same pace, straight towards the closest head, while Lou joined Will on the ledge, and started raining down fireballs from her staff. Silena and Cecil, on the other hand stealthily moved around the hydra, getting into position to take down any stray heads.
Percy swore violently as the hydra just narrowly missed biting his entire arm off. This was far larger than the average hydra, and was much more nimble and powerful too. However, it apparently wasn't fast enough, as Percy jumped up and severed two of it's heads, while Will fired a burning arrow into one stump, and Beckendorf sliced the other one in half with his burning hot sword.
This continued on for about 15 minutes, during which everyone had suffered at least some minor injury. It finally ended when Cecil jumped up and saved Silena, who was stabbing one hydra head in the eyes from being eaten by another head by slicing it down to the stump, while Percy cut off of the head Silena was stabbing. With the fight done, Lou decided to jump down from the 6 foot high ledge, and with infinite grace, fell, stumbled, tripped then rolled her ankle.
"Crap! Ah, fricken cliff!" She screamed as she stumbled around, trying to regain control of her foot. Everyone, even though they had just almost been killed, broke out into sniggers at Lou's foolishness. Percy, even though he was getting a kick out of the whole thing, knew that it was time to move on to the next cave. "Come on guys." He called out and beckoned to the small group. "Let's go."
Of course, this resulted in much grumbling, especially from Lou, who was currently trying to limp around as dignified as possible (without much success). The group eventually hobbled on, until a large buzzing noise filled their ears.
Everyone immediately looked over to Lou, who just shrugged and continued limping, until they heard the strange buzzing noise again.
Cecil, looking around the cave, noticed a small crack in a wall to the left. "Guys." Cecil said as he gestured to the wall. "I think I found something." Immediately, everyone stopped and looked at the wall. The group exchanged a glance, before Beckendorf pulled out a collapsable war hammer, and smashed the wall repeatedly. After a few blows, the wall caved in, and revealed a huge cavern. Everyone stopped, glancing at each other and the cave, before Percy, albeit with a sigh, walked into the crack in the wall, and walked up to one of the hills.
He was totally unprepared for the huge blast of power that took him off his feet, and knocked everyone back a few steps. Everyone started to run forward, until the cave started rumbling, pieces of the cavern roof falling down. "Percy!" Lou yelled, but not before Percy glanced over the hill, and saw a flash of gold, blue and white, and a large, wierd circular structure standing upright.
"Percy!" Lou yelled again, and Percy ran down the hill, and the group sprinted off towards the caves from which they had travelled here. They eventually stopped running when the rumbling had stopped, but Percy had perfectly seen what was in the cave. He knew what that structure was.
It was a Gateway, armed and prepared to transport whatever in hell was going to come here. And he knew, without a doubt, that they had found the source of the power quake a year ago, and that the long search, was coming to an end.
DUN DUN DUN! Dramatic ending there. No cliffhangers, at least not yet :p, but soon enough we'll be seeing the olympians, Annabeth, Nico, Grover, and everyone else! Remember, every review boosts my work efficiency, so review away my lovelies! See you all in a week or 2!