Daphne

After her fight with those mutants, Daphne was sorry that she had to leave them with Sarah. Thalia had used as much lightning as she could muster, and Daphne had used all of her explosive arrows, but no matter what they did the mutants just kept reforming. They just couldn't be killed!

Daphne was utterly exhausted, but stepping into the Garden of Hesperides filled her with energy. Just being near all that pure, untainted nature made Daphne feel like she had drank 20 cans of Red Bull.

Then she saw the dragon.

Lying beneath one of the trees was a dragon at least 10 times the size of Peleus, the one that guarded Half-blood Hill, and had too many heads for Daphne to count. She lost track at 73 when the creature stirred. Fortunately all it did was roll over and continue to sleep.

Then Logan sighed with relief.

Daphne just had time to think Idiot! when the dragon got up, saw them, and lunged. Daphne screamed. "NO!" And then...

Nothing.

No getting ripped to shreds, no getting blasted by fire, just nothing. When Daphne opened her eyes she saw the dragon's heads right in front of her face.

"Um, back up?" The dragon backed up.

"Woah," Logan said, "you can control that thing?" But Daphne wasn't listening. She was listening to the dragon's growling. Which she could understand.

"3C," it said, "he's in 3C."

How did she know that?!

Logan pulled Daphne along into the mountain. They had to instantly duck and cover. There were monsters everywhere!

The two of them managed to sneak around without being noticed for a while, the only problem being that the mountain was huge. They could barely go anywhere without getting lost. At one point they noticed another human. This boy was probably the same age as the two of them, had dark black hair, and wore a pair of dark sunglasses. Daphne guessed he was a demigod, but the thing was that he was speaking to a large group of monsters, trying to psych them up for battle.

"We will not be stopped!" the boy said, "Our parents have been lying in wait, defeated twice by the Olympians-" he said that word like it was acid, "-but their last defeat has borne me and my brethren, and we shall not be defeated by the gods' pawns like they were. The demigods of Camp Half-blood and Camp Jupiter!" He spat. "We shall crush the gods' children underfoot, and then we shall go after the gods themselves!"

The monsters cheered, roared, snarled, and made various other gruesome noises. Daphne and Logan sneaked away, both wondering if this guy wanted to destroy the gods, who were his parents?

Eventually they came to what looked like a prison hold. 3C. The two of them searched until they found that door. "So do we just break it open?" Logan asked, but Daphne was already picking the lock with her hunting knife.

The door opened, and, chained to the far wall, was the limp body of Percy Jackson.

Logan began sawing through his chains, while Daphne tried to stop herself from crying. They had found him. Percy Jackson. And for all they knew he was already dead.

Logan finished sawing through the last chain, which retracted into the wall. An alarm started going off somewhere. It was a trap.

They did the only logical thing: they ran. Any monsters they ran into they filled full of arrows, without getting too scratched up. The two of them worked like two teammates that had fought together their whole life.

Soon they made it outside, with a large hoard of monsters trailing behind them, to a very strange and cool scene: the four mutants in the garden, frozen in ice, still in battle positions. "Wouldn't die, so I froze them." Sarah explained.

Seeing the small army approaching a few yards away, Thalia stood beside Logan and started picking off monsters with arrows with him. "Try to find a way out of here," Thalia said back to Daphne, "me and Logan can handle this."

Daphne ran up to the dragon guarding the tree. "Can you fly us out of here?" she asked, feeling kind of stupid after realizing that the dragon didn't have wings.

But then a pair of wings grew out of the dragon's back. It roared as if to say "Come at me bro!" Daphne climbed on, followed by Sarah. Daphne was about to call to Logan and Thalia when Logan yelled "NOOOOOO!"

He jumped on the dragon, clutching the now dying body of Thalia Grace, with a black spike in her side, as the manticore, Dr. Thorn, slunk off into the mountain.