XIV

Percy

"What are these things?" Jason yelled as a giant axe-head nearly sliced him in half. He jumped out of the way and impaled it with his sword. Only it didn't turn into dust. In fact, it didn't seem to have any effect on the monster anyways.

Percy managed to focus… and realized that every single monster was a combination of three of the following: Household appliances, Animals, Weapons, Electronic gadgets, Furniture and Decorative ornaments.

He stabbed a monster with an axe-head, a zebra body, bottles for legs and chairs for hands, only to get hit by another one with an elephant head, vacuum machine body, giant earphone hands and computer mice for feet and legs.

"What are these things?" Annabeth yelled.

Everyone stared at Annabeth. When she didn't know something, it was usually bad. "These aren't in Greek Mythology!" she continued. She dodged a blow from another monster.

"We are demons!" one of them said. His voice resonated around his cleaver head. It sounded like someone was scratching a knife on marble, very, very hard. It was all Percy could do to not cover his ears and cringe.

He tried to slice one of them apart, but the blade simply passed straight through him like he was jelly. He felt the blade vibrating rapidly, and he pulled it out.

It was almost as if it didn't know what to do to this monster. The gap closed as soon as his sword was pulled out.

Percy didn't want to risk getting any blood on the soil below them. He dodged as cleaver head tried to cut his head off, then rolled to avoid getting pulverized by a weed whacker. He kicked out with both of his legs but his kick didn't seem to do much apart from make it angry. His now tattered Reeboks (thanks to hours and hours of fighting) started to feel cold-or his feet were starting to heat up. He immediately pulled them out and got back up, trying to regain balance.

Apparently realizing that they were going to make him heat up if they let him hit them, they started to crowd around him, going straight through him. His body started to feel hot. Around him, he could see his friends getting the same treatment.

Then he saw Frank. The guy was inside of a demon, almost as if it was made of jelly, and his mouth was open. Percy realized he was yelling in intense pain.

"Get away!" he yelled. He charged through the demons, slicing them apart to give himself some breathing room, and got Frank out of the monster. As soon as his head got out, it started to steam.

"Frank!" Percy yelled. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" Frank yelled. "It's affecting me more than you! But that's not important. You've got to save Hazel!" he pointed at a girl inside of another demon. She was starting to blister. Heat waves came off the demon holding her.

"On it!" Percy yelled. He ran straight over to it and sliced it apart. As soon as Hazel fell out of the demon, she started to cough, and the blisters receded.

He turned around-only to see Frank get swallowed up again. In the other corner of the room, he saw Piper frantically trying to get Jason out of another demon.

Only the Romans are getting hammered! Percy realized. He didn't dwell on it much, and he leaped back into battle, slicing his way back to Frank.

He sliced the demon apart, but then things got a little complicated.

One of the demons in the middle-the one with a giant vacuum cleaner for a head- started to suck up all of them with a giant vacuum. "Guys!" Percy yelled. "Get over here!" He managed to dodge the air, but Frank got sucked up as he did so. "NO!"

Frank was once again in the demon. It was only then that Percy realized that there was a thin layer of air-or something else- between Frank and the body of the demon.

As he sliced another one, he realized that the blade and the demon never even touched each other at all. There was some sort of force-field between them and the demons.

Suddenly, axe-head leaped for his arm. He didn't have enough time to react. The axe went clean through his arm… and did absolutely nothing.

He shook it a few times, just to make sure that his arm was, in fact, connected to his body and that it wasn't some sort of godly superglue holding it together. Actually, if it had been godly superglue, he wouldn't have known anyways.

He picked up his sword. Unfortunately, he wasn't having much luck with killing these demons at all.

He looked around and saw Frank, Hazel and Jason slumped against a wall, their bodies steaming. Then he finally realized that the people with roman lineage were having a natural disadvantage to the demons.

But why?

Percy ducked as a demon lunged at him. He ran over to Frank, Hazel and Jason. "Guys!" he yelled.

"Wha…?" Jason muttered. He was relatively unconscious, but he managed to blurt out some random noises.

"Jason, you need to keep yourself down." Percy said. "You got cooked by a demon."

Jason's eyes flew open. "I realized something." He said. "We can't attack them, and they can attack us."

Percy wanted to yell, You don't say! But he held it in. "And?"

"And you notice that there isn't a single drop of blood at all." Jason continued.

Percy suddenly felt like smacking himself in the face. That was what Gaia had been counting on! They couldn't defeat these demons, but on the other hand, the demons could kill them. All Gaia needed was blood to be spilt, specifically on the first of August, right here. It didn't matter if it was alive or dead, blood would do. She just needed to stall them. Agrios couldn't do it, because he'd probably slice them up and let their blood flow, and do something wrong. Gaia had used these demons to heat them up, hopefully killing them but without causing blood to flow!

He looked around the cavern. They were fighting a losing battle. With Leo's fire running low and Piper's charmspeak having practically no effect, Percy couldn't even hurt them!

Suddenly, vacuum-head sucked up Leo and Piper. Screaming, they got pulled into the demon like it was a vacuum bag. They steamed, and screamed as they tried to fight their way out. Their eyes started to close, and pretty soon they got out of the demon, only to get sucked up again.

"Any ideas?" he asked Annabeth. She was staring at the scene in front of them, cringing.

"Nope," Percy replied. "None. Honestly, we can't-"

Suddenly, Annabeth lifted off the ground and hurtled towards vacuum-head.

"Percy, help!" she yelled, before getting vacuumed into the demon. She quickly got her dagger and sliced through it, leaving just enough time for all of them to get out.

The three of them were steaming, their skin slightly red. "Are you guys okay?" Percy asked.

Leo was panting. "I think…" he stopped and fell, face first, on the ground.

As soon as they had gotten Leo and Piper safely behind them, he faced the demons.

"A good day to die young?" he asked Annabeth.

She smiled. "You bet."

They leapt into battle, swords out, slashing and generally doing nothing.

"Gods of Olympus!" Annabeth yelled, trying (unsuccessfully) to slice apart a refrigerator.

Percy wasn't having any more luck. He managed to avoid getting trapped in a demon and heated to death, but he wasn't any closer to defeating these things.

He tried for diplomacy.

"Look, guys, I know this might be a little hard to do, but we're trying to save the world. Could you please let us pass through here and get out?" Percy yelled, praying that, by some astronomical chance, that it was going to work.

"No." The axe-head hummed. He landed right in front of Percy. "We do not accept groveling. And your friends are dead. Our mistress has promised us much better things if we join her cause, and we do not refuse such an offer!"

He stupidly tried to slice Percy in half. Percy didn't even move and he went right through him.

"Curse it!" he yelled. "Ever since he rose into the heavens, we've gotten weaker and weaker!"

Percy turned around and saw axe-head behind him, kneeling on the floor. "But our new master has promised us that, when she arises, she will destroy all of you and give us our power back! I cannot wait any longer for the ruler to come back- will take too long. Instead I choose a new ruler- Gaia!"

Percy wasn't surprised, but axe-head seemed surprised that Percy hadn't reacted. "You know," he continued. He sounded a little worried. "I broke the rules in doing so, you know!"

Broke the rules?

"What rules?" Percy asked.

Axe-head looked like he was about to say something, but stopped himself. "Enough! As long as we keep you here until August first, we get to get restored to our former glory!"

He yelled at all of the other demons, "KILL THEM!", then launched himself at Percy.

Percy barely had time to react before axe-head completely surrounded him with his body. His arms and legs started to heat up. He managed to break out with his sword, but his clothes steamed. He was seriously starting to suspect that the steam was some sort of reaction, but at that moment, he didn't really care.

He looked around at the cavern. The entire time they'd been fighting, he'd realized one thing: that they weren't going to last much longer. He and Annabeth couldn't keep fighting forever, and the others were done from the attacks. But then things got even more complicated.

Annabeth accidentally threw her sword away. It looked so stupid, what she'd done, that Percy could have just smacked his head on a wall.

Of course, after having to fight for so long, their hands were quite tired from having to hold on to such heavy weapons. Annabeth probably wasn't quite used to the drakon tooth sword anyways.

It skittered across the floor, and clunked against the wall.

Annabeth yelled a bunch of choice words, and made a beeline for her weapon. Unfortunately, she was intercepted by two other demons, and went right into them.

Even worse, her hands weren't making much progress in trying to push away from the demon, and her body started to steam. Percy ran straight for her, but axe-head vacuum-head blocked his path. He managed to slice through both of them and keep going, but he was losing time. Every single step that he made was basically stepping through the slightly jelly-like demon. His body kept vibrating every time he stepped into a demon, which was probably where the heat was coming from. He finally made it to Annabeth and sliced the demon apart (temporarily) but by that time, she was already out.

The demons swarmed him.

Percy was alone. He had no tricks up his sleeves. His sword couldn't kill them at all, and one slice wasn't enough to get all of them away from him.

As he got into the demons, he felt his body vibrating rapidly and heating up. He knew their quest had failed.

But as he prepared to die, he saw the symbol glowing on his hand and suddenly had a completely random thought.

What if the "weapon" hadn't been an actual weapon, but a person? He'd had gazillions of suspicions about the guy he'd met on Long Island, for a long time.

Maybe now was the time to call for help.

With the little strength that he had left, he let loose a giant, silent scream for help.

CARTER!