Disclaimer: i dont own pjo
Thank you all for the nice comments! You guys are going to make me blush- may not be edited because im hella tired but still want to get this out to you all.
Cy later, enjoy~ - lob
T-T
"Perseus, come now. You're falling behind."
Artemis stood on the ridge overlooking a trench.
"Yes, yes. My lady."
The moon goddess lightly snorted. It was as audible as a still breeze on a hot summer day, yet Percy heard it. Ultimately, he decided not to comment on it and only responded with cheerful smile.
Percy gazed down, using his hand to shield from the sun, seeing nothing but darkness. His senses, however, told him that there was something down there. Lurking in wait.
"Down?"
"Yep. It seems to know we're here. Right around there." He pointed at a spot in the void.
"You sure?"
"Well, I could be wrong."
Artemis rolled her eyes and shook her head.
A shot was fired from her bow. The silver bolt producing a whistle of death as it soared through the air.
It hit the creature with a cracking sound.
Suddenly, the ground began shaking tremendously, threatening their footing to lose its stability.
"Mistress!" Percy reached out his hand.
Artemis immediately understood and practically flew in his direction, not minding anything else in her surroundings.
Percy quickly pulled his mistress into his arms and leaped away from the ledge, wrapping his arms around her to shield her from any possible dangers that might've taken the opportunity to spring out in surprise and attack them.
Their hands magically found their way to each other, intertwined tightly as if their life depended on it. Perhaps, afraid to lose balance or to feel secure knowing that there was another person physically with them. Or maybe, they wanted to know that they were together and if something happened, the other person would be right there to help as soon as it happened.
The way he pulled Artemis into his embrace seemed so natural as if they had practiced it a thousand times. Neither of them seemed to think much about it, their faces were cold and serious.
Despite being known as a man hater, Artemis allowed herself to be held by one as if it was entirely instinctual and not at all contradictory to her known image.
A woman who would skin any male that tried to touch her.
A woman who would gouge your eyes out if you laid eyes on her for too long.
A woman who would transform any males she comes across in her hunts into jackalopes, just for the fun of it.
A woman who would castrate you for smiling at her.
These were only some of the many rumors about Artemis.
Some of them completely false or heavily exaggerated based on a partial truth.
Strangely enough, these rumors didn't stop people from trying to court her. Perhaps, they were lured by the title of conquering a woman that seemed completely unconquerable.
If someone was able to successfully court Artemis, not only would they have an extremely beautiful wife, but they would be revered by every man in the known Greek and Roman world. Men included: gods, titans, spirits, satyrs, nymphs, demigods, cyclops, naiads, unicorns, centaurs, basically creature with sentience.
Her notoriety reached far and wide.
But no god or anyone that knew of Artemis's reputation could ever imagine in a hundred million years that she would willingly surrender herself to a man that wasn't themselves.
It was simply unthinkable.
Artemis was a distant and unattainable dream that no man should've ever be able to touch, which is why no one would believe it even if someone told the scene in graphic detail with video evidence.
Regardless of what anyone thought, it wouldn't change the situation Percy and Artemis were currently in.
Not even three seconds after they moved, the rock near the edge began to crack slightly, foreboding of what to happen next. The fragmentation expanded rapidly, resembling a spiderweb.
Large pieces of rock broke off and fell into the void. One would expect the sounds of crashing rocks to follow soon after, but there was no noise to indicate such. It was almost as if it had never happened despite two people being there to witness it.
Neither two looked away for a single second, still holding hands, and continued to vigilantly stare at the cliffside. Such an indicator was hard to miss and probably signified that something else would happen.
For a few seconds, there was a brief silence, before a faint ringing sound filled the air, echoing from the cavern below.
Artemis hastily yelled, "Ears!"
Their clasped hands instantly broke apart.
Percy instinctually lowered his hands to cover Artemis's ears while she turned around to do the same to him.
He always prioritized her wellbeing before his, and Perseus would practically throw himself in front of her whenever there was a potential danger. He always found a way to be close enough to protect her while simultaneously being at a distance that made her comfortable. Artemis was so used to it that she unconsciously moved to protect him rather than herself. Even though Artemis had more than plenty of time to cup her own ears, she didn't think to do so.
A deafening otherworldly screech distorted the air as it traveled upwards. The aftershock pushed the duo back. The tops of the tree whipped in the opposite direction. The wind pushed their faces to an extremely close proximity, where the tips of their noses barely touched. Artemis was currently a head shorter than Percy, so she was looking up at him.
For a few seconds, time seemed to slow as they exchanged an unspeakable conversation. Perhaps searching for something that was never there, or confirming an undeniable fantasy that existed within their essence of their very being.
An unknown emotion bubbled within her heart as she stared into his gem-like eyes, engraining every fine detail into his mind. His marvelous orbs gazed back with thoughts of concern and gratefulness.
They contain no form of lust and only wanted. She didn't know what he was thinking, but she didn't need as his eyes spoke all the words she needed to know.
After seeing that she was alright, he looked in the direction that the sound came from, laser focused.
His warm hands firmly held her ears shut, feeling the slightest tremors pulsating through his hands. He was trying to be as delicate as he could possibly be to make her feel comfortable. The minuscule shifts along with a faint beating coursed through her eardrums.
It was his heart. It appeared to surge calmly, yet its rhythm was unjointed somehow. Artemis knew what the normal rhythm of a heartbeat was, that was one of the ways she could tell how someone was lusting over her. The expansion of the pupil, shallow breathing, irregular heartbeat, absent mind.
All of these minor things in combination could be used in order to decipher a single conclusion.
She felt a sense of security like never before as if the world around her didn't matter, and they were the only ones in existence.
Her guardian usually appeared disinterested in matters of male and female. Today, she assumed, it was going to be no different, unless she read his mind.
As appealing as it sounded, she couldn't bring herself to search his thoughts.
Even though Artemis had done it before, it felt wrong. It feel like she took advantage of his loyalty to scour his thoughts, and he would have no idea. But, it would surely ruin what they had right now.
If she ever decided to be something on impulse due to something that he thought of, then she felt that she might regret it later.
Anyone else was fine. Just, not him.
Artemis really wondered where his thoughts were at during this time, and if they were similar to hers.
If they were...
It definitely wouldn't make her happy or anything. Not in the slightest.
Her cupped ear were slowly released, ushering the earful of reality back in. Her sensors deprived of warmth, a cold wind enveloped her body, similar to the feeling of taking a hot shower and being hit with the wind of Antartica once you step out.
Deep inside, a small portion of her wanted to stay like that for another second or two.
It wasn't the time to be focused on other things as another rumbling came from the trench.
A reptilian hand emerged from the trench. Its massive black claws penetrated the rock cliff as if they were made of butter. It began to pull the rest of its body upwards.
The duo looked at each other to confirm their next actions. It looked like they were on the same page as Artemis leaped into the tree while Percy unsheathed his sword. A clear film appeared on it as he was pulling it out.
He sprung at the creature and slashed at its hands, trying to destabilize it.
His sword pierced its scales rather easily, causing a black ooze to gush out. But, just as he was about to go in for another strike, a sizzling sound could be heard from the wound.
The previous damaged skin repaired itself and looked like nothing had happened in the first place. It happened as fast as he was able to cut it.
Percy leaped away, deciding to create distance between them, knowing that he couldn't do much to the creature.
The creature hoisted itself up onto solid land, curling itself on a nearby tree to display its massive length. It was a twenty foot long lizard-like creature with two massive arms.
It looked like a combination of a lizard and a serpent. The front portion of it was a lizard but the latter half was that of a snake. A strange abomination melded together from two normal-sized animals.
He couldn't fathom how it grew to such a length, but he also knew that it was unnatural.
Percy took a peek at his mistress. She was standing at the top of a tree, charging an arrow that glowed an increasingly dense silver.
His mistress seemed to be almost done, so he decided to distract it. Percy pointed his sword at the creature, and he shot a small projectile at its eye. Of course, it was not just a regular projectile, but one that had some of his power infused into it.
Through trial and error, Percy found out that he was capable with manipulating and empowering himself with water. During the incident with the only other man he's encountered, he was able to conjure a droplet of water as small as a bee's stinger to split apart his spear.
Since then, he consistently tried to summon the same power to no avail. That was until a year or two ago.
Before the small water bolt hit the lizar-pent, it exploded into a blanket of mist, blocking its vision.
It shrieked in response and opened its mouth to spray a dark purple liquid. It was probably best to not get hit by that, so Percy chose to evade the attack rather than block it with his sword in case it was poisonous.
He looked at where the liquid landed, his guess was right.
There was a hole in the ground with faint white smoke over it.
Good thing he chose to dodge.
Calculating the time that his mistress usually took to fully charge her arrow, now was a good enough time to move out the way.
The distance between him and the creature widened immensely as a streak of light passed by him in the air.
It was a beam as thick as thick as the palm of an adult. The beam passed through the head of the lizar-pent and continued to streak into the sky.
He was sure that the creature was dead as the dimming light revealed a gaping hole directly on its forehead. For a brief moment, Percy could see its pink innards underneath the creature's scales before blood ruptured outwards.
Its body was on the tree while it happened, so the top of the tree fell to the ground as the lizar-pent's body flailed around aimlessly before violently crashing to the ground, unable to regenerate itself.
The black ooze stained the grass as its body lay there in full display.
His mistress walked over to his side, observing the dead creature.
She looked unperturbed as if she had done this a million times already.
"Drakon," She said.
"Oh."
Percy heard of drakons from his mistress, but he didn't think that this was one since it looked different than her description. He also didn't feel that it was too big of a deal because of how easily his mistress had taken it down.
He didn't really do much, only stalling for time. Inspecting his mistress, it was good that nothing happened to her.
"Seems to be a mutated drakon though. It's much different than ordinary drakons. This one has the body like Medusa being half-lizard, half-snake."
An image of the half-snake lady appeared in his mind. He compared it to the beat and Percy thought that her analogy was pretty spot on. The more he thought about it, the more the analogy made sense.
They stood before the corpse of the drakon. Its body laid at a solid five feet around upper torso level. The drakon's head was sunken slightly in the ground due to the corrosive blood that continued to leak out like a running pipe.
Artemis ran her hands over its scales, feeling a smooth bumpy ride. There was gaping hole that went through its forehead and jaw at a diagonal, revealing a little portion of its heart, which was still beating.
She muttered to herself, "It might be a new species, maybe I should collect some samples for Athena. She'd probably want some."
Its tongue, or at least whatever was left of it, could be seen almost falling out of its mouth, covered in a bubbly saliva and black blood. Bubbles formed from the blood like a pot simmering soup.
The tip of the tongue wiggled and jumped, causing him to snatch his mistress's hand and pull her away, spinning her like a ballerina. He embraced her again, clutching one of her hands while pressing her body up against his. His action was an extremely long flinch. The post mortem twitching really freaked him out. He could feel the hairs on his body stand up with faint goosebumps growing on his arm.
It took him a while to notice their rather compromised position, but the second he realized Percy immediately let go, springing away from her. With how fast he jumped away, someone might've questioned whether or not he was scared of women. It happened within the blink of an eye.
He apologized profusely, bowing multiple times. He felt horrible knowing that his mistress didn't like men and that he just took advantage of her without any sort of warning. She put up with him so far. He wouldn't blame her if she decided to push him off the cliff, not that he ever thought she was the type of person to do that. But if she did, he would not blame her. What he just did was not right and extremely disrespectful, especially as a guardian and not as a lover or something.
Percy felt even worse looking at her slightly bewildered expression. He was also worried that he might've squeezed her hands a little too hard because he was scared.
Meanwhile, Artemis was just taken aback, not expecting his action.
...
To do or not to do.
...
sniff* *sniff*
A masculine scent filled her nostrils, overloading her senses for a brief second with her eyes closed.
It smelled like putting a shell in your ear and hearing the sound of the ocean echo within it.
It was both cool and pleasant.
He distanced himself suddenly and started to apologize profusely.
For a while, Artemis didn't really know what do to as the course of events was a little hazy.
They were too fast and sudden. The moon goddess couldn't properly understand what she just experienced.
But seeing him apologize when he had done nothing wrong, it really annoyed her because he felt as though he apologized way too much.
It took Artemis a while to convince him that everything was fine, and that he had nothing to apologize for before they awkwardly left to go back to camp.