Annabeth Chase, Percy decided, was a woman with quite the vicious streak.
It was something he had already been ruminating on, to be honest, even before the afternoon had gone to shit. Someone had to have approved the gigantic caltrops by the camp's entrance, after all. Those weren't the sort of thing a fully kind-hearted and altruistic person would sign off on. The rusted, spiky contraptions might have actually undersold the kind of sadistic genius the daughter of Athena really was on the inside.
"This one is next."
Then again, who was he to judge? Percy hadn't exactly been the paragon of stable mental states recently. Being the 'saint of swordplay' sort of implied that he enjoyed stabbing things a bit more than was normal.
"Fire, this time."
The sky bearer ducked a lightspeed slash of gleaming, sickly bronze. The dodge trailed visible, glowing arcs in the air from where his eyes had been just a moment before. A perfectly timed hand of wind snagged the attacking wrist, pushing the following backswing just enough off course. A nimble spin found the next strike sailing to his right before Kampê flexed and snapped the gripping air apart. Her snarl vibrated in Percy's chest as she struck once more.
Like some liquid eldritch tentacle, the Zephyros Creek itself lashed out from the trees and engulfed the Drakaina's opposite arm mid-motion. The water bulged and distorted, but held against the strain. The dragoness' flaming whip snagged, interrupted, and a shining streak darted into the newly created gap in Kampê's guard. Riptide's razor edge dug deep into the flesh near her rear left hip, parting skin and sinew with a fleshy sound.
Kampê screeched, the ear-shattering vocalization equal parts pain and frustration. Stuttering on three legs, the infernal jailer spread out her feet to compensate for the loss of her balance. All it took was a little bit of air manipulation and one great, green-scaled foot landed right into the exact patch of grass he wanted. Percy smiled.
"Designed hot enough to boil bone from the inside."
With an almost comedic 'click', a perfectly hidden rectangle of ground gave way.
WOOSH!
The scene was as if the maws of the underworld opened for a brief moment. Four white-hot gouts of flame erupted from underneath the break-away tarp, the tips of the molten jets tall enough to lick Kampê's draconic underside. The surrounding grass, at least what parts of it hadn't been trampled yet, crisped in an instant. Steam hissed into the air as a large chunk of Percy's watery limb was instantly vaporized. He hastily recalled the boiling creek, but not fast enough to stop the low-lying cloud from momentarily obscuring the immediate area.
"A foolish attempt, Olympian!"
Kampê barreled out of the mist like a freight train with a far scarier face. She lunged toward the ashen-haired god, both weapons screaming forward. Percy used a solid step of air to corkscrew over the scimitar's first strike. The poisoned edge spit at him even with the miss.
"You infernal thing." Kampê's snarled insults were almost background noise at this point. A distinctive fiery crackle heralded the whip coming around once more. This time it was intercepted by a pillar of water, one pulled straight up off of the low-level flood the son of Poseidon had created across the whole field less than a minute ago.
Another explosion of steam bloomed like a tactical smoke grenade. Teal clung to the mist's edge, though the rolling interior was completely hidden underneath the overcast sky. The sensation was akin to being swaddled in a clingy, moist blanket, but Percy couldn't deny that it felt invigorating. Kampê's next scimitar thrust into the cloud met nothing solid, screaming right past his shoulder, and Percy took advantage.
The sky bearer popped out of the top of the cloud like a cork from a champagne bottle. Water particles plastered his ashy hair to his forehead, glittering the same green as his pale skin. The little droplets were cool against Percy's face as he flipped right over the Drakaina's blade. The young god's xiphos slid smoothly back into his hand, summoned by thought alone. Riptide's flat edge parried away a striking scorpion tail with a ringing CLANG, before a flick of the wrist had it launching back away again.
Through the whole interaction, Percy wasn't sure he blinked, or even breathed. He dared a quick glance down at Kampê's midsection - his eyes found nothing but unblemished scale. Damn. The son of Poseidon hopped off a few platforms of wind to back away from the snarling heads and hissing snakes across the Drakaina's form.
"Fire immunity? More than probable."
The ghostly whisper of Annabeth's voice cut right through the sound of Kampê's thundering, pursuing steps. Her tone was layered, echoing, and yet each word was so unequivocally clear. The woman's voice was so close it was as if the demigod's phantom presence was living directly in between Percy's ears.
In the corner of his vision the triggered trap's glow flickered away. Nothing but dull, scorched earth and flash-dried mud remained behind. Just the barest silhouette of a person stood next to the opened pit, barely discernible against the dark forest backdrop. The wavering lines were more than the implication of a form rather than anything solid. Instead of standing on two feet, the figure's legs seemed to peter away into nothing half-way down the calf.
"Cross it off the list, I guess."
Percy didn't bother replying, even as he used the water around Kampê's feet to tug and herd the Drakaina against her will. The daughter of Gaea resisted, snarling at every turn, yet her precise and deadly strikes seemed to miss no matter the angle or speed. There were a few close calls, including one that almost gave him a rather gruesome neck shave, but Percy was always a half-step step ahead.
He felt a bit pinball-ish, using both the water and the wind to stop, start, leap, and bounce in unexpected directions at a moment's notice. No longer was Percy completely on the defensive - Riptide struck with precision and speed, and he had lost count of how many times he had seen some part of Kampê's insides beneath her rapid healing. The sky bearer's ears were filled with the crack of Kampê's whip and the ancient grinding of her draconic language.
Across the way, another golden section of the clearing lit up brighter than the others. The glow painted the surrounding inch-deep water like a shining beacon. Without even a flicker of motion, the ghost vanished and reappeared next to the highlighted target.
"Onto the next, then?"
Percy wasn't exactly sure when she had appeared, this whispering figure. Somewhere in the space between the formulation of plan 'make Kampê step on every trap' and the carrying out of said strategy, the chattering voices around the edges of Percy's perception had all coalesced. It was as if his need, his desire to utilize Annabeth's creations had breathed her specter into existence.
Hades, maybe that's exactly what happened.
No matter the cause, the ghostly almost-demigod had remained ever since. It wasn't exactly the woman that Percy had met a few nights ago - the hair was a touch too short, the lay of her shoulders all wrong. No, the barely discernible features were one of a leader in the midst of a war, a general creating defenses to shield her people from harm. The harsh, raspy voice was that of a physically younger Annabeth, yet one that sounded immeasurably more burdened. That weight was reflected in the unconscious slouch of the ghost's posture.
"Something has to work eventually."
Her low tone, too, made it clear the phantom wasn't directly speaking to Percy. Even if the words he heard mostly fit the current battle context, they were too . . . detached. Clinical. Like the blond woman was going through a checklist rather than assisting in a fight to the death. Closer to crystalized thought than anything else.
The scene her voice painted in Percy's mind was something much different than his current whirlwind circumstances. He could almost picture Annabeth sitting at a table, lit only by a low-set lamp at some ungodly hour late into the night. He could see her hunched over numerous hastily sketched-out plans, whispering aloud to herself while double and triple checking to make sure every possible contingency was covered. Apparently, to the teal bonfire underneath his skin, that was enough.
"Everything has a weak point, even immortals. The first part of the game is finding it." The not-Annabeth's smirk was palpable with that sentence. Her outlines wavered with the wind, barely holding on. "The fun part, though, is exploiting it."
Percy let out an amused chuckle, even as Riptide and Kampê's sword clashed again in an explosion of sparks and divine power. Kampê must have heard his noise of humor, because it felt like every pound of her prodigious weight was behind the strike. The blow rattled the bones in his arm, even when his xiphos was tethered by the wind and nothing else.
Each time Percy and Kampê met full force, the surrounding area became a little less recognizable. The open land in the center of the North Woods had devolved into little more than a pulsing gladiator pit, one of torn earth and shattered wood and cracked stone. It was a land of wind and cloud and water and green. Dark versus bright, puce versus teal.
Annabeth was right, though. Percy would know, especially since he had been living said game for the past few minutes. That was true even if every second felt more like an entire day.
"Slashing can be effective, except against thick armor." Not-Annabeth lectured distantly from her new ghostly perch. Even as he dodged another attack from Kampê's flaming whip, Percy made sure that the jailer was slowly being pushed in the right direction. Riptide was a dangerous enough threat to force the issue, the blade drawing brackish blood more times than not. "Crushing force, however, is potent against almost anything made of flesh and blood."
When next Kampê's foot fell into the earth, it was caught between two pistoning walls of rock. Any creature smaller than a cyclops would have been turned to paste instantly, but the jailer was a bit larger than that. Her following roar was accompanied by an eruption of dirt as the Drakaina wrenched her tree-sized leg from the trap. Pebbles peppered Percy's face and pinged off the sides of Zeus' Fist.
Still, despite the lack of visible damage, he did notice that Kampê's next couple of swings were slower than usual. A quick leaping corkscrew actually gave him a bit of space to breathe, which he appreciated even if he didn't technically need it. The brief pause let the distant sounds of clashing monsters and demigods pierce the veil over the field. Percy held back a grimace, fists tightening.
"Even a single second of delay could mean the difference." Annabeth's whispers seemed to sense his impatience, her form flickering in and out of existence. "The trick is to keep trying." Another shining yellow light tingled the back of Percy's neck. He could feel his own eyes flaring in unison.
"Thanks, Annabeth." Percy murmured to himself. Riptide flickered into being in his hand. The sky bearer used its tip to taunt Kampê with a few wagging 'come hither' motions. Of course, she obliged.
And so the dance continued.
When two mortals fought, endurance and stamina were often the deciding factor. When two immortals clashed, it was a different sort of beast. Mental power, not muscle power, was the difference. Will, smarts, experience, those sorts of things. Most divine beings had at least one in spades.
Eventually, in between the clashing of blades, Percy had realized something. For every trap he triggered, every faint he tested or fell for, he was learning. So was Kampê. The whole battle was nothing but a cleverly disguised game of cards in the end - strategy versus strategy, bluff versus bluff.
It was no wonder the tables had been flipped on him so quickly at the beginning. The sky bearer's bull-rush to save Drew had him laying out his entire hand, trump cards and all, before he had even known the rules. The moment Kampê didn't die, the initial round had been lost. And, like the heavyweight boxer she was, the jailer of Tartarus had kept her foot on the gas and pushed and pushed and pushed until Percy made a critical mistake.
Kampê's first connecting 'punch' should have been a total knockout. Percy might as well have taken a haymaker right across the chin. It was only thanks to Aphy, that wonderful goddess of a woman, that it hadn't been. He would think of a suitable way to thank her later.
That moment had been . . . eye opening. The feeling of true vulnerability, of real fear, was something that had paralyzed him. Not since Othrys had the threat of pain been so near, so effective. It was something the son of Poseidon had almost forgotten how to deal with. Thankfully, one ghostly daughter of Athena was there to kick both Percy's brain, and his ass, finally into gear.
Now, in those sparse moments between the pounding adrenaline and the brushes with death, Percy could survey his options more clearly. Round two had only just begun, after all, and the first step was always to survey the cards he had been dealt. His hand was good - he had the wind, the clouds, Zephyros Creek, Riptide and his own burning determination.
The real question was: what did he know about Kampê's cards?
She was physically strong, and her weapons were deadly. She was fast, but not as fast as him. She was skilled, probably more than he was. She was experienced, definitely more than he was. The dragoness wasn't weak to fire or spikes or acid (Percy had tried those already). She could heal any non-fatal wound with relative ease and never seemed to tire.
Most critically, Kampê had time on her side. In a battle of attrition, the Drakaina could afford to wait. Another good hand? Undoubtedly. In most scenarios, it might as well have been a royal flush.
Unfortunately for her, Percy wasn't planning on playing fair.
She's especially weak to lightning. That he knew for certain. Mid-thought, Percy parried another scimitar slash with a hardened wedge of water. The liquid gave way with ease when he dove through the shield a moment later, his skin tingling with the rush of his father's domain as Kampê's whip just barely missed his left leg. Zeus killed her the first time, and Thalia stunned her earlier.
A rising double-stomp of the dragoness' front legs rattled the earth. Percy kept his footing by never actually standing on the ground in the first place, surfing the ripples of the surface of his miniature flood rather than touching anything beneath. Kampê screeched, flaring her wings and exploding back towards him. Even as her massive form blotted out the sky, snake hair hissing and monstrous belt screaming, the young god remained unphased.
As if summoned, several copies of Not-Annabeth whispered into existence around the field. All of their see-through heads followed Percy's every movement as he slithered around stinger and sword and whip. A few more hidden traps made themselves known to his mind's-eye. The number was more than he expected but less than he had hoped.
"Electricity isn't really viable for my plans. Not against the sort of monsters I expect we'll face." The memory of the demigod's voice had shifted tone. It was like she was trying to sound discreet, as if the woman had pulled someone aside in a public place to whisper in hushed tones. "It takes too much to generate enough to be deadly, especially without someone like Thalia around." In unison, a half-dozen specters reached up to knead the space between their non-existent eyebrows. "I'll do what I can. Our best bet would be to trigger them all at once somehow." With her piece said, the apparition was gone.
"A distracted mind leads to a dismembered body, boy!" Far quicker than a creature of that bulk had any right to be, Kampê appeared once again with her weapons poised to strike. "Die!"
A downward slash cleaved another gouge into the soil, and Percy was just able to slide under the barbed end of her whip as it cracked towards his face. The heat almost made his eyes water. It was a miracle he still had both eyebrows, honestly.
Rather than panic as the dragoness' gargantuan bulk threatened to flatten him, the sky bearer created his own opening. A tug of the hand had Riptide attacking from above this time, forcing Kampê's scorpion tail to fend it off to protect her relatively unguarded wings. After a few clashes the blade danced away again.
So did Percy, sliding just between two of the dragoness' talon-tipped feet and back out the other side. He felt positively athletic pulling it off, even if the sky bearer had to crane his head to the side mid-air to avoid an alligator's snapping jaws. The dodge put him right over a golden section of grass, which he avoided triggering by sliding a firm layer of water over the top of the trap right before his sneakers landed.
"You first!" Percy grinned, heartbeat rushing in his ears at the close escape.
The young god punctuated the verbal jab by crashing an uprooted tree directly into Kampê's shoulder. He barely even remembered plucking by the thing from the edges of the field, roots and all. The fuel in his core thrummed, bright and boundless. The Drakaina flinched from the surprise attack, though the expression was gone in a second. What damage her flesh had sustained knitting itself neatly away in a matter of seconds.
"Your healing is slowing down, half-and-half!" The son of Poseidon taunted.
Percy didn't even have to try to make his voice come out as nasal and annoying as possible. It was a technically correct observation, but such technicalities meant little at that point. Given the way Kampê sneer remained unaffected, he probably didn't have the luxury to wait it out completely and they both knew it.
"Can you hear them, Olympian?" Kampê snarled, stalking forward. "Can you hear them dying for you?" An expert feint of her scimitar almost caught Percy flat-footed, but her whip sailed long when he just stopped dead mid-air like someone paused him with a television remote.
Another jeer, something about how ugly the Drakaina's smile looked, slipped thoughtlessly from his lips. The mindless taunt was easier than answering her question. Tartarus, even continuing to survive was easier than thinking about it.
Percy subtly skated away from his precious electric traps with his next few dodges. His plan required balancing the knife's edge - the young god was herding the Drakaina as much through inaction as she was herding him through direct action. There was no way she hadn't caught on to at least that part of his plan, but Kampê couldn't know the full extent of it.
Percy was confident in that because not even he knew. As his mouth continued to run loose, the sky bearer's mind was whirring away.
Trigger them all at once, huh?
There were a few ways he could do that. Water was an excellent conductor, and he certainly had plenty on hand. But first, Percy would need to hold the dragoness down. That was easier said than done.
There could be no more glancing blows, no more near misses. The clock had struck zero, and it was do or die time - and not just for him. Percy could feel the weight of a thousand souls, all of them hinging on the next few minutes. But if not even Annabeth's strongest crushing traps could hold her in place, what options did he have?
"Use whatever resources you can." An echo of the demigod's voice rippled into being. Annabeth's phantom form did the same in the corner of Percy's eye, hunched over and bulked up with invisible armor. One arm was held out, as if placed on a smaller person's shoulder. "Misdirection, confusion, advantageous weather." Her words were clipped yet calm, a lecture barely given voice before some ambush or other conflict. "Terrain." The space where Not-Annabeth's eyes would be held two white pits instead.
When her outline whisked away, Percy's gaze landed directly on the stack of boulders Blackjack had nonchalantly called a 'pile'a shit in the woods' only an hour or two ago. That analogy seemed more fitting by the minute, with how caked in mud the thing had become. Ripped soil and upturned roots gave the thing a slimy, wet appearance. A pile of shit indeed.
Although . . . it was a rather unstable pile of shit, now that Percy looked at it a bit closer. Only the bottom few stones, the ones hiding the Labrynth's entrance, appeared any sort of stable. Everything else certainly didn't. The top most boulder - the craggy, bulbous tip of which came about to Kampe's waistline - seemed ready to slide off any second.
Well. How about that? A new plan. Or, most of one anyway.
The next few minutes were some of the most frustrating and most exciting of Percy's new lease on life. Exciting, because every step closer to Zeus' fist was like a shot of adrenaline straight into his veins. Frustrating, because he couldn't actually express the growing thrill and give the game away.
"We both know this is futile, worm!" Percy almost rolled his eyes, even as he rolled over a slashing scimitar strike. "Every moment you delay is another death on your hands! There is no victory here, not for you!"
Kampê's whip motioned to come around from the sky bearer's left, but at the last second a tricky flick of the wrist had it coiling across to attack from the right instead. Riptide barely made it in time to deflect the burning tip - sparks splashed across Percy's water-logged curls, fizzling out upon contact. The young god had to send the blade away with a shove of his hand only a moment later, lest Kampê try to rip it from his grasp. A neat tuck-and-roll thankfully put his back to Zeus' fist, and so Kampê's next rush put them ever so slightly closer.
"Who says I'm delaying?" Okay, not his best comeback that time.
"As if you could do anything else." The Drakaina snarled back, her too-wide lips peeled back completely from her massive teeth. It was clear Kampê wasn't having fun anymore. "You. Cannot. Kill. Me!"
Each word was punctuated with a flurry of a dozen or more strikes. Percy had to hastily throw himself into an instant flow state to bend away from them all. The world around him warped, distorted just enough to keep his head on his shoulders. He drew more and more and more from the blaze in his chest - at one point he could have sworn that he moved in between blinks.
His skin felt too full. Stretched. Percy did his best to ignore it.
Kampê's never ending insults had become an unfortunate constant since the battle had entered its second phase. The dialogue had been fun at first, at least some twisted sort of fun, but not so much after she had started taking him seriously. It was like bantering with a brick wall - no matter how many barbs Percy threw or how many attacks he dodged, the Drakaina thundered along with a single-minded focus. He could only hope that her dogged determination would benefit him in the end.
"You don't seem to be doing such a great job either!" Never let it be said that Percy Jackson wouldn't try, though. "You've still only hit me once!" At this point, he honestly wasn't even sure where the snippy remarks were coming from. Somewhere along the line the sky bearer's mouth had just decided to up and run away from him. Again.
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because Kampê's blade nearly took his arm off in retaliation. Percy traipsed away by the skin of his teeth once more, falling back a few yards and dragging the Drakaina ever so closer. Yeah, come get me.
"You think yourself too clever, boy." The daughter of Gaea was apparently very adept at both talking and fighting, given that Kampê attempted another series of deadly claw-swipes with her draconic front legs even as the words dripped from her open maw. "You take me for a fool, do you?" Her tone made it sound as if there could be no greater insult.
Kampê's sideways, cat-like eyes were glowing much the same as Percy's were. The reflection of her blade shone in the orb's smooth surfaces, arcing down only to be paired off course by a darting Riptide. The sky bearer fell back yet again, puce smog thick in his lungs, expecting Kampê to pursue as usual. Instead, the Drakaina only watched his backpedal, wide feet planted firmly into the upturned soil. For one long second, Kampê merely stood and observed him.
Okay. That was new.
Percy clutched the leather grip of his sword, put off balance by the abrupt change in pace. The young god narrowed his glowing eyes at his towering adversary - it took great effort not to turn and look at the base of Zeus' fist, only a dozen yards or so to his rear. So near and yet so far.
"Do you know how old I am, Olympian?" The question came out of left field. "Do you truly, truly grasp it?" Kampê's massive, misshapen head cocked to one side. Her rumbling, ancient tone was almost . . . amused.
"I don't see why that matters." Percy bit back, voice as venomous as the liquid dripping from Kampê's scorpion tail. The Drakaina produced a sound akin to a chuckle, if it was pitched down several octaves and run through concert speakers.
"I thought not." The dragoness mused aloud, clearly meaning it as an insult. "Allow me to . . . educate you." She drawled. For the first time since the fight began, Percy watched as Kampê's whip fell motionless to the soil. "I've been battling since before Prometheus even shaped the pitiful humans you now fight so dearly to protect. Since before the gods were even a twinkle in the Titan's eyes." The flaming tip sizzled against the low-lying water. The urge to spin his engagement ring made itself known with force.
"I earned my titles through blood, both mine and that of my enemies." The daughter of Gaea almost seemed to wax poetic for a moment. "I honed my blades against both Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires in the deepest parts of the pit. For eons we did battle and I always emerged as victor." Kampê's wide chest seemed to puff with a sort of pride he had only seen before in Olympus' throne room. "My sacred duty was sanctioned by Ouranos himself. You claim to be his heir-" The Drakaina spat out the word like a slur "-and yet he had more power in a single strand of hair than in your entire body."
Percy knew it was only a taunt. He knew it. The knowledge didn't help.
The sky bearer's entire being bristled at the insinuation, out of his control. Literally - wind whipped about his form and tore at his clothes, agitated waves rushing across the flooded plain. His form tingled with so much power that he could feel it in his teeth. The burning teal flame in his core was raging, roaring in indignation, yet the infernal jailer only smirked. Oh, how he urged to cut the expression off her face.
"Tell me, boy." Kampê jeered, her too-wide smile sharp and dripping with malice. "How many traps have you left?" Percy watched as the huge tip of her scimitar waved out to the side. "Once your tricks inevitably run dry, what is your plan? You've no more favors to cash, no more allies to call. Olympus has yet to intercede, I doubt they will do so now." The blade returned back, pointing down at him from above. Kampê's gaze bored into his own. "Will the halflings survive without you, hmm? Were I to flap my wings and leave this wretched forest to reign death on them from above, could you even stop me?"
The sky bearer stayed mute, clenching his jaw. He could feel the way his irises shone with a barely contained whirlwind, but all their green didn't generate an answer. Kampê seemed to relish in his silence. The Drakaina lifted her whip hand, tapping at her chin with a sharp, taloned finger as big as Percy's thigh.
"I suppose the better question would be . . ." The sky bearer didn't like the way her voice trailed off, purring in the worst possible way. Kampê's scaled torso rippled grotesquely with the sound. "If I don't come any closer to that little pile of boulders-" Percy's chest hitched. "-then what will you do?"
The world was still for a moment. The pause extended for one breath, then two. Kampê's grin widened.
"Oh, how cute." The jailer cooed. The sound was nothing but derisive. "Nothing, it seems." The barbed end of Kampê's fiery whip rose into the air once more, like a snake slithering into motion. The dragoness lifted her scimitar along with it.
Percy's eyes stayed glued to the dripping, poisoned edge. He still hadn't moved. No, instead the sky bearer just stood - burning.
"Is that all it takes to muzzle Olympus' little attack puppy?" The daughter of Gaea's smile morphed into a snarl quicker than the son of Poseidon could blink. "Good." The grin came back just as fast. It was even more sickly the second time around. "I could only take so much of your incessant yapping."
The flame rose higher. Hotter, hotter, hotter still.
Kampê straightened, rolling her shoulders in a slow, mocking motion of vulnerability. "Now." Her wings flared, the pointed tips half a football field apart. "Would you die for me, youngling?" With scorpion tail rising and monstrous belt howling, the jailer's entire form prepared for the final rush-
"I am disappointed, Kampê."
The voice that came from Percy's mouth wasn't familiar. It was deeper, accented, impossible in the same way that Kampê's language was impossible. The young god's lips weren't his own, his tongue not his own. No, Percy Jackson was somehow there and not at the same time. Swallowed whole by the willful blaze contained within.
"What?" Kampê froze mid-motion.
Percy heard her voice through a mile of stuffed cotton, watched as time seemed to speed and slow around him with no rhyme or reason. Space itself bent and warped, spirals upon spirals upon spirals upon spirals. He wasn't sure when his body had started floating, only realizing that gravity no longer gripped him when his eyes were nearly level with her own.
"For all your lauded 'experience', you still managed to ask the entirely wrong question."
The war-torn field rippled with each word. Instead of a glowing star in the center of a suffocating void, bright green now filled the entire plain. His aura licked over the trees and climbed into the air, all the way up to the dark bottoms of the clouds themselves. The sight was almost like an artificial dawn rising over the entirety of Camp Half Blood Percy's entire being, Kampê's entire being, were nothing more than specks under a bright
Teal
Sky.
"Cease this." Kampê actually took a step back. Her inhuman, bony knuckles were white around her weapon's grips. "This- this is impossible."
"I think not." Percy could only watch, drifting somewhere far away, as he spoke. His world was nothing but cloud and wind and fire. "I believe my own lesson is in order." Riptide had slipped from his grasp. He didn't know where it had gone. It didn't seem to matter anymore.
"I commanded you, cease!" Kampê screeched. Her scream went ignored.
"Now." The teal fire wearing Percy's skin clapped its hands together. The sky bearer only realized he was echoing the motion far too late. "The real question-" Zeus' Fist began to shake, convulsing from the base upward like a resuscitating corpse. The sound was as if the earth itself was coming undone. "-is not what I shall do when you come no nearer to the stones." Percy's muscles lifted his lips into a smile without his consent.
"You should be rather asking-"
One by one, slowly, the massive boulders rose from the soil. Mud shook from their sides. Kampê retreated another step.
"-what YOU shall do-"
To Percy, each one-tone chunk of rock was nothing more than a pebble in the palm of his hand. He thought of Aphy. What was it that he did with pebbles, again?
"-when the stones come to you instead."
The next few seconds could have lasted an age and yet no time at all.
The first boulder cracked through Kampê's guard, ripping the whip from her off-hand and nearly taking her arm for the ride. Percy flicked a second from a million years away. Kampê's scimitar put up a valiant effort, but when the stone landed a mile deep into the North Woods the shattered remains of bronze went with it.
It took a third to cripple her wings. A fourth to crush her ribs. The fifth was the final blow, taking the ancient queen of dragons out at the knees. Literally.
"And so it ends."
The creature that was almost Percy Jackson and yet not watched the gory, disfigured ends of Kampê's limbs try and fail to reconstitute. Her blood painted the grass in bubbling, hissing swathes. To the sky bearer, the sight was equal parts fascinating and disgusting, filtered through a dozen invisible screens. It was almost a relief that he couldn't sense a stomach to feel upset.
"Please!" Like a beached whale Kampê struggled and cried and frothed against the muddy soil. "Please!" Her cries, once so egotistical, had turned nothing but pitiful. The flailing motions only spread her own innards further across the plain.
Really, Percy wasn't even sure what she was asking for. He felt that strange smile drop away. Something worn and weary took its place.
"Goodbye, Kampê."
He wasn't sure why his voice sounded so sad. A single, unison click echoed across the field.
As if Zeus had been hiding underground the whole time, lightning spat from the soil as a half-dozen traps activated simultaneously. The noise was akin to a thunderclap - there was no way everyone inside Camp Half Blood's borders couldn't hear it. Zephyros Creek flowed with a mind all its own, electricity eagerly running through the water and across the plain. The explosion of power was bright enough to sear into the back of Percy's eyelids.
In the end, there wasn't much left of Kampê, daughter of Gaea, daughter of Tartarus. Only a blackened, smoking husk where her body had been.
"Hmmm." Percy's hum almost came voluntarily from his throat. His descent to the ground was softer than a falling feather. "Ego tends to ramble." The sentence came from somewhere outside the sky bearer's own mind, purposeful in its repetition in a way he couldn't quite explain.
Percy's feet carried him dutifully up to the fallen Drakina's head. Her scorched jaw was distended, teeth coated in soot and her own charred tongue. Only one of the dragoness' slitted eyes had survived the electric shock. The other was painted across the grass, much like the body of the pegasus she had murdered in order to capture Drew. The heads on her belt and the snakes atop her head hadn't fared much better.
Kampê looked so much smaller now, he noticed. So still. Parts of her great bulk were already flaking away into golden dust, revealing the absolute destruction of the ground beneath from their clash. Her glittering remains tasted acrid to his wind's palette.
"Anaklusmos."
The blade was instantly there. It vibrated with worried, yet no less loyal, emotion. When Percy gripped its floating handle his skin was little more than a moving, swirling pool of green neon.
"I apologize for sullying your edge once more, friend." Percy was pretty sure the sentiment came from his own heart this time. "This shall be the last of it, for today." The language, though, was some archaic combination of his own English and Aphrodite's Greek and something much, much older that he couldn't name.
The legendary xiphos only hummed in understanding. Percy smiled, thankful.
Overhead, the sun's rays were just peeking through the clearing cloud cover. Apollo's gaze was so near, so attentive, that the sky bearer could almost see the god's face in his peripheral vision. The sensation was completely overshadowed by the small, vow-shaped hole in Percy's chest that filled up as the last of the jailer's presence faded away.
It took only one strike to cleave Kampê's car-sized head from her neck.
Percy nearly lost himself again, walking over the tops of the quiet North Woods towards the sounds of battle. Space and time refused to stay consistent - he could feel the eyes of Olympus on him, of course, but so much more than that. It was the wind, the clouds, the earth, the stars.
The boughs of the trees below his feet bowed away, respectful and cowed. Kampê's blackened face broke apart a few of the top-most branches as her remains were hauled along. Several of the dead dragoness' thicker snake-hairs made for a good enough handle. Her decapitated head weighed so much less than the bottom of the heavens that the sky bearer barely even noticed.
No, the bone-deep tiredness came from somewhere else.
Percy wasn't sure how much longer this could last, this sensation of nothingness and yet everything. The teal flame of his being was a flash-fire, hot and bright and all-consuming. And yet, for all its hunger, it could only burn for as long as the young god had fuel left to give. Not even the loving thrumming of his fiancé's vows could fill the empty, gaping void that was growing in Percy's core.
As he crested over the edge of the North Woods, the young god laid eyes on the trenchline. He had feared a massacre. Prepared for it, almost. In reality, what Percy found made it clear he had underestimated the half-bloods once again.
There were very few monster corpses visible. Golden dust painted the yards before the top of the trench instead. It was as if Demeter had taken her brush and recolored the grass, the sparkling yellow thick enough to be calf-deep in some sections. What bodies there were outside the trench appeared humanoid - traitorous demigods, most likely, cut down by arrow and spear and magic. Those with the thickest armor looked more like pincushions than people.
The battle was not over, certainly, but drawing to a close. It likely had been even before Percy killed Kampê. The center of the line was crawling still with campers and monsters, but the flanks stood quiet and secure. Hellhounds leapt over the lip only to be met by half a dozen blades, Cyclops blinded by arrows and cut down by the ankles.
The trench was alive at least three rows deep. The front-most campers, most of them wearing purple, moved with surgical precision. Booming voices cried Latin military phrases, directing their movement like an orchestra's director. There was a practiced flow, and effortless understanding there that Percy could respect even if he couldn't see himself participating.
No, it was the Greeks that the young god could empathize with. Roaming bands of orange-clad campers leapt over the top in daring hit and run strikes, felling any combatant that strayed too far from the group. Pegasi clouded the sky, taking out harpies and Stympalian birds at a ratio of ten to one.
With Kampê, the fight would have been lost almost immediately. Without, it was only a matter of time until victory. Percy felt a bit of himself unwind with that thought.
The assurance of eventual success didn't mean the battle hadn't been costly - the lack of a massacre did not equate to a lack of casualties. Shouts from the front line swarmed his buzzing ears. Specific words and phrases cut through the din.
"Medic!" One Roman camper cried, hauling another soldier off the front line. The wounded demigod's face was slathered with blood and missing an ear.
"Stay the line!" An officer's roar steadied a portion of the front, even as a Cyclops' wooden club sent bodies flying with a single deadly blow.
"Fire!" That voice sounded familiar. Percy observed as a dozen silver arrows arched over the field in a deadly, monochromatic rainbow. Not one failed to find the neck of an unfortunate monster.
Near the town's borders, away from the fighting, stood tents with painted red medical crosses on the sides. Erected on wooden poles and held down by taut rope, the triage centers were swarming with people. Percy counted far too many stretchers moving in and out of their thick, woven flaps. He could hear the sounds of pain and desperate healing even from here.
Hidden between the trench network and the wooden buildings, Percy spotted the thing he most feared. A long line of white, lumpy shapes laid across the grass. Motionless. Bodies underneath shrouds, at least several dozen.
Teal fire roared in agony.
"Army of Atlas."
Percy descended down towards the midst of the monster's ranks like the angered hand of the gods themselves. For a moment all fighting seemed to stop. Even the monstrous pigeon flocks froze mid-air. Demigods and bloodthirsty creatures alike turned, jaws gaping in equal measure. Percy couldn't see it, but to those observing from below, great streaming clouds fell from his shoulders like a jet's contrails - or massive, glowing wings.
"Your fight is over."
Kampê's head made a sickening crunch when dropped from a dozen feet off the ground. Everything below her upper lip had already faded away into dust, leaving those with the right angle to peer straight into her electrified skull cavity. The nearest monsters jumped away from the gruesome sight, screeching and crying in fear and confusion. The campers peeking above the trenchline made similar noises. Percy observed it all with a tired, weighted apathy.
"I am Percy Jackson." The sky bearer's booming, echoing greeting washed across the plane. "This place, and its people, are under my protection."
Percy was starting to lose feeling in the tips of his fingers. Each exhale seemed to summon in a creeping darkness at the edges of his vision. Still, he had more to say.
"Leave, now, and you will be spared from me." The young god managed to don his best vicious smile. The strange, foreign language was heavy on his tongue. Each word was harder to get out than the last, as if he was forgetting it in real time. "If only to deliver this message."
The sky bearer met the eyes of the closest monsters, one by one. Even the fiercest of them flinched away as Percy spoke his final words.
"Next time let the Titan meet me himself."
The following few seconds made it clear that, no matter what you presumed of their intelligence, monsters did indeed value their own lives.
The sound of panicked fleeing drowned out everything else as a hundred creatures sprinted back the way they had come. Despite Percy's inaction, the rout back into the trees didn't guarantee safety. Only the winged harpies were particularly unharmed - the woods, and those that called it home, were every bit as vicious as the campers themselves. Percy had no doubt at least a few would slip through the grasp of the dryads and their elfish cousins, but the sounds of crunching bone and slashing flesh made it clear that only a fraction of the great army would escape back to the Labyrinth in one piece.
No less than half a minute later, the entire field was empty.
"Lord Perseus!"
A familiar voice crashed through the sky bearer's thickening brain fog. Percy turned in slow motion, still hovering, to find an armored demigod cresting over the trenchline. Covered head to toe in bronze and monster remains, it was only when the woman wrenched off her centurion-style helmet that he realized it was Reyna.
"We were just preparing to muster out to your aid, my Lord." The dark-haired demigod's accent was thicker than it had been before. Stress, probably. The heavy lines around her eyes certainly looked like that was the case. "I see that won't be needed." The smile she gave was somewhat undercut by the sounds of retching coming from inside the trench behind her back. "I'm glad."
"Hey, Reyna." Percy was surprised when his voice came out speaking English again. He wasn't surprised when his vision started swaying side to side. "It's good to see you." The daughter of Bellona was multiplying before his eyes, her face growing several pairs of ears and her neck sprouting more than one head. His hands felt numb to the wrist. "Could you get my fiancé, please?"
"Of- of course." Reyna took a step forward. Her helmet clanked to the soil as she dropped it to reach her hands out towards him. The praetor's face had paled significantly. "I can have a runner sent immediately-"
"No need, young one." Percy's entire being filled up with pink starlight. "I am already here." A dozen sets of gentle hands gripped every part of Percy's body, holding as he turned. His wavering vision was greeted by the most beautiful face in the universe.
"Hello, beloved."
"Hi." Percy's lips felt swollen, his tongue uncooperative. He tried to reach out to touch her flawless cheek but couldn't manage it. "I did it." It felt so important that he told his goddess the news. "I saved her."
"I knew you would, my love." Percy's back hit something firm, the scent of grass invading his nostrils. Aphrodite's smile was brighter than the sun above as she laid him down without resistance. "Il n'y a jamais eu de doute- There was never any doubt." Her fox-tail hair ticked against his exposed neck. The young god hadn't even noticed when he had stopped floating.
His goddess fingers felt sinfully good as the love deity started stroking through his hair. Percy couldn't even keep his eyes open. He was so . . . so tired. Nothing but tired. Empty.
"I think I'm going to pass out." The son of Poseidon barely managed to get the words through his lips. There were spots dancing across the darkness, echoes of lightning and death.
"You are safe here. With me." The reassurance meant so much more than he thought it would.
Aphrodite's whispered voice, her warm energy, surrounded Percy. The teal flame was gone, and the ache in its absence was filled by the feeling of her. The sky bearer sighed with relief - he hadn't even realized that he was gripping her silk blouse with both hands.
What was he so desperate for? He couldn't remember.
"I love you." He slurred. The void had opened up beneath him, and the young god was sinking. Falling. He tumbled deeper with every breath.
"I love you too."
Her response was the last thing he heard before Percy Jackson knew no more.