The Winged Warrior

Chapter 9

Through the mass of furious wings and painful slashes at my hands, face and neck, I spotted Percy in the distance, flying through the air after about thirty birds who seemed to have called it a day at the sight of his sword.

"Oy, Percy!" I said, through the mind link. "A little help?"

When he saw me, Percy lazily turned the birds he had been pursuing to ash and sped towards me. Within seconds, all the birds were just little clouds of dust.

"Do you need a lift?" He asked.

I nodded, and he grabbed my cloak and pulled me upwards as he carried me through the air, his great wings flapping higher and higher. He dropped me when I was about ten feet off the ground. I rolled, notched and arrow and fired all at the same time. I was off again before the three birds I had impaled had vanished, and felt the reassuring bump in my quiver that meant the arrow had returned. (My arrows are enchanted, BTW, kinda like Riptide for Percy.)

"It's no good!" I heard Nico shout from behind me. "There're too many of them to handle!"

Though I didn't want to believe it, I knew he was right. Without a sound to drive them away, they would destroy the camp itself before we could destroy them.

It was then that I heard a yowl from next to me.

Adalind, her face contorted in pain, collapsed, next to me. She was double her size, but it looked like a bird had impaled her in the wing. There was a great, sizzling, burning, circular hole in it from one of the bird's celestial bronze beaks and she was holding it at an odd angle.

"PERCY!" I called through the mind link in desperation, staring at the wound in shock.

I saw Percy in the distance, rising into the air to get a better look at what I was so worried about. He caught sight of Adalind, and I saw her scales shimmer and turn bright red with anger as Percy shook with fury and shock.

He dived at Adalind, but before he could reach her, he stopped short about six hundred feet from the ground. He seemed to be in pain, as Adalind's injured wing was steadily turning black as night.

He fell out of the sky.

Plummeting like a bullet, I just managed to dart forward and catch him before he hit the ground. His face was contorted in pain, and his hands were clutching his right wing, pulling the feathers as though trying to yank them all out.

I moved his hands gently and gasped.

There was a great, sizzling, burning, circular hole in it, an exact copy of Adalind's.

I heard a shocked gasp from behind me, and looked up to see Lexi staring at Percy's wing as though she was looking into Tartarus.

Her face was contorted, twisted in anger, hate and sadness. Her mouth opened, and I barely had time to yell to the others "Cover your ears!" before she screamed.