Percy woke up, disorientated. He tried to sit up, failed, due to the fact that he was bound completely in a thick, harsh rope not unsimilar to the hotdogs that the vendors used to serve in New York. He struggled with the bindings and tried to reach for Riptide. His hands were to tight to reach it.
He was still struggling with it when a shadowy figure stepped into the doorway, crude light outlining it's hulking, massive figure. Gosh, He thought. This guy could go against the Minotaur. He might even survive.
The figure stepped in the doorway and began bee-lining towards him. Oh great, He thought mentally to himself. How am I supposed to fight THIS with arms and legs tied up? Only then he saw it's face. It was.... Horrifying. It (What gender even is this monstrosity? Percy thought) had old and wrinkly face, sagging with grime, dirt and what seemed to be blood. The color seemed to have run away from the face, leaving only dirty white and grey on what skin that is not covered by the dirt or other unpleasant things. The thing wore an ragged, blackened leather for the shoulder, knee and elbow pads, with a torso plate made out of a strange black metal. The rest of its body was covered by ripped, blackened fabric.
It looked straight at him, smiling cruelly, revealing a set of rotten, yellow sharp teeth. You should probably get a dentist. He thought. The figure advanced towards him. 10 metres away... 5 metres away... 2 metres away... Just as it was about to lay it's misshapen hands upon him, a sharp grunt issued from it's mouth. It stopped 1 metre from him, standing still for a moment, and then toppling towards him like a felled tree. Percy squirmed to get away, but his lower torso and legs were squashed by the kilos of tendons and muscles that suddenly made it's impact. The air was knocked out of him momentarily.
A shrill hoot sounded the air, and a small figure landed on top of the monster's body. Of course. He should have known. The owl, in all of it's glory, stroke a pose on top of the dead body upon landing. It then began to wipe it's wooden beak upon the tunic, smearing it with a black, viscous substance Percy could only assume that was its blood.
"You could've come sooner, you know. I was beginning to think you weren't going to show up at all." The owl hooted indignantly and flew on top of his head. It then began stamping all over him. Luckily, wooden owls don't weigh as much as real ones, so therefore Percy could feel only a tapping on his head and neck. Unluckily, wooden owls beaks still hurts when impacted against a living body.
"Ow! Stop! Stop! Fine, fine, you came – Ack!" Percy yelped as he was bombarded with the sharp pecks. Once the owl was satisfied, there were a dozen small peck wounds littered around his upper body. He wriggled from under the weight of the creature.
Once he was out from under it, he fell, exhausted. What would Annabeth do now? He thought to himself. He looked around for his backpack. Of course, it wasn't there. He imagined what Annabeth would say now: Get up, Seaweed Brain!
He rolled over and sat up. He still felt Riptide in his pocket, as usual. He took it out and uncapped it. It instantly grew to the size of a leaf – shaped, bronze blade. He always felt more confident with Riptide in his hand. The owl flew silently over from a beam in the ceiling and landed on top of his head. He did not protest.
He silently walked through the door, trying to be as quiet as he can while also maintaining balance in order to not let the smug owl fall off. It's sharp claws dug into his cranium. "Can you not try to insert your claws into my head?" The owl readjusted it's positioning, somehow finding a place it can securely sit on and becoming even more uncomfortable than the first position.
Percy did not have the strength or the time to argue and made his way out of the door outside. They were in some sort of abandoned town in the forest. More figures made there way around the town, squabbling, and arguing over various possessions. Percy quickly ducked behind a bush. One of the creatures strode past, bow legged and back-bent, holding a sort of canteen. Percy could see multiple weapons sheathed and unsheathed hanging from its belt.
Percy waited till it stumbled past, and quickly speed-walking awkwardly while bending down at the same time, as to not alert the orcs and to be fast about it. This worked surprisingly well, and Percy made his way down the broken paths of the town and searched various buildings until he found his belongings in what appeared to be an old church, or watchtower, or perhaps a combination of them both.
Only problem was, it was guarded by a dozen of the ugly humanoids, and a few of them were even beefier than the one Percy encountered in the barn. He was crouching down near a bail of hay. Then, for the first time he heard them talk. The voice was harsher and croakier than the rasping Percy heard back in the forest. Percy wondered if crows could talk, they would sound like this. No, He thought. Crows would sound angelic next to this voice.
He was now faced with 2 choices: To lunge out now, decapitate the orcs, take what was his, or wait until the uglies shifted patrols and then take as little of them as possible and then take his belongings. He decided to call each one respectively the Clarisse Method and the Annabeth Method.
He decided that he liked the Annabeth method better. "Get comfortable, owlie. We're going to have to wait until they shift patrols." The owl hooted in response, and jumped off his head and in the rafters of the church. The things didn't appear to notice the owl, carrying on with their crude speech. As for Percy, he had to make do with hiding behind a few dusty crates. "And now we wait." Said Percy to himself.
He was almost asleep when they shifted patrols, but luckily the owl pecked his hand hard enough for him to have a strangled yelp. He looked over his shoulder, and found no monsters there. "Alright. Time to pick up my stuff." He ninja walked to the table, looking every few metres to check if the patrol had switched.
He finally reached the table. He began shoving the gifts from the gods into the bag given from Dionysus. A bottle of wine was missing from the pack, but the rest were there. He began putting his armour on, since if they were to be discovered, he would be shish-kebabed by several ugly weapons before he could say Hades Underpants.
He was finally done putting on his armor when a dozen figures barged through the door. One of them was speaking a raspy form of English. "So I was saying to Gernbag, where is that ugly pig?" And he replied to me " Why don't you go check?" So I did, and guess what I-" The ugly creature suddenly stopped in it's track, noticing a figure in magnificent blue and green clad armour with a great bronze sword. He also noticed an owl (A strange species too) perched on the shoulder guard of the figure. And of course, it was also the last thing the orc saw before it died in a painful grunt.
The orcs yelped in surprise, and then drew their crooked blades, and began hacking everywhere. When one of the swords made contact with the azure amour (If Percy's rolling and slashing wasn't enough) it broke immediately. Within a few minutes, all that is left was 1 monster, wounded. The orc backed into the wall of the barn. "What are you?" The orc snarled at the shining figure. He squinted and protected his eyes from the small but shining light emanating from the figure. "A elven – warrior?" The orc sniffed the air. "No.... Istari?" Percy advanced closer, bringing his blade up. "Human.." The orc croaked with it's dying breath. Percy brought down his sword upon it's head.
"Urgh." He said. Black monster juice leaked onto his hands. For whatever reason, monsters didn't dissolve as they usually would here. Or maybe.... No. The idea was too terrifying to think about. He scraped the edge of his sword on the nearest wooden post, cleaning most of the weird blood off it. The owl hooted in satisfaction. "Yes, I know I fight well." Percy told the owl.
He was just about walking out when an alarm bell rung. A single orc crawled outside. He sighed, and closed his eyes. Round two it is. He said inside his head. The owl hooted in compliance.
Wow! I cannot believe this got past 200 views! I was just checking it the other day. Sorry the story is super slow currently, but things will get faster. Again, thanks for reading this. The chapter placements are all over the place currently, but expect chapter 10 in November.
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Of Swords and Fire (Percy Jackson/LOTR)
Fanfiction[Regularly updated] Middle - earth is on its knees. The east is in the hands of the enemy. The shire is now a fortress in these dark times. In New York, Percy was eating Mcdonalds with Nico, when he is once again shazamed by the gods and thrown in a...
