Bonds

Annabeth Breaks the Rules

During the final battle with the giants, when the gods themselves (finally) left the cloistered halls of Olympus to aid their children, Annabeth witnessed the full destructive power of the sea. Percy and his father hammering the dragon-legged children of Gaea and Tartarus with all the unforgiving power of a tsunami, tearing their weapons from their hands with the ferocity and strength of a whirlpool, and violently dragging back any who dared to flee like a riptide. It had been both an awesome and terrifying sight, and she was thankful she had been preoccupied with her own foe as to not dwell on the latter (especially after what she had witnessed in Tartarus). The terrifying spectacle had served as a reminder that despite the Hawaiian shirts and beach bum beard, the god of the sea was a raw force of nature that was to be feared and respected if one valued their life.

Eurybia though, was none of that.

"Come on, kraken breath! That the best you got?!" The silver titaness spat as she narrowly dodged the super-heated claws of the Warrior. A strap of her yellow sundress melted from the proximity of the glowing claw and some of her moonlight hair singed, but Eurybia paid it no mind. Throwing herself forward into a twirl, slicing through the black, rubbery flesh of the Star-Spawn with her twin Celestial Bronze kopides. The water beneath her bare feet propelling the titaness forward while simultaneously pulling her foe closer; the daughter of Gaea using the ebb and flow of the tide she was mistress of.

Perhaps it was just from the relief of having a divine being in her corner, but Eurybia was grace incarnate to Annabeth. A keeper of nature sent by the Fates to aid her escape from the sadistic creature she believed to be Brian.

And she could use all the help she could get.

As Eurybia's blades sliced into what passed as the black behemoth's left hip, its right thigh exploded into an undulating mass of tentacles. The unwound appendages racing across the warehouse floor, over the sparking remains of broken automatons, and piercing through shipping containers in pursuit of the daughter of Athena and son of Kronos. The idea of them catching her worse than death.

"Eurybia!" She shouted as a tentacle twice as thick as her arm reared back like cobra. One arm was wrapped under the shoulder of the unconscious Knight, while in the other she brandished the bottom piece of the boy's weapon, Shatter. The piece of the Celestial Bronze weapon was glitching out, its weight fluctuating wildly, but it was the only weapon available to her. The dagger-bow-combo Knight had recently forged her lost among the rubble in the fight.

The tentacle leapt forward, and she swung her blade down. The weight of the fragment quadrupled at the zenith of her swing, making her stumble forward, but also cleave through the foreign flesh with relative ease. It was incredibly satisfying to wound the creature that had so cruelly tortured her and possibly set into motion the events that ruined the lives of her and so many others, but that satisfaction was short lived when she caught sight of the remaining tentacles converging at her as she fell.

"NO YOU DON'T!" Eurybia shouted as she finished her arc around the Warrior, slicing through its grasping appendages with a growl. A singular, emotionless eye looked away from Annabeth to the titaness, its pupil dilating and then shrinking as if registering her for the first time. The Star-Spawn's 'gut' began to heave and buckle as the tenured professor ducked beneath its arm, and Annabeth's eyes grew wide in horror as she realized what was about to transpire.

"EURY-"

The Warrior's abdomen exploded into a writhing, grasping mass of tentacles that almost instantly ensnared the silver titaness from behind, wrapping around her waist, arms, and neck. Eurybia bucked, kicked and blindly slashed at her foe's appendages as they raised her off the ground, but for every limb lost, three more took its place. Before she was completely engulfed by the squirming limbs, she dropped the blade from her left hand, and a small orb of sliver light formed in her open palm-