Luke's POV
I was walking around the camp in invisible mode, trying to decipher the meaning behind the camp's new defenses. My heart was still racing from the meeting with Chloe, but I was alert enough to notice patterns. The hands of Clarisse and Annabeth were clearly visible, with the Ares cabin and the Athena cabin leading most of the attacks. I was a little miffed when I saw that Hermes cabin was centered around the other cabins, acting as defense. When I had asked Clarisse about it, all she'd said was, "Someone had to do it." Annabeth had said that there were too many young campers under the age of thirteen who hadn't been claimed in the Hermes cabin, so it was dangerous to put them in offence. She had also said Hermes was the biggest, and a large cabin on defense was a good strategy. It had only been about four hours since the Monster Donut incident, and I was impressed at how quickly the camp organised itself.
The one thing I really did agree with was the large platform in the tallest tree of the forest, where the Chaos warriors would stand. It was an excellent vantage point and would make archery and spell-casting a lot easier if the need arose.
It was my turn on the platform, so I climbed the tree quickly and took my seat, dangling my transparent legs over the edge and staring down at the top of Thalia's pine below me.
I had made so many mistakes. I had not seen Thalia for so many years, and I knew she would still be alive and well in the hunt. I missed her.
At first, the rush of regrets racing past my eyes was all I could see, until I realized they weren't regrets at all. They were shadows, racing past in the form of... Stymphalian birds.
Without hesitation, I turned and blew the horn next to me on the platform.
The sound echoed around the camp, a loud, urgent battle cry that made the ears prick up and the heart restless.
A few of the birds fell out of the sky at the sound, but many kept coming, ignoring it completely. I knew that these birds were long accustomed to the sound of a conch horn.
I immediately reached out to the other chaos warriors in my mind.
"Styphalian birds! Grab your weapons NOW! Alert the other campers, we'll hold them off."
I felt the shocked responses of my fellow fighters through the frenzied cries that reached me before the mind link was cut. I took out my bow and arrows and stood up, firing at a rapid pace.
I had discovered while training that though I was good with a sword, I actually preferred fighting with a bow and arrow. It allowed me a sense of control instead of hacking wildly at everything.
I shot down about fifty in the first ten seconds, and was a bit disappointed with myself. I sped up the pace as I heard the shouts of the Ares and Athena cabins behind me as they fought.
After about two minutes, in which I had managed to kill 6,894 birds, (Yes, I counted) about twenty seemed to realize I was the biggest threat, and zoomed at me. I had no time to shoot before they were upon me. I didn't have my sword, and I didn't have enough space to swing a kneasel (That's a HP joke, guys) let alone fire an arrow.
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.
Her scream was piercing, but I managed to cover my ears with one arm and Percy's with the other before we all dived to the ground.
I could see her shaking, hands curled into tight balls of rage as she screamed on and on. The birds all around us were falling out of the sky like apples, limp and motionless, hitting the ground with sickening thumps before exploding into sulfurous yellow powder.
Lexi had only ever done that once before. On a foreign planet, Nico had caught a rare disease and was on the verge of death. Percy had tried all of his Apollo and personal healing powers on Nico, but to no avail. We had set up camp on a deserted moor, and an army of native monsters had found us and attempted to kill us.
Lexi had been as she was now, shaking with anger. She had yelled at the monsters to go away and leave Nico alone, but they kept coming. So she had just screamed.
I remember all the monsters exploding straight away, their faces contorted in pain as they heard the sound. I also remember not being able to hear anything for the next two months.
It was lucky we had all covered our ears.
I looked around. The screaming had stopped, and every bird was dead. Lexi rushed forward and dived at Percy, me and Nico went over to Adalind.
The holes in their wings were identical to the last scratch. It appeared that Percy felt everything Adalind felt, but not the other way around.
Adalind had never faltered when Percy was hurt by the phoenixes.
We took Percy, Adalind and a shaking Lexi to the infirmary, and I saw Will bending over a bed. He looked over and ran to Percy, shaking his head in disbelief.
The last thing I saw was a motionless figure on the bed, her deep blue eyes wide and glassy, her black hair fanning around her head like a halo. Her arms and legs were in a position that she could've been sleeping, but her face was frozen, her eyes staring and unmoving.
Through my haze of shock, I heard Will and the injured Percy talking, but barely understood a word of it.
Chloe was dead, and it was all my fault.
Percy's POV
Will was the first thing I saw when I came round.
"Percy, are you all right?" He asked, his sky blue eyes wide with concern.
"Course I am, I'll heal faster that you can say Aeschyus. Never mind me, what about Adalind?"
Will bit his lip anxiously. "I'm sorry Ash, but she'll never fly again. The wound is too well developed."
I felt shock course through my body like a lightning bolt. I couldn't believe it.
I imagined what it must feel like if my wing was broken beyond repair. I would be devastated, for five hundred years my life had revolved around flight.
I looked down at my feet, but then shot back up, an idea forming in my head.
"But if I heal, won't she heal too?" I asked. I knew about the link between us.
Will looked at me pityingly.
"I'm afraid not. The link between you only works one way, unfortunately. It's a bit like Frank Zhang. The payment for having the power of the perfect fire is that you feel everything Adalind feels. If she dies, so do you."
"Oh." I said.
"There's something else, as well." said Will, leaning closer to me. "About Katie's cause of death."
"What is it?" I cried, shooting up from the bed and nearly bashing Will's nose in.
"It's the craziest death I've ever seen. There's no evidence of stabbing, bruising, shocking or any external damage. She hasn't been poisoned, she doesn't have any trace of illness of disease, It looks like her heart just... stopped. But she didn't have a cardiac arrest, either, her heart didn't change speeds before it stopped. It's like she just... turned off."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and then Will said something else that shocked me even more.
"Not only that, but that girl over there," he nodded to a pretty girl with black hair lying on another bed, "Exactly the same thing. She died right after the Stymphalian birds, just like Katie died after the vines. And..."
He leaned in closer to me, and whispered,
"Nico collapsed right after the hellhounds. I think the same would've happened if you weren't Chaos warriors. Your powers protect you and you just collapse for a bit."
I was reeling from all this information, and then Annabeth burst through the doors of the infirmary, waving a piece of paper covered in lines at me.
"I've found it! I've found the link between the attacks!"
She plopped down on the end of my bed without so much as a hello and handed me the piece of paper. I stared at it blankly.
She sighed in exasperation.
"Oh, seawee..." Before she could get any further, I clapped a hand over her mouth. But it was too late.
"Percy..." whispered Will, looking at me is shock. "Are you serious?!"
"Shhhhhhhh!" I gestured wildly, flapping my hands around in his face. "Be quiet!"
While Will sat back on his heels and stared at me in disbelief, I leaned over to Annabeth. "What's the link, then?"
"Well, it all started when Nico fainted. I thought at first that it was just normal, exhaustion or something, but then I realized that Nico is now a chaos warrior. With that kind of power it would need a very powerful illness or injury to cause loss of consciousness."
"So?" I asked, feeling slightly confused.
"Well it must've been something else, then!" She sighed exasperatedly, her breath fluttering a curl of her blonde hair. She continued, "I also had a look at the other deaths, and my theory fits. Every attack is related to a God or Goddess, and every time an attack happens, a child of that God is killed. That's why there were no marks on the bodies."
"Soooo...." I said uncertainly, "Hades was the hellhounds, Demeter was the vines and Aphrodite was the... wait, why would Aphrodite's be the Stymphalian birds?"
"Because, seaweed brain, Aphrodite is connected to all birds, not just Doves." She said, rolling her stormy eyes.
"Oh."
I stood up and stretched, making towards the door.
Will and Annabeth stood up to stop me, but the warriors just sat back, looking amused. Most of them, anyway. Luke was staring at the Aphrodite girl, and the look on his face was just was horrified and shocked under his hood than it had been when he first saw the body. He hadn't moved.
"Percy, where do you think you're going? You have to stay here and heal!" said Will, looking at me disapprovingly.
"What are you talking about? I told you, I'd heal faster than you could say Aeschyus. Look."
I flexed my right wing, showing them its completely healed flesh and feathers.
"But... That's impossible." said Will in shock and amazement, staring at me.
I winked at them and walked out.
Almost as soon as I left, I felt my wings droop, my eyes fall to the floor.
She would never fly again.
Even as I said it, I felt the familiar burning behind my eyes, but I gritted my teeth and walked on.
Be strong, I told myself. You're the leader. Show no weaknesses. You can find a way to fix this.
I looked up at the evening sky and saw the huntress shining strong above me. I had only met Adalind a week ago, but I knew she was the type of friend that even my fellow warriors couldn't replace. We have a bond like no other, and I knew everything about her, as she did me. We were a team, the ultimate machine.
And now Adalind couldn't fly.
At least she's not dead. I thought to myself, but even as I saw the twinkling lights above me, I knew it wasn't going to be enough for her when she found out.
And I swore, right then, that I would find a way to help her if it killed me. I swore it on the river Styx.
Lexi's POV
I saw Percy's face fall as Will told him the bad news. He put on a brave face and tried to find a solution, only to be told that it was impossible.
To be honest, this didn't surprise me in the slightest. I had seen the severity of Adalind's wound, but I didn't remember Percy's. I remember seeing a hole in Adalind's wing, then a flash of sea green feathers, and then waking up here. I guess the others must've brought me in. I sat up quickly.
"What happened?" I asked. Nico looked at me in concern.
"What are you talking about?" he answered, his face reflecting my own confusion.
"The birds! What happened to them? Are we still fighting?"
Nico's face was definitely worried as he stared at me, his dark eyes fixed on my orange ones.
"You don't remember?"
I shook my head, slightly concerned myself. Memories don't just disappear.
He stared at me for a second, and then said, "Well, Adalind got hurt by a bird and she fell down. Percy was fighting somewhere else so we called him over and he saw her injury. He started flying forward, but then he just... fell out of the sky. Luke managed to catch him, and put him on the ground. He had a hole in his wing that was exactly the same shape as Adalind's."
My hands flew up over my mouth as I gasped in horror. "What happened next?"
He looked at me for a second before continuing. "Well, he was thrashing around, and then you came, and you saw... what had happened. Then you... you... did the... thing."
"Oh no." I said softly, burying my head in my hands.
You know I'm technically an alien, right? Well my species, the Arishe, have minor hypnotic powers, so we can get people to do stuff for us. But when a powerful Arishe or a member of the royal family get really stressed or scared, we release this huge wave of sound that makes monsters go crazy. We manipulate their brain signals so that all they want to do is kill themselves, or each other. We don't like using it but sometimes it happens without us realizing.
I still haven't told the others I can do it willingly whenever I want to. The truth is i'm a bit scared they'll make me use it all the time. Another thing I haven't told them is that it's excruciatingly painful, like burning your insides, or freezing them so much all you feel is pain. It stops your heart briefly, and you collapse
There are a lot of things I haven't told them.
Hi peoples!
I'm sorry I killed Chloe!
Yes she is actually dead
Gah!
I am being overloaded by feels right now, they hurt.
So we're starting to see new sides to Lexi, I wanted to create a deeper character.
PS, plz plz plz check out this amazing book called the Alzeriux pill by Tilda2369, it's really great. This chapter is dedicated to her!
more things coming up...
cheers,
catgirlxxx