So close but yet so far away.
I was literally around 200 steps from my mother. Just needed to climb a little more. The mountain wasn't all that steep, but for some reason, I felt as if my body refused to obey me. Normally, I would feel my body very light, perfect for climbing or running fast. But there was something deep inside of me that had regretted coming here.
Took me around 10 minutes to get to the Garden of the Hesperides where I saw the three Hesperides. All of them had a similar appearance to someone I had seen before, but I couldn't quite place who.
"Ah young hero. Here to fight our father? If so you will have to go through Ladon first." The middle one said in a sweet and creepy voice.
"Or, I could just not do that and go straight to doing what I came here to do," I simply shut down her idea.
"The quest has gone through Ladon. You will need to pass through the same difficulties they did if you want to fight our father" the smaller one said.
Perfect, arrived after the quest. Just perfect. "Fine, I'll fight Ladon if it's what it takes. Can't believe this is happening," I muttered the last part.
I went on forwards when I saw that Zoë Nightshade was fighting a hundred-headed giant dragon with serpentine-like skin. Ladon. Even if I hated her with all my being, I wasn't going to let her be killed by a stupid dragon.
I sprinted my way towards her and aided her.
"What are you doing here boy? Couldn't find anybody else to lay with you?" She asked me from her peripheral vision
"Nice to see you too Nightshade. Seems you learned to talk in the four days we've been apart,"
"More than four days," she replied as she dodged Ladon's tail.
"Well I wouldn't know, I was unconscious for a good percent of that time. Also, do me a favor and go fight with the others. I can deal with this beast,"
"No can do pretty boy. I'm here as his old tamer, he should be able to recognize me,"
"But he doesn't. Please, just go help he others, knowing Jackson he's already battling Atlas. You know how he is," I could see that she saw my point of view, but was also conflicted with her decision.
"Zoë" I yelled as Ladon was going to bite her. She turned almost too late, but I jumped towards her bringing her down. Instead of her being bitten, a bit of my leg suffered the bite.
"Aahhhh" I felt like my leg was going fall off, a very acidic substance through my bone. Easily the worst pain I've ever felt.
"We can't defeat him!" I said in despair.
"Wait let me try something. A last-minute idea"
And then I shit you not, she began to sing a lullaby! And some gears in the dragons head apparently began to turn and he remembered Zoë Nightshade. Ladon's acidic breath was blown on to us (which didn't help the acidic pain in my leg) and he began to sleep.
"Why the fuck didn't you do that before?! Do you know how much my leg hurt?!" I asked her trying to follow her to the other battlefield, limping pretty badly may I add.
"That almost never worked. Now shut up, we have to go help the others." She did a full sprint whereas I could only fast limp over there.
"I hate my life," I kept repeating as I followed Zoë, who was easily eight hundred feet in front of me.
We kept running towards the battleground for about two and a half minutes when we arrived at the scene. There were basically four parts of the 'battleground'. There was Amnabeth fighting bunch of stupid monsters, there was Percy Jackson fighting Atlas, the damned Luke Castellan fighting Thalia and then my mom holding up the sky.
As soon as my mom saw me, her eyes brightened the triple which they were originally. It seemed as if I had given her hope once again.
"Zoë, you go fight Atlas. I have personal business to settle." She nodded, this being the first time she has listened to me (or probably any male).
I 'ran' as fast as I could towards where Luke and Thalia were engaging in a sword fight. Gripping my necklace and ripping it out of my neck, my bow was formed. It has been a while since I used it, but there was something about this that made me extremely confident I could hit my target. I readied my bow while running just like in the movies, and aimed at Luke's shoulder.
"Castellan!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. He turned to look who it was that said his name and I fired instantly. The arrow flew at a godly speed, embedding itself on his left shoulder.
Now, I have no idea how this happened, but as I approached Luke, my bow began to morph. Slowly, it appeared as it had broken into the half, then a grip began to form and some sharp edges also appeared. In the span of five seconds, my bow changed to a pair of hunting knives.
"I will fucking kill you Castellan" I said in my deepest voice.
"Why? Because I'm a 'traitor'? Face it Jagger, your mother hasn't claimed you because she is ashamed of you. You would be so much better with us, join us. Realize who the real enemy is. Kronos would never do anything to hurt us." Now that was the last straw.
"Thalia, go help out Zoë. She will need your help"
"You won't tell me w-" she began to say when I cut her off
"I'm not telling you. I'm ordering you. Go. NOW" I said pretty roughly, not being able to control my anger directed to this creature in front of me. She looked at me with a broken face before sprinting towards the other battles.
"You and I aren't much different Jagger,"
"Shut up" I growled as I tried to slice his neck. He just sidestepped and cut my arm.
"Tsk tsk tsk. You know you're handicapped yet you decide to face me?"
"I have nothing else to lose," he swiped towards my right abdomen and I dodged it. He kept slashing with great technique and I just kept on dodging and moving a lot. Having just one functional leg didn't help my movability at all, and so I had deep cuts all over my chest, abdomen, legs, and arms. But the biggest one was a stab just by my lungs.
Suddenly, an idea popped into my brain. I'm a hunter, and hunters are aggressive but not overly so. I wasn't thinking like a hunter, I was thinking like a Greek militia warrior. But that isn't me.
So, as Luke was going to impale my heart with his sword, I quickly dodged, moved forward and slashed his sword hand in a manner that it would be extremely painful just to grab his sword. I kept on attacking, impaling my hunting knives into his thighs, abdomen, and arms. I seemed to have taken a big toll on him, as he looked very tired. There was no doubt I was even more tired, with the venom from the bite consuming my last bit of energy.
"I will recuperate. I will get better. We will overthrow Olympus. Hope your last living minutes were worth it,"
"Even if I die right now, I hope you know that this plan has failed," and on queue, we heard Atlas yell 'No! Not again' or something like that. Annabeth, Thalia, Zoë and now Jackson were dealing with the monsters. Luke was watching as his plan failed, and so I took the opportunity to take my last remaining energy to Yeet Luke down the cliff.
I know he survived, as I still existed. If he had died then a paradox would've been created and that's just a whole other world.
I turned towards the rest of the quest members when I felt my body shut down. All except my head and half of my heart and lungs just stopped working. I fell down on my side, but I couldn't feel when my body made contact with the ground.
I vaguely saw the figures running towards me, putting me face up and trying to ask me questions. All I could see were around two of these figures crying, which in turn made some tears fall from my eyes.
"I-I do-don-don't w—wa-ant to-to die" I managed to croak. My life hadn't been that bad compared to many other demigods, I had a fairly good relationship with my mother, and it was all coming to an end.
"You're not going to die" I heard a feminine voice said from beside me, clearly crying her heart out. She had black hair, spiky.
"Th-Thalia" began to choke on my words "i-i never me-meant to-to hurt y-you"
If she replied then I didn't hear it. I was starting to see blurry, and I recognized it as that my death was just a few seconds away.
"M-mom" I don't know if she grabbed my hand or not, I don't even know if she was there. But I hoped this words will make up for everything. "I-I lo-love y-you s-s-so m-much. I-I'm s-sorry f-for c-c-causing s-so much p-pain to ev-every-everyone. F-for-forgive" The 'me' never came out. There were no more words which I could say. I began to choke on my own blood for about five second when everything stopped. No more pain. No more darkness. No more nothing.
Ok well this book is finished. Hope y'all liked it. I know it's not well written and there were a lot of plot holes but hopefully it was entertaining. I just had this idea for so long and I felt like I needed to share it. So here it is. Please comment something, even if it's just a word. Thank you so much for reading. This is my first finished book so it's a big deal for me. So thanks!!!!