Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

SEVEN | Alex

KILLING DOGS DIDN'T TAKE MUCH EFFORT. And after stabbing a good fifteen hellhounds over the course of the battle in Manhattan, Alex no longer felt guilty when they burst into little clouds of ash and smoke. But somehow Mrs. O'Leary had the constitution, and luck, of a cyclops in Hephaestus's forge. Percy rode on her back like a horse jockey, avoiding every attempt by the Lydian Drakon to kill them.

As Alex decapitated another dracaena, he risked a glance up at the two-hundred-foot long serpent currently smashing lamp posts on 34th Street. Percy and Annabeth leapt out of its snapping jaws. Mrs. O'Leary howled, slamming into the drakon's head like she, not Percy, had bathed in the River Styx.

None of this mattered, though. Unless Chris and Silena could convince Clarisse to get over herself and help save the world, they'd all be drakon meat before long. Alex ducked as a scythe swung towards his head. Rolling into a pedestal that must've held one of Daedelus's automatons, he hissed in pain. Stupid.

Alex scrambled back. He licked the blood off his lips, too focused on swinging his sword to use his arm. Iron tang filled his mouth. A hellhound twice the size of Mrs. O'Leary bounded through the still-settling corpse dust of a dracaena. With a frustrated scream, Alex hurled a large piece of broken concrete at the hellhound's face. It yelped. Adrenaline flooded his senses as he tried to stand.

His boot slipped on gravel and glass shards. Alex winced as some of the debris cut into his palms. His sword clattered to the ground. Biting his cheek to even out the pain, he grabbed it, pulled himself up with a spoke of rebar poking out from building debris, and turned back to the growling hellhound. It leapt at him, red eyes sunken and glowing in it's sleek black fur. Alex stopped breathing. 

He swung. The sword sunk into the dog's body. Hot, sulfuric breath filled his nose as Alex ducked away from a maw of sharpened teeth as big as a shark's. With all his strength, he drove the sword deeper. He felt muscles and tendons slice. The hound shrieked before disintegrating into ash and dust the color of the void.

Alex fell to the ground. The drakon's roar reverberated all around him.  Sweat mixed with blood, cut lines down his grimey face.

Ok. Maybe killing dogs hurt more than he had been admitting to himself. Alex looked around them. He tried to ignore the massive serpent destroying building corners and attempting to eat Percy and Annabeth. Instead, he tried to read the field. It didn't go well.

The campers continued losing ground. Alex already stood a stone's throw from the entrance to the Empire State Building. Most demigods in the field had been wounded in previous fights, fed ambrosia, and pushed back out to defend the entrance. Katie Gardner tied up and strangled dracaenae in ivy and vines. He could see Travis and Connor working in tandem, swords flashing with their speed. Nyssa from the Hephaestus cabin looked to be repairing or altering some of the vacated mortal vehicles, maybe rigging a car bomb?

But with every minute that passed, they found themselves inches closer to the doors. His arms burned. But he parried another dracaena's blade before sending her back to Tartarus. He had a job. He couldn't stop. He couldn't fail Camp Half-Blood. Not again.