(Ella's POV)
Percy took out his ballpoint pen, but I locked eyes with him-giving him a silent warning. Not yet. He understood. A lot of monsters have terrible eyesight. It was possible the Hydra might pass us by. But if he uncapped his sword now, the bronze glow would certainly get its attention.
We waited.
The Hydra was only a few feet away. It seemed to be sniffing the ground & the trees like it was hunting for something. Then I noticed that two of the heads were ripping apart a piece of yellow canvas-one of our duffel bags. The thing had already been to our campsite. It was following our scent.
My heart pounded. I’d seen a stuffed Hydra-head trophy at camp before, but that did nothing to prepare me for the real thing. Each head was diamond- shaped, like a rattlesnake’s, but the mouths were lined with jagged rows of sharklike teeth.
Tyson was trembling. He stepped back & accidentally snapped a twig. Immediately, all seven heads turned toward us & hissed.
“Scatter!” Annie yelled. She & I dove to the right. Percy rolled to the left. One of the Hydra heads spat an arc of green liquid that shot past my shoulder & splashed against an elm. The trunk smoked & began to disintegrate. The whole tree toppled straight toward Tyson, who still hadn’t moved, petrified by the monster that was now right in front of him.
“Tyson!” I yelled. Percy tackled him, knocking him aside just as the Hydra lunged & the tree crashed on top of two of its heads. The Hydra stumbled backward, yanking its heads free then wailing in outrage at the fallen tree.
All seven heads shot acid, & the elm melted into a steaming pool of muck.
“Move!” Percy told Tyson.
I ran to one side & drew stormcatcher, hoping to draw the monster’s attention.
It worked. As soon as my glowing blade appeared, the Hydra whipped toward it with all its heads, hissing & baring its teeth.
The good news: Tyson was momentarily out of danger. The bad news: I was about to be melted into a puddle of goo.
One of the heads snapped at me. Without thinking, I swung my sword & instantly regretted it.
“No!” Annie yelled.
I'd sliced the Hydra’s head clean off. It rolled away into the grass, leaving a flailing stump, which immediately stopped bleeding & began to swell like a balloon. In a matter of seconds the wounded neck split into two necks, each of which grew a full-size head. Now I was looking at an eight-headed Hydra.
“Nora!” Annie scolded. “You just opened another Monster Donut shop somewhere!”
I dodged a spray of acid. “She's about to die & you’re worried about that?!" Percy said.
"How do we kill it??” I asked.
“Fire!” Annie said. “We have to have fire!”
As soon as she said that, I remembered the story. The Hydra’s heads would only stop multiplying if we burned the stumps before they regrew. That’s what Heracles had done, anyway. But we had no fire. I backed up toward the river. The Hydra followed.
Percy & Annie moved in on my left & tried to distract one of the heads, parrying its teeth, but another head swung sideways like a club & knocked them into the muck.
“No hitting my friends!” Tyson charged in, putting himself between the Hydra & them. As they got to her feet, Tyson started smashing at the monster heads with his fists so fast it reminded me of the whack-a-mole game at the arcade. But even Tyson couldn’t fend off the Hydra forever.
We kept inching backward, dodging acid splashes & deflecting snapping heads without cutting them off, but I knew we were only postponing our deaths. Eventually, we would make a mistake & the thing would kill us.
Then I heard a strange sound-a chug-chug-chug that at first I thought was my heartbeat. It was so powerful it made the riverbank shake.
“What’s that noise?” Percy shouted, keeping his eyes on the Hydra.
“Steam engine,” Tyson said.
“What?” I ducked as the Hydra spat acid over my head.
Then from the river behind us, a familiar female voice shouted: “There! Prepare the thirty-two-pounder!”
I didn’t dare look away from the Hydra, but if that was who I thought it was behind us, I figured we now had enemies on two fronts.
A gravelly male voice said, “They’re too close, m’lady!”
“Damn the heroes!” the girl said. “Full steam ahead!”
“Aye, m’lady.”
“Fire at will, Captain!”
Annie understood what was happening a split second before Percy & I did. She yelled, “Hit the dirt!” & we dove for the ground as an earth-shattering BOOM echoed from the river.
There was a flash of light, a column of smoke, & the Hydra exploded right in front of us, showering us with nasty green slime that vaporized as soon as it hit, the way monster guts tend to do.
“Gross!” Annie screamed.
“Steamship!” yelled Tyson.
I stood, coughing from the cloud of gun powder smoke that was rolling across the banks.
Chugging toward us down the river was the strangest ship I’d ever seen.
It rode low in the water like a submarine, its deck plated with iron. In the middle was a trapezoid-shaped casemate with slats on each side for cannons.
A flag waved from the top-a wild boar & spear on a bloodred field.
Lining the deck were zombies in gray uniforms-dead soldiers with shimmering faces that only partially covered their skulls, like the ghouls I’d seen in the Underworld guarding Hades’s palace.
The ship was an ironclad. A Civil War battle cruiser. I could just make out the name along the prow in moss-covered letters: CSS Birmingham. And standing next to the smoking cannon that had almost killed us, wearing full Greek battle armor, was none other than Clarisse.
“Losers,” she sneered. “But I suppose I have to rescue you. Come aboard.”
Sorry for the delay you guys😶...
I've been busy with moving to a new place lately..but I'll still update tho😁
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Take care my lovely readers.❤️
Alice signing off.
XOXO.
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