Awakened Memories

There Is A Thorn In My Side

There Is A Thorn In My Side

Annabeth

Jason was making good use of the legion's eagle. He rallied his troops beneath it and they fought with renewed strength. The eagle must have been very important to them. Before I gave it to Jason, the Fifth Cohort was just good. Now, they were great.

I was cornered in a large crowd of monsters with no way out. I fought as hard as I could but the monsters seemed to have realized which demigods were the most dangerous, and they kept coming. I almost thought they had me when something happened.

"Twelfth Legion Fulminata!" Jason's voice roared over the clash of weapons and lightning spread through the monsters surrounding me. The lightning jumped from each monster, connecting them in a long pulsing line and disintegrating them. Soon, only piles of dust surrounded me and I saw Jason pointing the eagle towards me.

"Thanks," I gulped at my close encounter.

"No problem," He swallowed as well before rushing off to rejoin the fight. I ran and jumped onto a hellhound's back, not stopping for a second.

As the hellhound disintegrated I jumped and landed on the back of another one. I stuck my dagger in its neck and it started to disintegrate as well, but not before it bucked and threw me off. I flew through the air, flipping around and watching the ground come dangerously close. At the last second I stopped, and was gently lowered to the ground. I stood and found Calypso fighting nearby. She saw me looking and winked, and I knew she was the one who had stopped me from getting hurt.

I dashed back into the fight. I somehow ended up fighting back to back with Calypso, and saw that she was very powerful. She used her powers to her advantage, to save herself or others from getting hurt, and to speed up the process of the war. But she also looked like she was still getting used to them. Her powers must have been suppressed on Ogygia, and they were just now coming back.

She also fought amazingly well. I tried to watch her in case she needed help, but she was doing fine on her own. Calypso had been trained by someone truly great, and she never forgot his or her training. She performed maneuvers that took me weeks, months, even years to master as if they were nothing. I found that I liked fighting with her. We worked well as a team.

I heard a thundering across the field and Calypso and I turned. A manticore was crashing across the ground heading straight for us. Me, particularly. I recognized him. It was Dr. Thorn, the manticore who had tried to kidnap Bianca and Nico di Angelo and Percy, before Percy managed to contact Grover and lead us to him. The manticore was still able to take one demigod, and that had been me.

I glared menacingly at him. He was the one who brought me to Luke, which led to me holding the sky. He almost killed Percy twice, and Thalia, Grover, and Zoë, before they got the help of Dionysus.

Calypso and I stood ready. She seemed to recognize the look in my eye that I had something personal against this particular monster. The manticore ran toward us and something whizzed through the air, coming from behind his back. The thorn sliced into my side and I winced, pressing a hand to it. I jumped into the air as Dr. Thorn came close, landing on his back. I grabbed Calypso's hand as he ran past her and pulled her up behind me.

"Duck!" I told Calypso. She didn't ask why and ducked as I sliced Anaklusmos through the air behind her, cutting off part of the manticore's scorpion tail.

He snarled and bucked, tossing us into the air. I positioned myself so that I was upside down, my sword pointing towards the ground. The blade pierced the manticore's back and I used the leverage to keep myself from falling on my face. My feet gently touched the ground and a dagger appeared in the back of the manticore's head as Calypso landed next to me.

Dr. Thorn whimpered as he disintegrated. Soon he was nothing but golden dust.

Calypso and I high fived before we raced off in different directions. I saw a group of Aphrodite campers cornered. They had gotten much better at fighting, but most of us had had more years of training than them. I dashed over to them and helped them slash through the monsters.

At one point I saw a large serpent slithering through the crowd. At first I thought it was a drakon, but it didn't look like it. Then I saw the pink scarf tied around its neck and Silena riding on its back. Beckendorf had become the Primordial Ophion, which meant serpents. That meant that the snake was Beckendorf! He slid through the battlefield, gulping up monsters as he passed them and smashing others with his tail. It was a nice sight.

Another time I saw dozens of monsters being tossed away and an elephant charging at them. The elephant grew smaller and became one of the Romans, Frank, I think was his name. He shot an arrow at an empousa and then took off into the air as an eagle. He could shape shift!

The Roman named Hazel was riding a large horse who sped around the field at a speed only Blackjack could match. She seemed to look at the monster's army and their weapons or armor would fly right off of them and into the waiting hands of a demigod.

I watched as demigods that had fallen asleep from the Oneiroi rose and jumped back into the fight, if they hadn't been killed or weren't injured enough. The ground rumbled and I turned, seeing Percy kneeling with a murderous glare in his eyes.

He jumped up and rushed into the fight, but I saw him wince at the dead bodies he passed. He saw me and a look of relief passed over his face. I smiled at him before whirling around and tossing away a net a dracaenae had tried to entrap me with. A sword flew through the air and stabbed the dracaenae, killing it.

The sword pulled itself from the crumbling monster and flew back into its owner's hand. Percy held Oblivion and fought back to back with me.

A hellhound lunged and Percy looped his elbows through mine, pulling me onto his back. I kicked my legs out and the hellhound crashed to the ground, whimpering. Leo bashed a hammer into its skull and it disintegrated.

I ducked and Percy ran across my back, using it as a springboard and landing on the nose of a drakon. He climbed on top of its head and slashed at its eyes, blinding it and then driving Oblivion into the drakon's neck with godly strength.

He jumped off of the drakon's body as it disintegrated, but stumbled and fell to his knees as he landed. "Percy!" I rushed over to him and fought off monsters why he recovered. "Are you okay?" I asked, momentarily forgetting he couldn't hear.

"Yeah." Percy replied. He had heard what I said. He lifted his head at me and grinned. "I'm great."