The Awakening

Jelly

Sophie's POV

The kelp monster was gaining on me.

I had dropped down a ladder-like structure to the bottom of a stingy, highly echoey sewer. Of course, I immediately started straight, following my instincts, which apparently were good water navigational skills.

Thanks, Dad.

What I failed to pick up on, was the huge dark green, slimy beast snaking through the shallow, disgusting sewer water behind me. I hadn't even heard it or sensed it in the water, most likely from the Mist, which I hadn't gotten used to, yet. Percy told me that it would take some time for me to see past the Mist, because my elven tendencies were prominent than my demigod ones, and vice versa for Perce.

Anyway, there I was, trudging in the middle of the smelly, contaminated water, close to an exit, when a slimy tentacle-like thing wrapped itself around my ankle, dragging me backwards.

My feet were swept out from underneath me, my face smacking against the dirty water during my ascent. The thing pulled me up by my ankle, lifting me upside down to face the monster I nicknamed Jelly, because it was a big, green, skinny blob of a creature.

It was obviously a snake of some sort, not one of Greek mythology that I'd ever heard of. But, the head portion of it, which only tightly fit in the expansive sewer, was so big that I couldn't picture anything following it.

Its huge aqua-colored, forked tongue licked me up the front side of my body, obviously getting a sample of a tasty half-demigod, half-elf snack.

Our friendly encounter only went downhill from there. Especially when I opened my big, stupid mouth.

"Hey, Jelly," I prompted snootily, still dangling in the air with its hold on my ankle. "Can you answer a quick question before you eat me?"

It hissed in response. Sounded like a yes to me.

"So, I'm a big Harry Potter nerd, and I was just wondering . . . Do you speak Parseltongue?"

The tentacle-like thing, which seemed to just mold out of the creature's head, seeing as I didn't see any others, shook me vigorously.

"I-is th-that a y-y-yes or a-a n-n-no?" I questioned while having the living daylights shaken out of me.

When the creature only hissed and shook me harder in response, I figured it was time to find a way out of its grasp.

Bad idea.

I tried Inflicting. Didn't work. I couldn't Teleport with no momentum. Enhancing was useless. My Polygot self was too stubborn to try anything but Parseltongue.

Telepathy was a huge disaster.

I reluctantly resorted to transmitting a greeting to the creature, to which I received the most deafening screeching noise. It was almost a mix of hundreds of cats scratching their claws down a blackboard and the stereotypical scream of a dumb teenage girl in a horror movie.

I think I blacked out for a minute.

All I knew is that my Telepathy attempt had enraged the creature more.

Jelly flailed a bit - out of uncomfort or shock from my Telepathy, I had no idea - and dropped me out of its clutches.

Good news, right? Wrong.

Had I been able to get my bearings quickly and levitate myself safely down to the ground, I would've been fine. But, I was temporarily deaf from the screech of the creature in my mind.