I'll be here forever

chapter 31

When Percy finally showed up, it was not how I expected.

I'm not really sure what I did expect. Maybe I expected him to be injured, to be upset, something. Let's just say, it didn't exactly play out how I planned it in my head.

We'd been hearing screaming for a while. The screams got closer and closer, and my dracaena captors started to get nervous. They huddled closer together, whispering and muttering amongst themselves.

This newer scream was close, really close. It was a blood-curdling, tormented scream, and I'd hate to meet whatever made them sound like that. I didn't know why they were screaming; and I hoped it was a friend for me, an enemy for them. If not, well, I was screwed.

The screaming stopped abruptly. There was a wet thud, just outside the large doorway to the chamber I was being held in. I shivered.

Something about the size of a bowling ball rolled into the room. It was covered in blood, and upon closer inspection, I realized it was the head of a dracaena. It was hardly recognizable.

I was completely disgusted and... grossly fascinated. I'd never seen the severed head of a monster before. All monsters exploded into golden dust and reformed down in Tartarus, just to crawl their way back up again centuries later (special mention of Medusa, because she turns into gold dust but leaves her head behind as a spoil of war. How do I know this? No idea).

So how the hell did the dracaena's head stay here? And did that mean they would never reform?

The dracaena around me exclaimed in outrage, and in grief. I thought they rightly deserved it.

And then Percy walked in, and the pride that fluttered in my stomach was squashed into little pieces by fear.

He was spattered in blood that definitely wasn't his own. Riptide glistened red in the dim light of the cavern, the bright bronze painted with blood, dripping from it. He had a cruel and murderous look in his eyes that I could see from all the way over here, and it was fucking terrifying. His mouth was set in a thin line, but other than that, he was deathly calm. I think it would've been less scary if he was angry, or upset, but he wasn't.

The only other time I'd seen him remotely like this was... in the dream we'd shared. When the Arai cursed dream me. When he'd killed all of the Arai even though he knew he would be cursed for it, just to protect me.

"Where is she?" he asked the dracaena, and though he said it quietly, his voice echoed throughout the chamber, ringing in my ears. It had a detached quality to it, like he wasn't really there.

The dracaena stayed silent and surrounded him, eyeing Percy dangerously. He didn't react, just let them circle him. I winced at the very poor planning on his part.

"I asked you a question," he said, his voice deadly calm, so sharp it could cut through glass.

I tried screaming, yelling for him. I yelled until my voice was hoarse, but he couldn't hear me. I guess the cage was soundproof as well as camouflaged.

"You killed our brethren," one of the dracaena hissed, angrily.

"You took someone very important to me," he replied simply.

"You're outnumbered. It is seventeen to one, and there is no water for miles," a different dracaena boasted, and the rest murmured in angry approval.

The corners of his mouth lifted dangerously. I wouldn't call it a smile; a smile is something of joy. This was different. It was lethal, sharp. Un-Percy like.

"No water for miles, you say?" he sounded strangely amused. The dracaena hissed and started to advance; I closed my eyes, not bearing to see him ripped apart.

Instead, I heard that awful screaming again. I opened my eyes to see Percy with his hand held outstretched toward one of the dracaena, concentrated, a small but terrifying grin on his face.

I shifted my gaze over to the dracaena he was gesturing at. They were the one that was screaming.

I watched in horrified fascination as their body convulsed and writhed and they screamed, and they wouldn't stop screaming. Blood poured out of their ears, their eyes, their nose, their mouth, in between their scales, any open space on their body. I couldn't look away.

The rest of the dracaena watched in stunned and horrified silence as their kin bled out on the floor.

When the screaming stopped, nobody moved. The body of the dracaena twitched, and was still. It didn't dissolve into dust, or give any indication of ever doing so. It was well and truly dead.

I felt sick.

"I'll ask again. Where is she?" he said, his voice lifting dangerously.

I prayed for the dracaena to just tell him and run.

Instead, they howled in grief and charged all at once.

I shut my eyes again, pressing my hands into my ears as hard as I could to get their awful screaming out of my mind. It didn't work very well.

I waited until their muffled screams stopped. Only then did I dare to open my eyes.

Percy was standing over my dracaena, the one that had spoken to me first when I'd woken up. The only one left. His sword was pressed against their throat, the bloody bodies of their kin littering the floor behind him. A couple of them hadn't been subjected to the torture Percy inflicted upon the others, and they had exploded into gold dust, being sent down to Tartarus. Those were the lucky ones.

"You know what I want," he said, and the dracaena stayed silent. The horror in their eyes would haunt me for the rest of my life.

"There," they snapped, pointing to my cage, their hand shaking.

"If you're lying to me, or if she's dead," he hissed, pressing Riptide further into their neck, "I will rip you limb from limb, and then shove them down your throat. Understood?"

My dracaena nodded frantically, and Percy turned Riptide back into a pen, walking toward my cage. They slithered away, not daring to look back at the corpses of their brethren.

I wish I had that option.