Demigods: At Midtown (A Percy Jackson and Marvel crossover)

28

A flash of copper

a stab of pain

a blur of glimmering scales

a dizzying fall...

Then nothing.

Peter came to with a groan. He was lying on something hard - the ground. He could feel slightly damp grass beneath his fingers, and taste the faint flavour of strawberries and sea salt on the air. There was a throbbing pain from his left arm and a wooziness in his head that meant it took two tries to sit up. What had happened to him?

He remembered landing in the quinjet, ready to embark on his mission to save the Avengers and instead finding himself faced with miles of empty land in every direction. He'd left his suit in the jet, deciding it would be less suspicious for a random teenager to be snooping around some fields, then put the plane into invisibility mode and brought his web shooters and a tranquilliser gun with him. He'd made it maybe a mile away from the jet, following some faint tugging unease in his gut up a hill towards a big tree. Now that he thought about it, it was the same sensation he'd felt around Annabeth and Percy, whispering that something was wrong, unnatural, dangerous. It was different to his normal spider sense but came from a similar place. Maybe the gut sensation was what had made him truly mistrust the duo in the first place.

He'd reached the top of the hill, but before he could look at what was on the other side, he'd been distracted by something sparkling in the branches of the pine tree, so he'd gone closer to take a look. Then... then something.

Peter frowned and examined the source of pain on his arm. The slowly healing punctures looked suspiciously like a bite mark, and as he looked back towards the tree he realised that they had probably come from the golden dragon curled around the trunk. He knew, rationally, that dragons didn't exist, but there was nothing else this winged creature could be. It coiled possessively around the tree, watching Peter with slitted yellow eyes and huffing smoke in his direction.

Judging by the pain that refused to fade, it was probably venomous too. Peter rolled slowly away from the tree and the dragon seemed to relax a little, still eyeing him warily. One hand to his head, Peter rose woozily into a crouch and looked around from his vantage point. Behind him, fields stretched into the distance. Ahead was the dragon and the tree - didn't dragons usually have a treasure hoard, not a tree? - but past the monster, on the other side of the hill... Peter pinched himself to make sure this wasn't a hallucination, because on none of the satellite maps he'd looked at of the area had there been a village. But sure enough, there was a collection of buildings visible in the valley, including what seemed to be a small version of the Colloseum in Rome he'd seen pictures of.

Peter had a sinking feeling that the Avengers were down there somewhere, but that would mean going past the dragon. Unless... there was a ribbon of woods to his left that formed a sort of crescent around the whole village area. If he used those for cover he would be able to sneak into the settlement hopefully undetected.

Only swaying a little, Peter managed to get to his feet and back away from the tree. He could feel his metabolism working to clear his system of the toxin and the wound on his arm knitting itself closed as he edged around the dragon, heading not for the settlement but the woods. Luckily the dragon lived up to its stereotypical territorial nature and didn't give chase or make any move to attack him, but Peter only dared turn his back to it when he'd made it to the cover of the woods. Then he set off at a light jog in the rough direction of the village, trying to keep his steps light but also wanting to put as much distance between himself and the dragon as possible. After all, he didn't know how long he'd been out - it could have been anywhere from a minute to an hour - and there was a chance someone had spotted him. Also, dragon.