Slayer of the Beasts

The Competition

Annabeth Pov

I scanned the crowd for Percy. I missed him.. a lot, all of us did, The guilt was overwhelming to know that we betrayed him. We did not believe him. Nobody did. He was out hero, our saviour, and we threw him away.I thought about why we were doing this tournament again. So according to Athena, Percy would still practice his sword fighting, and he would come here. We would find him, explain everything to him, and hopefully, he would come back. This was such a rough situation. There was no sight of him. There were a thousand questions in my head, mostly , would Percy even want to come back ?We still started the competition, just in case. Everyone failed badly,  their posture to how they held their weapon was totally wrong and according to what Athena said, they could not be Percy, plus some of them were female, of course. Then at the last, a guy stepped up, his hoodie's hood was on and he wore a mask. You could not describe his facial features if you tried."I challenge you" he said in a somewhat familiar voice, but I could not put my finger on it." You still think you can win ? You will get destroyed" Andrew, the idiot said arrogantly, I still don't know why I believed him over Percy. "You talking about yourself ?" the hooded guy questioned in a innocent tone and smirked which sent the whole crowd  laughing their butts off.  Even I felt the urge to laugh. So this was how the competition worked, you would first have to beat the weakest person first and work your way up. So naturally, with a bit of convincing, we of course put Andrew first. Half the mortals got past him. The hooded guy chose his preferred weapon from our range of weapons, which was a sword. Andrew used a sword too. Both of them got onto the arena and readied themselves. "Get ready" the guy smirked. The battle began, and it was pretty clear who was winning. He jabbed and swirled and twirled his sword and Andrew was out in like 30 seconds. Next came Piper. She two was beaten in 2 minuted. He worked his way up, soon Hazel, Frank, Leo, even Jason, Reyna and Nico were out. Based on the vote we did earlier, I was the top level. No mortal even came close. So this was mortifying, a mortal, mind you was tearing up our most experienced fighters like it was no big deal. I was playing with riptide in my pocket, which did not work for me but I still kept it from when it was taken from Percy, it was a memory, a reminder. Soon it was my turn, I pulled out my dagger. As a analyzed him, I noticed, his stance was different, it was perfect, hip grip, posture, ,everything, as if he was a skilled fighter, which he definitely was. I charged and feinted to the right and turned to the left. He fell for it and lunged to the right and then just as quickly turned and blocked my attack, as if he read my mind. It was not him who fell for the trick, it was me. I wondered if he knew my tricks, which got me back to Percy, but that is the thing, no stranger knows my tricks. A sudden sound of the slicing of wind shook me out of my thoughts. I blocked it and he went for another attack. This was how the whole match went. I barely had time to defend, leave attacking. I was getting tired quickly. I did not know what to do.