madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-I would make a Fred and George joke, but JKR had to go and ruin all my fun-

This text post was seriously made for this chapter or smthn ⬆️

double update cause i feel like it

<3

Akhlys lunged at Percy and for a split second he thought: Well, hey, I'm just smoke. She can't touch me, right?

He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking over glasses of wine and their giant scissors, ready to cut his life thread to pieces as the goddess's claws raked across his chest and stung like boiling water on unclothed skin.

Percy stumbled backward, but he wasn't used to being smoky. His legs moved too slowly. His arms felt like tissue paper. In desperation, he threw his backpack at her, thinking maybe it would turn solid when it left his hand, but no such luck. It fell with a soft thud and up flew a cloud of mist.

Akhlys snarled, crouching to spring. She would have bitten Percy's face off if Annabeth hadn't charged and screamed a piercing scream right in her ear.

Akhlys flinched, turning toward the sound.

She lashed out at Annabeth, but Annabeth was better at moving than Percy. Maybe she wasn't feeling as smoky, or maybe she'd just had more combat training. She'd been at Camp Half-Blood since she was seven. Probably she'd had classes Percy never got, like How to Fight While Partially Made of Smoke.

Annabeth dove straight between the goddess's legs and somersaulted to her feet. Akhlys turned and attacked, but Annabeth dodged again, like a matador.

Percy was so stunned, he lost a few precious seconds. He stared at corpse Annabeth, shrouded in mist but moving as fast and confidently as ever. Then it occurred to him why she was doing this: to buy them time. Which meant Percy needed to help.

He thought furiously, trying to come up with a way to defeat Misery. How could he fight when he couldn't touch anything?

On Akhlys's third attack, Annabeth wasn't so lucky. She tried to veer aside, but the goddess grabbed Annabeth's wrist and pulled her hard, sending her sprawling. Red blood splattered onto Akhlys's dress, but it wasn't her own, from her face.

"Oi! Fuckface!"

Akhlys wouldn't be tricked by yelling any more, it seemed, but both Annabeth and Percy whipped around at the sound of Teqi's voice. It wasn't supposed to sound like that. Percy felt Riptide slide from his uncurled fingers as he watched.

"God's, you're as bad as Shakespeare, pick on someone your own size!" Teqi snarled, with a voice too deep and hair too short.

She marched straight out of the shadows like she'd been made of clouds all her life, and Percy only had a second to take in the fact her drakon-skin armour had been replaced with a bloodstained Camp Half-Blood shirt and denim shorts.

Akhlys turned from Annabeth, eyes sunken and red with anger and blood, claws curled and ready to tear open whatever Teqi had become. A horrid thought struck Percy, that maybe this was what the daughter of Dionysus was going to look like when she died. 

Was this her ghost?

The goddess hadn't even opened her mouth before Teqi punched it shut.

Annabeth scrambled, or more so wafted, away from the brawl as Akhlys wailed back at Teqi's wispy but apparently solid form. "You cannot touch me! You are mist! You would need time! How dare you fight me, I am inevitable!"