It almost worked ✸ Apollo ¹

XXXIV. Kidnapped by dead sailors

The hydra sniffed their campsite, and Lydia realized it was following their scent. Which meant no sudden movements. Charging their weapons wouldn't do them any good at the moment.

Each head was diamond-shaped, like a rattlesnake's, but the mouths were lined with jagged rows of sharklike teeth. Lydia had seen pictures of the Hydra before. Yet the real thing made her veins run cold. Even Tyson was trembling. He stepped back and accidentally snapped a twig.

The rule about no sudden movements was broken now, all seven heads turned toward them and hissed. Lydia held onto her pack of throwing knives on the side of her jeans. She scattered to a side of the bushes.

Annabeth dove to the right. Percy rolled to the left. One of the Hydra heads spat an are of green liquid that shot past his shoulder and splashed against an elm. The trunk smoked and began to disintegrate. The whole tree toppled straight toward Tyson, who still hadn't moved, petrified by the monster that was now right in front of him.

"Tyson!" Percy tackled him with all his might, knocking him aside just as the Hydra lunged and the tree crashed on top of two of its heads. The Hydra stumbled backward, yanking its heads free then wailing in outrage at the fallen tree. All seven heads shot acid, and the elm melted into a steaming pool of muck.

"That totally isn't terrifying!" Lydia yelled.

The hydra turned to her, but she was already prepared for it. She raised one of her throwing knives to the Hydra's eye. Before continuing to throw all her knives at each of their eyes. It screeched.

"Stop!" Annabeth told her "You're just gonna make it mad and open another donut shop!"

The Hydra's eyes were blinded, and it threw some acid "Why are you so worried about that?"

She dodged it, and went back behind another bush. A colony of ants escaped from their nest in the ground beneath the bush.

"Fire!" Annabeth said. "We have to have fire!"

"That might be a problem." Lydia looked at her "Where are we gonna get fire?"

"I was thinking the same thing!" Percy backed up toward river. The Hydra followed.

Annabeth moved in on his left and tried to distract one of the heads, parrying its teeth with her own knife, but another head swung sideways like a club and knocked her into the muck.

"No hitting my friends!" Tyson charged in, putting himself between the Hydra and Annabeth.

As Annabeth got to her feet, Tyson started smashing at the monster heads with his fists so fast it reminded Lydia of the whack-a-mole game at the arcade. But even Tyson couldn't fend off the Hydra forever. They kept inching backward, dodging acid splashes and deflecting snapping heads without cutting them off.

Lydia mainly used her knife, but she did hold the Hydra down for a while with her powers. She never understood why she was the only child of Dionysus who inherited that ability. It seemed weird that some demigods got certain gifts and others didn't.

Although it did remind Lydia of an old story her grandmother used to tell her, something about their family being descended from a historical person. She couldn't remember who. So she'd have to ask if she ever came home again.

Then they all heard a strange sound a chug-chug-chug. It was so powerful it made the riverbank shake. Lydia didn't have time to look and see where it was coming from. Because the hydra had eight heads now. "Why did I even try to blind it?"

The noise was getting even louder now, Tyson mumbled something about a steam engine. A familiar voice yelled "There! Prepare the thirty two pounder!"