The Fall of Jackson || EDITING

/14/

Anakulos

Bodies dropped all around me. The crack of Arete by my side and the whistling of Altair as Nyssa fired arrows, mixed with the sound of war filled my ears and I faintly smelt blood.

I instinctively enhanced mine and the Order's senses to lessen our chances of death as I slashed through the enemy- my only goal to reach End.

A scream came from behind me before it was abruptly cut off and I started the mental tally in my head.

I felt something coming from my right, before a pure black arrow hit the sword so it clanged to the ground. An endless enslot of arrows poured in the direction of the sword, before they dissappeared into the crowd, finding another target.

I somehow ended up back to back with Alethea. She cracked her whip twice and tossed her shield into the air. An identical whip appeared in her other hand as I caught her shield and threw it through a line of dracanae. Alethea cracked her whips and they latched onto the nearest monsters, before they squeezed and the monsters popped into blackened dust.

See, anytime something was killed by a weapon weiled by the Order, it wouldn't die or anything of the sort, instead, it would be taken to the Void for eternity. So if I could kill End, the blessing would make sure that he would stay there.

I ducked and a dagger flew over my head and into the chest of a turned demigod. I mentally thanked Klemenis and slashed through another crowd of monsters.

"Archers!" Annabeths voice shouted and a volley of arrows rained down onto the enemy.

She ran into my line of vision and I ran over to her, slicing through enemies until I reached her side. Maybe some part of me still felt an undying loyalty to her after everything we'd been through, but the rest of me decided that it was because she was a vital part of my plan.

We fought together like we had a million times before- which we had, she just didn't know -until only piles of black and gold dust was all that was left. I nodded her way and took off into another crowd.

An elephant ran past me, trampling the enemies. I raised a hand into the air and Frank Zhang came back around, picking me off the ground and hoisting me onto his back.

My swords were replaced with a bow and I picked off the nearest enemies until I found Nyssa. I pulled her into my place and slid off of Franks back, smirking as he ran around crushing monsters under his feet.

I heard a tear and looked around to see a turned demigod with a sword in his hand, a piece of my cape hanging from it. I saw red and his head rolled to my feet.

"Pathetic."

I slashed through a couple more crowds of enemies before I heard an angry bellow from behind me. Campers and enemies parted simultaneously and made way for the Minotaur. His red beady eyes were trained on me as he charged. I brought my swords up and aimed them at him.

The Minotaur lowered his head as he charged and my swords went right through him as he crumbled into black. I wiped my swords on my cape, staining it with red, and leisurely walked around, swinging my swords and decapitating monsters.

When only a thrid of the enemy was left, they finally decided to retreat. I knew deep down that more would returned, but thanked Order that we finally had a short break.

The Apollo and Ares campers were tending to the wounded, while a few other campers gathered the dead. The tally in my head was nowhere near the exact number of campers that died, and I didn't know wether to laugh or mourn.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, Chiron and the party ponies had arrived with their strange assortment of weapons.

But I didn't know how worse my day would get when none of my soldiers returned to me.

《●○●》

"What do you mean they've been taken?" I shouted and stabbed Klemenis' dagger into the table we were surrounding.

"They were taken by the enemy. All we could find of them were the pins." Clarisse repeated for the umpteenth time.

The counsellors were silent, awaiting my next orders. I groaned and the dagger disappeared.

"I'm going back for them."

"No." Chiron snapped. "You're the commander. You will stay here and plan the next attack."

"Listen, my people are out there. I'm briging them back wether you like it or not."

"You're people?! What about mine?!" Annabeth screeched. Oh yeah, it seems that I forgot that the remaining of the seven (minus Annabeth) had been taken aswell.

"To Hell with your people." I replied and left the meeting.

I marched back to the small clearing where our tent was set up and threw the flaps open. I rummaged through the pile of pins, looking for the rest of my friends pins. I found all of them and added them to my belt.

I sighed at my torn cape and replaced it with a pure black one, tossing the other onto a table and retying my hair up into its halfbun. What I forgot though, was 1. the enchantments that Alethea had set up for entruders was down, and 2. my hood was down. So when a small voice whimpered behind me, everything that I'd worked for dissappeared and I was the weak boy they'd thrown into Tartarus decades ago.