The Animal Within

Chapter 27 - Draco

The journey to Topeka to meet with Bacchus – as per with Piper's vision from her knife, Katoptris – was going well up until Percy mentioned the suspicious lack of monsters.

The Seven were discussing what to do. There were lots of things happening that Percy hadn't been aware of. While the Romans were trying to follow the Seven, they had greater problems now in the form of twin giants. And, even worse, according to Nemesis, they only had six days until Rome was destroyed.

And then Annabeth and Piper finally caught Percy up to date on what Kronos hadn't mentioned to him, in the form of the mysterious Titan in the Labyrinth, the sea monster, the fact that Luke may have ran off with some venomous sea monster fangs, and – for some odd reason – sea-goats were mentioned too.

Then, Percy made the stupid mistake of mentioning that he was surprised that they hadn't been attacked yet by monsters.

A few seconds later, a furious roar rattled the ship around them.

They were somewhere along the border of Wyoming and Denver, heading to Topeka. Unfortunately, Festus started creaking in alarm.

"What was that?" Frank demanded.

Percy shook his head. "I don't know," he said, ignoring Annabeth's furious look in his direction. "But it sounded big."

"Come on," Jason sighed, reaching for his gladius. "Let's go see what that was."

Percy was content to let the Roman Praetor take the lead. While Jason had been pretty tough on him at Camp Jupiter, he had still given Percy a chance to prove himself by going on the quest to free Thanatos. The two had soon struck up a heavy rivalry, but they'd come to each other's defence when Gaea had attacked New Rome.

Jason was a stickler for the rules, but he wasn't a bad guy.

Riptide was in Percy's hand as he emerged out onto the deck behind Jason. Coach Hedge was already yelling and waving his bat at something in the air, peering down over the railing of the ship as he threatened to brain the monster.

Percy was tempted to join him, up until the point that the monster shot up past them. It moved too quickly to be entirely visible, but Percy could have sworn... the point of Riptide dipped down. "Was that a dragon?" Percy asked in bewilderment.

It was massive. The Argo rocked in the air in the monster's wake.

Leo uttered a curse in Spanish as he stared up into the dark sky overhead.

Jason shook himself out of his shock. "Yes," he said.

The dragon was so large that it blotted out the night sky overhead. Percy exhaled sharply, eyes trailing over the dark wings – modified forelimbs so the dragon didn't have forelegs – to the spines running down its back and the muscular, serpentine tail that lashed through the air.

"Since when did dragons exist?" Piper demanded.

Annabeth gaped up at the dragon overhead.

It roared down at them, mouth starting to glow.

"Leo!" Jason yelled.

"On it," Leo said. Fire rolled from the dragon's maw, a white-hot torrent blasted straight down at the ship, but Leo twisted the fire back around up at the dragon. The flames bit harmlessly at the dragon's fire-resistant hide. Just that little bit of fire-bending seemed to have exhausted the fire-user. "That's not normal fire," he gasped out. "I can't do that many more times."

"Annabeth," Percy said as the dragon tucked in its wings and dove down at them, "any ideas?"

Annabeth was frowning heavily, eyeing the dragon with interest. "I think... Piper, you know your stars, right?"