Tangled Legacies: A KOTLC and PJO Crossover Story

The Venom Fountain Attacks Me: Chapter Nineteen: Annabeth's POV

A tingling sensation rippled through my body, from my toes to my head. It felt like needles stabbing me. At my toes, it felt like daggers. A sharp crack next to my ear woke me from my restless dreams. It was the same bloody scenes over and over: a raging battle. Friends and family lying sprawled on the ground, bruised and bloody. The world destroyed by the war. One of my closest friends. Dead.

The last image was blurry and indistinct, but I could clearly gauge the meaning of it.

My eyes slowly opened, blinking in the bright lights. The man- Elwin- was standing over me. Percy was sitting on the other side of the room with a blond girl- Sophie- and Fitz and Biana were sitting on the cot next to me.

My eyes were drawn to a curtained-off corner of the room. All of the elves were studiously ignoring it. I wondered what it was, and why they all seemed so sad in this room.

I tried to speak, but my throat was dry and parched. Elwin was flashing balls of light around different parts of my body and muttering to himself. I caught some of his words- Faded. Broken? Poison? He was some kind of doctor, that was for sure. And he was an elf. So my life was in the hands of a crazy elvin light-making, goggle-wearing doctor who I barely knew. Not exactly reassuring, especially considering the fact that in my current condition, I couldn't get up and run away. I tried to shut down the negative thoughts filling my brain, but I was too tired. I let the man pour foul-tasting medicine into my mouth.

He moved the sheet off my bandaged arm. The filthy dressings had been changed and it didn't sting as much as it had, but the injury still throbbed like I was being hit by a hammer over and over. I'd gotten a deep gash while fighting a huge hybrid monster in Los Angeles, before I knew about the elves. Now I could bet that the thing was some sort of elvin monstrosity.


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The field looked empty and ordinary, but I knew anything could be lurking in the corn plants. they were taller than I was and closely planted. The beast had killed the farmer who owned the field and torched the farmhouse near the plot. I suspected the monster was hiding somewhere in the corn, waiting to pounce of unsuspecting passersby.

A low growl reverberated through the surrounding neighborhood. The cornstalks rustled toward the center of the plants. A spiked back breached the surface of the stalks, and I tensed. A swath of corn went up in flames and a deafening ROOOOAR drowned out the sounds of nearby traffic.

"di immortales," I muttered. This thing must be huge! And it could breathe fire. I drew my bronze knife from my belt and slipped into the maze of stalks. I crept toward the heat and smoke where the thing was most likely hiding. I also followed the sound of the beast snarling and slobbering.

I caught a glimpse of movement and instinctively shouted, "HEY!"

It turned around and roared. Its breath was like rotten eggs and spoiled meat. I shuddered at the thought of this thing eating a full-grown man and then taking the man's property for its stomping ground.

"OVER HERE! COME EAT ME!" I taunted. It had started to make its way to the residential zone behind the farm, and I could hear kids laughing and yelling from that direction. I didn't want the beast to end the lives of innocent children. Better for me to die trying to kill it than it destroying an unsuspecting suburb. It suddenly lunged at me. The only thing that kept him from ripping me to shreds with his long, yellow fangs, which were dripping with venom, was my quick reflexes. Camp Half-Blood's rigorous training courses were definitely worth it. I dodged the monster's huge paw and rolled under its scaly belly, coming up behind the monster.

Its tail was like a scorpion's, with a foot-long barb on the end, dripping with venom that sizzled when it splattered the dusty, smoldering ground. Before it could whip me with its spikey tail, I sunk my dagger into its hip, just above the joint. It roared, and I waited for it to disintegrate. When it was clear that I had just made it mad, I quickly yanked the knife out of the beast's scaly skin. But some monsters took more damage to defeat, so I drove my dagger hilt-deep into the monster's neck. It growled and thrashed, trying to get my weapon out of its scaly hide. This was no Greek demon. It was something... Other. I closed my fingers around the hilt of my dagger, still embedded in the thing's flesh. I swung my leg up and planted my foot on the knife's blade, then used my position to swing the other leg onto the neck of the creature. Then I pulled the dagger out of the creature's shoulder.

I slashed and stabbed at its head, but it just continued to try to shake me off. It finally succeeded, throwing me inches from a smoldering heap of fallen cornstalks. I rolled away from the fire, but, unfortunately, that was also the direction in which the thing was crouching, waiting for me to stumble into its clutches. It swiped at me and for a moment, I thought it had missed.

But a few seconds later, pain flared in my arm. A long, deep gash ran from my shoulder to halfway down my forearm. Blood oozed from the cut, making me dizzy. I lay on the ground, unable to stand, and suddenly heard the telltale whoosh of the beast lunging, coming in for the kill.

I stabbed blindly, bracing for impact. But it never happened. I slowly opened my eyes and saw the monster struggling to escape the thick noose that now encircled his neck.

A blond, rugged-looking man was pulling at the end of the rope, beads of sweat rolling down his face. A mailman stopped his truck, horrified at the battle going on in the cornfield. The blond man yelled something in a strange language; not Greek or Latin, and definitely not English. When the delivery guy looked confused, the blond man tried again, this time in halting English:

"Call your authorities!" He shouted, then he held a slender gold stick up above his head. I blinked and he was gone. the delivery guy dialed his cell phone in a daze and spoke with the operator at the other end. Then he drove away as fast as he could. (Which wasn't very fast, considering he was in a mail truck.)

The rest went by in a blur: the fire trucks and ambulances and a police car with sirens blaring, the paramedics lifting me onto a stretcher.

After I'd spent a day or so in the hospital, I realized that even though I was still weak and in pain, despite the fact that I was dirty and exhausted and needed more medical treatment, I needed to get to Percy. So I ran away from the hospital, catching a train to San Diego, then stopped at a McDonald's (hey, I hadn't eaten in days and only had a few dollars) and ate. The food was terrible. I hadn't even been in San Diego for a day before I bought train tickets to Phoenix, Arizona. I traveled to New York that way, using my emergency credit card to buy tickets and meals.
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I wasn't any stronger, despite being in the elvin doctor place for a few days now. Elwin was muttering under his breath about what could possibly be wrong with me.