The Dragonborn's Disciple - Part 2
Ladon's hundred heads roared once more.
The sound made the entire garden tremble.
It was already preparing to attack again, giving Percy no chance to rest.
But Percy moved first.
He lunged straight toward the beast.
One of the heads swooped down to intercept him.
Percy jumped onto it, using it as a pathway, and suddenly accelerated, sprinting along the dragon's neck.
Another head lunged at him with its jaws wide open.
Percy leaped forward.
That head ended up biting the very neck Percy had been running across, making the first one let out another furious cry of complaint at its own idiotic head.
Percy grabbed Riptide and spun it between his fingers into a familiar javelin-throwing stance.
Without waiting even a second, he hurled Riptide with all his strength at the next head rushing toward him.
"KIAAAA!"
The head screamed as Riptide pierced straight through its forehead, obviously causing it unbearable pain.
But not for long.
Because Percy made a massive leap while gripping his black sword with both hands.
The Chaos enchantments engraved into it blazed brilliantly, surrounding the entire blade.
Then...
Zap!
A slash of ice burst open along the sword's path, freezing Ladon's neck solid the instant it connected.
That head became completely motionless as frost covered its neck.
But only for a moment.
The ice cracked on its own and began falling to the ground.
Along with it...
Ladon's severed, half-frozen head.
Because it had been frozen solid, no blood came gushing out.
But the cries from the remaining heads, filled with pain, echoed once again.
"GROOOOOOOW!"
This time even the branches of the golden apple tree shook violently, making the apples rattle like bells.
One or two more golden apples dropped onto the grass.
Percy didn't waste the opportunity.
He jumped onto the severed, frozen neck and, using his black sword, drove it into the neck of another nearby head.
Then he let his body slide downward, carving a massive gash as he descended.
But before reaching the ground, he planted both feet against Ladon's neck and kicked himself backward.
Because Ladon, consumed by pain and rage, had begun thrashing all of its remaining heads wildly, to the point that three enormous jaws crashed into one another while Percy weaved between the crossing necks in midair.
Still...
One of the heads had enough sense left to see where Percy was about to land.
So it positioned itself directly beneath him, waiting for him to fall straight into its mouth.
Percy was about to make his move.
But before he could...
A black arrow tore through the air and pierced that head's eye, leaving it no choice but to recoil.
Percy glanced over and saw Bianca holding her bow, her hands still trembling from fear.
Even so, she was already nocking another arrow to help him.
Percy couldn't help giving her a small smile.
Grover had also pulled out his magical flutes, ready to summon spectral beasts and command the surrounding plants.
If he even could...
Considering this was someone else's garden.
"He's insane," Thalia couldn't help saying.
But excitement was beginning to rise inside her chest as electricity gathered around her spear, filling her with an overwhelming urge to join a battle this epic.
"Yeah," Zoë replied, unable to take her eyes off the fight.
"But..."
"He's actually doing it."
There was a strange emotion in her voice as she watched this young boy accomplish something a legendary hero had failed to do long ago.
Zoë's gaze drifted toward Riptide, which Percy was using as a thrown weapon.
A mixture of emotions flickered across her eyes.
But like everyone else...
She couldn't just stand there.
She immediately drew the bow from her back.
For a brief moment, she hesitated.
Because if they truly defeated Ladon...
She would be helping defeat the creature that had guarded the garden that had once been her home.
But just as one of her sisters had said...
She was now one of Artemis's Hunters.
And what Hunter would stand by while such magnificent prey stood before her?
Especially when defeating Ladon was necessary to save Artemis...
The goddess who had saved her.
So be it.
Zoë took one of her silver arrows and nocked it, aiming toward the nearest heads.
In a single second, her hand moved so quickly that at least ten arrows shot out in flashes of silver before striking directly into the dragons' eyes.
Bianca noticed Zoë's strategy and immediately did the same.
Although, obviously...
She didn't have Zoë's speed or her accuracy.
She nocked arrow after arrow and, using the bow Miraak himself had given her, began firing with all the seriousness she could muster.
The great bear summoned by Grover's enchanted flute charged straight toward Ladon.
Compared to everything else, though, it looked tiny.
And in the middle of Ladon's frenzy and pain, it was crushed beneath one casual stomp.
But Grover didn't stop there.
He kept playing his flute.
Huge wolves began appearing one after another.
Every time one charged at Ladon, trying to inflict even the slightest bit of damage, and was destroyed...
Grover simply summoned another without stopping.
Even enough ants could bring down an elephant.
Unable to hold back that growing excitement, Thalia raised her spear toward the sky, which now seemed closer than before thanks to them being almost at the mountain's summit.
The clouds swirling around the mountain began striking her spear with dozens of small bolts of lightning, charging it even further.
Thalia pointed it at Ladon, trying to imitate the lightning spell Percy had used earlier.
But instead of one massive bolt, dozens of smaller lightning strikes began crashing into the dragon's heads.
They didn't deal nearly as much damage or knock it back like Percy's spell had...
But they certainly annoyed it.
Especially now that it could feel the pain of its two completely destroyed heads.
The dragon began moving even more aggressively.
And although the damage her companions were dealing was truly minimal, at least a dozen heads or more were occupied dealing with them.
And that was enough.
Because fighting a hundred heads at once was a challenge even for Percy.
But just as he was thinking that...
Percy realized too late that a gigantic tail had appeared from his right.
He didn't have time to dodge.
"Ebonyflesh."
Alteration magic covered his body barely a second before the impact.
The tail struck him head-on.
The dark protection shattered like glass.
Percy was launched through the air and slammed into the trunk of the golden apple tree with so much force that several apples shook loose among the branches.
This time...
Percy truly felt the pain.
The air was driven from his lungs.
Besides...
He was already using every ounce of strength he had just to fight this thing.
And he'd only managed to take down two of its heads.
Percy looked toward his friends, who were still keeping several heads busy to give him some breathing room.
His gaze hardened with determination as he drew in a deep breath.
"I still haven't used this one... let's see..."
Ladon didn't give him time to finish.
Dozens of heads lunged at him from every direction.
Percy opened his mouth.
"Tiid..."
The air changed.
"Klo..."
Everything became just a little slower.
"Ul."
And with that final word...
Percy watched as Ladon's heads, which had been hurtling toward him only an instant before, now moved as though they were pushing through thick water.
Leaves drifting from the trees hung suspended in the air.
The blood trickling down Percy's forehead fell in slow, gleaming drops.
Percy smiled faintly.
His own body felt as though it were moving through mud...
Yet at the same time, his mind was still working at incredible speed.
And he didn't waste a single second.
His eyes swept across everything.
As if examining each of the hundred heads.
His friends unleashing their attacks against the others.
Then, after what felt like one or two seconds...
He moved.
He slipped between two open jaws.
Jumped across a massive tongue.
Drove the black sword into one neck as he spun, using the momentum to launch himself toward another head.
Riptide slashed through an eye.
The black sword ripped open a throat.
Then another.
Then another.
He leaped from neck to neck as though he were fighting underwater.
Every strike was brutal.
Precise.
Merciless.
He could see the enchantment within the black blade slowly erupting from the center of every wound before spreading through the dragon's heads.
And although...
For Percy, it felt like several minutes had passed...
When time returned to normal, several of Ladon's heads roared all at once.
Dozens of them began falling at full speed, raining from the sky like a storm of severed heads.
Even Thalia and the others froze as they watched Percy tear off multiple heads in an instant while grievously wounding many more at the same time.
Ladon's remaining heads roared together in agony, feeling the loss of more than twenty heads and another dozen that had been horribly wounded.
"KIAAAAAAA! GROWWWWW!"
The deafening roars were so violent that everyone had to cover their ears, feeling as though their eardrums were about to burst.
At the same time, a horrible stench poured from Ladon's mouths.
Percy landed in the middle of the grass, breathing heavily as he covered his ears as well, staring at the creature.
Although he had severed many heads...
It had taken a toll on his body to move inside that half-frozen time.
His muscles burned as though he had just pushed through the most exhausting workout imaginable.
"There are still plenty left..."
he muttered as he looked at the creature.
But he no longer saw it as an impossible beast to defeat.
Even that strange feeling he'd experienced before—the one that had driven him to challenge Ladon in the first place—seemed to be giving him more and more strength.