The Dragonborn's Disciple - Part 2
The entire garden fell silent.
No one breathed.
The Hesperides who had fled earlier were watching everything unfold from a safe distance, standing completely still, unable to comprehend what they had just witnessed.
More than a quarter of Ladon's heads now lay scattered across the ground.
Never, in thousands of years, had they seen anything like this.
The Hesperides' eyes settled on Percy, the same boy they had said just moments ago didn't look threatening.
Now...
He was fighting Ladon himself.
After all, there was a reason Hera had chosen the dragon to guard her sacred tree.
Then...
The dragon's entire body began trembling more and more violently.
Its bronze scales slammed against one another, producing a metallic thunder that echoed across the entire mountain.
One by one, the remaining heads stopped roaring separately.
Now they roared even more in unison than before, as though they were suddenly being controlled by a single mind.
The sound was even more deafening than before.
The air itself vibrated.
Percy frowned as he noticed the change.
"I... don't like that."
Ladon's enormous body, which until now had never strayed far from the tree, began moving as though it no longer cared in the slightest about its duty to guard the golden apple tree.
As though its only priority now was completely destroying the mortal who had endangered its life.
It charged toward Percy while its tail smashed into everything around it, causing huge chunks of the nearby mountainside to break loose and crash into the garden.
Dozens of golden apples fell to the ground.
So did several massive branches.
The guardian had completely lost its mind.
Well...
Several minds, actually.
It was like a living mountain charging straight at Percy.
"Watch out!" Zoë shouted, telling everyone to scatter.
Percy watched the monster turn into a runaway truck barreling straight toward him.
But something that massive left him very little room to dodge.
Then suddenly...
From the side, the beast's tail appeared beside him with a speed that even caught Percy by surprise.
It was moving even faster than the dragon's heads.
It slammed directly into his side.
Thankfully, he'd already cast Ebonyflesh.
But just like before, the protection couldn't completely withstand the impact.
Percy was launched through the air, tearing three trees out by the roots before crashing into an enormous boulder.
This time...
Percy felt every ounce of the impact surge through his body.
He couldn't stop himself from screaming.
"AAAH!"
He could feel bones breaking all throughout his body.
"Percy!" Bianca shouted as she immediately raised her bow and fired arrow after arrow, trying to draw Ladon's attention away as the dragon charged toward Percy, flattening the nearby forest in its path.
Zoë did exactly the same.
A silver rain streaked across the sky.
But this time...
Ladon didn't even look at them.
Even when several arrows pierced the eyes of different heads, every single one of them kept staring only at the spot where Percy had crashed.
"He's ignoring us..." Zoë whispered in disbelief.
Every head remained focused solely on Percy.
As though he were now the only enemy that needed to die.
And once he was dead...
The rest could be dealt with afterward.
Grover clenched his teeth, worried about Percy, but he didn't stop.
He raised his flute again.
This time he played as though he were pouring every last ounce of strength into it.
His face even became noticeably paler, as though he were giving up a huge portion of his own energy.
Five enormous wolves emerged from the mist and charged straight toward Ladon.
Even then...
The dragon didn't so much as glance at them.
As the wolves leaped toward its tail, trying to sink their fangs into its hardened scales...
With one casual sweep of its tail, as though swatting away flies, all five wolves vanished beneath several tons of bronze scales.
Grover, his face pale, didn't stop.
He summoned them again.
It even seemed as though every time he did, his body aged just a little, as if he were burning away his own vitality to turn it into mana for the summons.
Again.
And again.
He wasn't trying to hurt it.
He only wanted to buy one second.
Even Bianca's fingers were covered in her own blood as her bowstring had begun slicing into her skin.
Thalia continued raising her spear toward the sky, calling down lightning that, by now, seemed to have lost much of its power.
At the same time, Thalia's lips moved.
They began bleeding as she forced her own blood—the blood she shared with Zeus—to command the lightning of the world.
Even if it ended with her being burned alive by it.
Zoë clenched her fists.
But she didn't stop firing her bow either.
On Percy's side...
Still embedded in the massive boulder, he watched the enormous dragon charging toward him while trees toppled in its wake.
He tore himself free from the rock, even though his bones felt like little more than dust.
At the same time, he cast several healing spells over his own body.
Obviously...
They weren't enough to heal him completely.
But they were enough to let him keep moving.
With his back against the rock face, Ladon was already right in front of him, its heads about to attack once again.
But Percy activated another spell at the same time.
Cold spread through his entire body.
Then suddenly...
As though it had appeared from nowhere, a blizzard formed around Percy as its center before exploding outward.
Not only did the freezing wind and swirling ice completely block visibility...
It also began slowly freezing Ladon's body, trying to work its way through the dragon's incredibly tough scales.
Obviously...
It wasn't enough to seriously injure the dragon.
But it did seem to slow its attack just a little.
The veil of frost gave Percy room to move, since Ladon could no longer clearly distinguish him through the snow and ice.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The sound of several heads crashing down echoed through the storm as they tried to smash him... or swallow him whole.
Instead, they slammed into the massive boulder when they failed to find him, reducing it to enormous chunks of rubble.
Rubble Percy had to leap over to avoid.
"If ice isn't enough..."
Percy muttered, knowing that spell wasn't capable of dealing any real damage to Ladon's defenses.
Then came the flames.
Fire Cloak.
A ring of fire exploded around Percy, forcing several heads to pull back as scorching heat engulfed the entire garden, instantly shifting it from freezing cold to blazing heat.
That sudden change seemed to have some effect on Ladon.
Or on any living being thrown from one extreme to the other so abruptly.
Percy seized that opening and thrust both hands toward Ladon, who instinctively tried to retreat from the flames. They weren't dealing much damage, but they did seem to make its scales burn—especially after they'd just been frozen.
Dozens of ice spikes tore through the air.
Ice Spike.
Three struck where several of Ladon's necks joined together.
Another pierced one of the wounds on a head and, because of that, drove completely through it.
The monster roared once again as it raised its entire body.
It was the first time Percy had seen the creature's full form.
But this wasn't the time to stand there in awe.
Because Ladon looked ready to use its entire body to crush him completely.
"Damn it," Percy muttered, thinking as fast as he could. He immediately raised one hand and pointed at the ground beneath him.
A glowing crimson rune formed instantly.
Percy stepped on it without hesitation.
The rune exploded, launching Percy's body away with the force of the blast, carrying him out of the path of Ladon's crushing weight.
Though he also took part of the fire damage himself.
He hit the ground, rolled several times, then finally came to a stop, rising onto one knee while breathing harder and harder.
But he wasn't given a moment to recover.
Ladon's tail swept across the battlefield once again.
Percy instantly jumped backward, barely avoiding it, but he could feel every movement making his already injured muscles and bones ache even more, still far from fully healed.
"Just... a little longer..."
he murmured before dropping to one knee again.
He raised both hands toward Ladon...
But instead turned toward Thalia, pointing both hands at her as he watched her trying to gather the few remaining bolts of lightning still falling from the sky.
Then he unleashed a storm of lightning toward her.
For a moment, Thalia's eyes widened in surprise.
Then she watched the lightning slam into her spear, flooding it with energy.
"Put all of that power into one attack!" Percy shouted as he spent nearly all the magicka he had left to cast that Master-level spell.
Thalia felt the electricity making even her hands go numb.
But when the final bolt released from Percy's hands reached her spear, she pointed it toward Ladon, who was charging at Percy once again.
"TAKE THIS!" Thalia shouted, pouring everything she had into that attack.
Then...
As if her spear itself had become one gigantic bolt of lightning, carrying enough energy to burn the ozone itself...
It shot toward Ladon.
For the first time, the dragon couldn't keep all of its attention on Percy.
It turned to watch the lightning racing toward it.
Of course...
There wasn't much it could do anymore.
That attack was unbelievably fast.
It was as though Zeus's own lightning bolt had struck it head-on.
"KIAAAAAAA!"
The dragon's heads screamed in agony as its body was lifted once more, every one of them roaring toward the heavens.
Seeing that...
Percy couldn't help smiling.
That was enough.
Percy touched his throat for a brief moment and took a deep breath.
"JOOR... ZAH... FRUL!"
The Shout blasted toward Ladon, who was already suffering from the internal burns caused by Thalia's lightning.
The instant it struck the dragon's chest, Ladon was forced backward, collapsing onto its back while continuing to roar.
But...
The sound wasn't the same anymore.
Its enormous body suddenly seemed to lose its strength.
Even its heads began moving just a little slower as they tried to turn back toward him.
But Percy didn't waste that moment.
As several heads lunged at him again, he used the lingering force of the earlier explosion to propel himself high into the air above Ladon.
Both swords had already returned to his hands.
He descended straight toward the dragon's chest with both blades.
The few heads that tried to stop him moved far more slowly because of that sudden weakness.
Though that weakness already seemed to be fading, making them move faster and faster toward Percy.
But...
Not fast enough.
Percy fell.
Both swords pierced straight through Ladon's chest.
Especially the black blade, which erupted with the full force of its Chaos enchantment.
The instant it sank into the beast's body, it unleashed a violent mixture of lightning, fire, and ice inside it.
As though the dragon were being killed from the inside out.
"GROAAAAAAW!"
Ladon roared as unbearable pain tore through its body, thrashing violently.
But Percy refused to let go.
He gripped both swords with all his strength.
Ladon's movements grew slower.
And slower.
Its roar weakened little by little.
Until finally...
Only a few heads managed to move just enough to look toward Percy.
Then they all fell together.
Every last bit of strength left them.
As the dragon's colossal body slowly began turning to dust.
As though sending a monster of that magnitude back to Tartarus was a far more difficult process.
Percy pulled both swords free and remained standing atop the creature's chest, breathing heavily.
His throat burned from using so many Shouts one after another.
His clothes were in tatters.
His body was covered in wounds.
But he couldn't help feeling an overwhelming sense of pride as he looked down at the enormous dragon's corpse beneath his feet.
And as though that weren't enough...
It was as if a thousand drums were echoing from the heavens themselves.
A rhythm so ancient it seemed to shake even the soul.
Their thunderous cadence made the entire mountain tremble harder and harder.
Then a current of wind began swirling around Ladon's body.
The dragon started to glow.
And suddenly, all of that energy rushed toward Percy, surrounding him before flowing into his body, taking the spectral shape of an enormous dragon that completely enveloped his silhouette.
Grover and the others watched in silence, feeling those heavy drums resonating inside them as well, witnessing what looked like Percy's baptism.
It was completely different from what had happened when he defeated the Lernaean Hydra.
This time...
It was as though he had truly slain a real dragon.
And because of that...
He was receiving the true baptism of a Dragonborn.
Everyone present was witnessing the true birth of a Dragonborn.