Chapter 80: Don't hate Percy, hate the Arena

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You guys wanted Percy to kick ass? Well here's your chappie! Also no spellcheck.

...

(Magnus POV)

I told my friends I did not know how to fight, especially without a cruise control sword. They wouldn't listen. Instead they wondered what kind of way Percy and I would die.

"Dismemberment." Halfborn speculated.

"Guys, I'm allergic to dying." I protested nervously but they just led me to the combat area.

Percy took out a silver pen from his pocket. I frowned, "A pen?"

He gave me a smug smile and uncapped it. The pen grew longer and in half a second, he held a shimmering bronze sword with a double-edged blade.

"Wow!" I said with awe, "You have a pen sword?"

"That's stupid!" Mallory said but I detected a flint of admiration in her voice . Mallory herself had a pair of serrated knives.

"Watch this." Percy said and he waved his right hand. Water began pouring out of his hand, forming the shape of a sword in the air. First it was floating water but it began to freeze.

Slowly the water turned into ice.

"Awesome isn't it?" Percy asked, his lion, which I learned was named Rebel, roared in an agreement.

"So how'd you get a lion?" I asked. I missed the conversation at breakfast, due to me being later.

He shrugged, "He's a Nemean lion, his skin is impenetrable."

"Really?"

Rebel stared at me, challenging me to try it.

I swallowed. I felt heavily under armed. Maybe I could ask my aunt Freya for her cats.

T.J. fastened his bayonet to his rifle and Halfborn stripped down to nothing but his leggings, though he did sport a pair of vicious-looking double-bladed axes. Standing next to anyone else, Halfborn would've looked massive. Next to X, he looked like a toddler … with a beard, abs and axes.

I looked at my hotel sword, "So how do I get an awesome weapon?"

Halfborn laughed, "Magnus, if you want more than the basic equipment, you'll have to capture it or trade for it. The hotel armouries take red gold, or they work on a barter system."

We entered the arena and my jaw dropped.

The battlefield was so huge I couldn't process what I was seeing.

Back in the good old days when I was a street kid, I used to sleep on rooftops in the summertime. I could see the entire cityscape of Boston from Fenway Park to Bunker Hill. Valhalla's battlefield was bigger than that. It offered maybe three square miles of interesting places to die, all contained within the hotel like an interior courtyard.

On all four sides rose the walls of the building – cliffs of white marble and gold railed balconies, some hung with banners, some decorated with shields, some fitted with catapults.

The upper floors seemed to dissolve in the hazy glow of the sky, as blank white as a fluorescent light. In the centre of the field loomed a few craggy hills. Clumps of forest marbled the landscape.

The outer rim was mostly rolling pastures, with a river as wide as the Charles snaking through. Several villages dotted the riverbank, maybe for those who preferred their warfare urban. From hundreds of doors in the walls around the field, battalions of warriors were streaming in, their weapons and armour glinting in the harsh light.

Some einherjar wore full plate mail like medieval knights. Others wore chainmail shirts, breeches and combat boots. A few sported camo fatigues and AK-47s.

One guy wore nothing but a pair of Speedos. He'd painted himself blue and was armed only with a baseball bat. Across his chest were the words COME AT ME, BRO.

"This is madness." Percy stated and I nodded.

X cracked his knuckles and grinned, "Guns don't matter. Fighting does."

Percy gave him a skeptical look, "They have automatic firearms, we won't be able to reach them without getting shot."

T.J. Showed Percy his bajonete. "Those guys out there with he assault rifles? That's all flash and noise. They're the least dangerous people on the field. But this bayonet? It's bone steel, a gift from my father. Bone steel works just fine."

"Bonesteel?" Percy wondered.

"Stop talking and start fighting!" Mallory yelled and she threw her knife, which sank into a Einherji's back. He fell dead to the ground.

"Who are we fighting?" I asked, trying to see if some Einherji had team shirts or something. Maybe it was boys against girls.

"Everyone!" Halfborn grinned.

Percy paled, "Do we have a plan?"

Halfborn managed to make his grin even wider, "Stay with us and slaughter as many of them as possible."

"That's not exactly a plan," Percy mentioned, "And how do we win?"

"It does sound like a really bad plan!" I agreed, though it sounded a bit like a yelp.

Halfborn tilted his head. "Why would I need have a plan?"F

From a thousand different balconies, horns blasted.

The einherjar charged into battle.

Until that morning, I'd never understood the term bloodbath.

Within a few minutes, we were literally slipping in the stuff. We'd just stepped onto the field when an axe flew out of nowhere and was about to hit Percy right in the chest but it was deflected by Percy's ice shield.

Halfway through he had dropped the ice sword and decided to fight with only one sword and shield.

His shield automatically detached itself from his arm and flew to his hand, he spun around and threw the shield at the axe thrower. He fell to his knees, laughing. "Wow!"

Then he collapsed, dead.

The shield stopped mid air and flew back to Percy's arm.

"That guy has a shield with cruise control," I murmured but no one seemed to care about that fact in the heat of battle.

Percy and Halfborn were waded through the einherjar like they were taking a stroll through the park.

Percy gracefully swirled around like a deadly tornado, rolling, jumping. Stuck in a deadly dance. Halfborn took a simpler approach and just waded through enemies, his axes whirling, chopping off heads and limbs until he looked like he'd been playing paintball with only red paint.

Percy's lion was running around our small group, bitting and chomping on the dead bodies of Einherjar. It was disgusting, yet the lion was having a big time.

It was not long before we attracted a lot of attention, Einherjar pointed at us and waved at their cammerades to join in killing the newbies.

None of my friends seemed to be concerned about that.

T.J. sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while he stabbed and parried with his bayonet.

X smashed through one group after another. A dozen arrows now stuck out of his back like porcupine quills, but they didn't seem to bother him. Every time his fist connected, an einherji turned two-dimensional.

I? I tried to stick around the indestructible lion, figuring it was a human-I mean animal shield.

I tried to stab someone a few times, one time I stabbed someone in his head but then my sword got stuck inside it.

I tried to pull it out, but instead I only dragged a dead Einherji with me. Finally Rebel devoured it and my sword was freed.

"Thanks." I muttered but the Lion was already somewhere else which distracted me from a incoming spear.

The pain bit into my thigh. Pain flared all the way up to my neck. Mallory cut the spear thrower down.

"Come on, Chase, keep moving! You'll get used to the pain after a while."

"Aspirin!" I yelled back, but she had already chosen someone else to yell at.

I stumbled towards our small group, not wanting to stay behind. I held my hand on my wound, trying to stop my guts taking a trip outside.

T.J. jabbed his bayonet through the faceplate of a medieval knight.

"Let's take that hill!"

He pointed to a nearby ridge at the edge of the woods.

"Why?" I yelled.

"Because it's a hill!" He yelled excitedly.

"He loves taking hills," Mallory grumbled. "It's a Civil War thing."

We waded through the battle, heading for the high ground. My thigh still hurt, but the bleeding had stopped. Was that normal?

T.J. raised his rifle. He yelled 'Charge!' just as a javelin ran him through from behind.

"T.J!" Percy yelled, Mallory pulled him away, "come one newbie, let's take the hill!"

We ran up the hill, hacking and slashing everything that moved. Well the others. I had the opportunity to stab a girl in the back but I didn't do it. I couldn't.

More javelins sailed over my head.

"You guys do this every day?" I demanded. "No. Thursdays are dragons."

"But-"

"Hey, Magnus, the whole point is to get used to the horrors of battle. You think this is bad? Wait until we actually have to fight at Ragnarok."

We reached the edge of the woods.

X and Halfborn guarded our backs, while Percy and Mallory took the front.

The enemies were a horde now. All the scattered groups within sight had stopped fighting one another and were after us. Yelling things like, "Greek!"

"Freykid!"

"Water in my nose!"

Mallory noticed my horrified expression, "They are after us now. You two are the new kids."

She grunted, "Luckily one of you know how to fight."

We climbed the hill, weaving from tree to tree for cover. Halfborn threw himself into a group of twenty guys who were following us. He destroyed them all. He came up laughing, an insane light in his eyes. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds. A dagger stuck out of his chest, right over his heart.

"How is he not dead yet?" I asked.

"He's a berserker." Mallory glanced back, her expression a mix of disdain and exasperation and something else … admiration?

'That idiot will keep fighting until he is literally hacked to pieces.' Something clicked in my head. Mallory liked Halfborn. You don't call somebody an idiot that many times unless you're really into them. Under different circumstances, I might have teased her, but while she was distracted there was a wet thwack. An arrow sprouted from her neck.

"Damit!" she murmured while glaring at me.

She collapsed.

I knelt at her side, putting my hand on her neck. I could feel the life seeping out of her. I could sense the severed artery, the fading heartbeat, all the damage that had to be mended. My fingers seemed to grow warmer. If I had a little more time –

"Look out!" shouted X.

I raised my sword, I accidently parried another sword. I pushed back, knocking the attacker downhill.

My arms ached. My head was throbbing, but somehow I got to my feet. Halfborn was forty yards away, surrounded by a mob of warriors all jabbing him with spears, shooting him full of arrows. Somehow he kept fighting, but even he wouldn't be able to stand much longer. X ripped a guy's AK-47 out of his hands and smacked him over the head with it.

"Go, Magnus Beantown," said the half-troll. "Take the crest for floor nineteen!"

Percy dragged me away and finally we reached the top of the hill. I leaned back against a tree trunk while Percy shot a column of fire downhill, burning several Einherjar.

Wait, fire?

An arrow hit my shoulder, pinning me to the tree.

The pain almost made me blackout, but I snapped the shaft and pulled myself free.

The bleeding stopped instantly. I felt the wound closing as if somebody had filled it with hot wax.

A shadow passed over me – something large and dark hurtling from the sky. It took me a millisecond to realize it was a boulder, probably shot from a balcony catapult. It took me another millisecond to realize where it would land.

Too late. Before I could shout a warning to X the half-troll and Rebel the lion along with a dozen other einherjar disappeared under a twenty-ton chunk of limestone, the side of which was painted: WITH LOVE FROM FLOOR 63.

"NOOO!" Percy yelled but it was too late.

A hundred warriors stared at the rock. Leaves and broken twigs fluttered around them. Then the einherjar all turned towards us, the last two survivors of floor 19.

The wrongly chosen Einherjar.

Another arrow hit me in the chest. I screamed, more in rage than in pain, and pulled it out. "Wow," one of the Vikings commented. "He's a fast healer."

"Try a spear," someone suggested.

"Try two spears."

They spoke as if I wasn't worth addressing – as if I were a cornered animal they could experiment with. Twenty or thirty einherjar raised their weapons. Knowing that my only allie, Percy, was stuck in a fight with three heavily armored einherji.

The anger inside me exploded. I shouted, expelling energy like the shock wave from a bomb. Bowstrings snapped. Swords fell out of their owners' hands. Spears and guns and axes went flying into the trees. As quickly as it started, the surge of power shut off. All around me, a hundred einherjar had been stripped of their weapons.

Percy's shield flew out of his hand along with his sword and somehow even managed to kill a couple Einherjar before falling useless to the ground.

The blue-painted guy stood in the front row, his baseball bat at his feet. He stared at me in shock. "What just happened?"

Percy stared at me with confusion, and I just realized I had disarmed him as well.

The warrior next to him had an eye patch and red leather armour decorated with silver curlicues. Cautiously, he crouched and retrieved his fallen axe.

"Alf seidr," said Eye Patch. "Nicely done, son of Frey. I haven't seen a trick like that in centuries. But bone steel is better."

My eyes crossed as his axe blade spun towards my face. Then everything went dark.

...

(Lyssa POV)

"O." I murmured as all the Einherjar pointed their weapons at Percy.

He began to breathe loudly, exhaling everytime like he was swallowing sand. He stared at Magnus's body with shock in his eyes.

Then his eyes began changing color, rapidly shifting between gold, black, pink and all the other colors the rainbow has and even a few colors I didn't knew that existed. Like Oreo red.

Then I remembered something nyx had told me.

Something that happened two times before and usually got Percy in trouble, from which I was supposed to protect him.

I waved my hand and the Percy Manual mom gave me appeared in my hand, I opened the manual and went to the content page, What to do when: Percy is dying, Percy kissing other girls, Percy meeting Primordials, Percy blows up things, Percy making a full mental connection with Chaos Aha!

I went to page 65 and read the instructions, Percy's emotions blah blah blah. Chaos memories blah blah blah.

"Oh!" I called out when I found the solution.

If Percy acess Chaos's full potential knock him out with an object. Do not maim him or I'll hang you above the void!

I closed the manuel and glanced at Percy again, "One big knock to the head!"

All I had to do was take a physical form and kick him in the nuts, I mean head.

Then I noticed the damage Percy was doing and I was frozen in admiration.

As Percy was glaring at the Einherjar the earth began to shake violently.

Grass began to grow up the legs of the nearby Einherjar and tried to strangle them.

Then an arrow pierced into Percy's arm, he screamed in pain, a loud thunderous scream that went through the entire battlefield, stopping everything.

Percy closed his mouth but the screaming didn't stop.

Somewhere in the distance I saw the river sprung to life and a giant humanoid figure made of water stepped out of it. It had no defining features except for a sword made of water.

The river screamed and drained the entire area, water spikes came out of the water and killed a several dozen Einherji.

The river man, thingy, marched forward and swung his gigantic river sword. I couldn't not exactly determine the size of the thing, as it was to far away, but I saw it was killing Einherjar every second.

Around Percy the trees began to copy his scream, the trees trunk slowly moved around and hit the unfortunate Einherjar like it was a baseball bat. The roots of the trees began to grow like it was on steroids. Everywhere tree roots sprang out of the ground and began tearing large groups of Einherjar apart.

It was beautiful, I took a few selfies with Percy before I went to investigate what was going on. I should probably knock him out but personally I wanted to investigate this.

Besides, there was no way mom would ever find out about this.

I wondered why Percy was reacting so heavily, sure a few of his friends died along with his cat but that shouldn't have affected him that much.

Being the Goddess of Madness I could take a small peak into Percy's sanity and I found out that this was not just the emotion he felt today.

Nope.

It was all the build up frustration from the last few months, the death of Despina and Bianca. His own dead and the troubles it gave his family and friends.

Satisfied I concluded that this was just the final straw.

I probably should knock him out….but I wanted to see this. Besides if Percy went crazy (Like me) I could always knock him out later.

And I had to made a few extra power seals between Percy and Chaos.

I summoned Doritos and resumed the Percy show.

The Valhalla ravens, who were used to send messages and for scouting, were now squeaking and making other terrifying bird sounds as well.

The flew down at the battlefield and began to pick on Einherjar and tore their flesh apart.

The most funny thing however were the sneezes.

At random times a Einheri sneezed and then their head blew up!

Amazing! Seriously, Percy is so awesome.

From all sides the Einherji were attacked by the battle arena itself, the grass and trees taking them out like ants.

One of the smarter Einherji had set the forest on fire, but that didn't work. Instead the flames rose higher and spread themselves across the battlefield burning a dozen more of those punnie Einherjar.

I was about to take another selfie when a flash appeared next to Percy.

It was the...what was her name again? Conchilla? Gorila? Gunilla!

Her blue eyes were wide and filled with panic.

"Stop Percy!" she screamed and she shook his body a few times but Percy was stuck in his trance like state. He kept glaring at the distant Einherji.

Tears were streaming down Gunilla's face, "Stop! You're destroying Valhalla."

Personally I didn't care about Valhalla. Percy did not seem to care either.

"Sorry for this!" Gunnila murmured and in her hand a flaming spear appeared.

She spun the spear until she held the blunt side of it and slammed hit Percy right in the head.

"Wow." I murmured as Percy fell to the ground.

Once Percy collapsed, and presumably knocked out, the craziness stopped. The river turned normal again and the flames quenched.

The Ravens and plants were acting like usual and the Einherji stopped having deadly sneezes.

Gunilla gave Percy a worried look before she grabbed him, bridesmaid style, and carried him away.