I OWN NOTHING. *sob*

Chapter 2

"Archers!"

Percy felt uneasy, restless.

Annabeth's steady voice rang out in the chaos, transforming them from kids into trained soldiers. Even in the most intense battles, it never wavered, yet another of the many things he admired about her. It was filled with a confidence that, for some reason, Percy couldn't match.

"Stand ready!" Something was wrong. Where was the adrenaline? Where was the senseless buzz as his curse sent waves of power through his tense body? Where was…where was Chiron?

Annabeth shouted out some more orders, shaping the campers into some formation or the other, but Percy couldn't listen to her. Apprehension was less than a murmur, barely a whisper in his heart, but it was there, and he could hear it.

One of the more memorial bits of the Titan War was that Kronos didn't just include monsters in his forces. Monsters, Percy could deal with. But then there was fighting his own distant family. Demigods who had fallen in with the dark side, after having their parent's backs turned on them one time too many, were just as common as beasts. They were the enemy, sure-but they were also his cousins and nieces and nephews. During that battle, some of the campers had chosen to fight these turned half-bloods as if they were nothing but monsters, monsters that lay dead on the street rather than blowing back to Tartarus. Percy had chosen not to.

But this time, it wasn't his respect for human life that made him reluctant to fight the dragon and Rider. He, the invincible Percy Jackson, was afraid. The pair stirred an ancient fear deep within him, almost like the way Ares inspired anger and Hades made you want to take a nice little dirt-nap. The guy looked like a god, too, his regal armor gleaming along with the dazzling chips of sapphire that covered his dragon, as she rained down fire from the sky. But the quiet aura of power that they radiated wasn't godly or Titanic in nature. It was older than even the gods, his mind seemed to be telling him, and for some reason the uncertain idea filled him with cold fear. Percy wasn't exactly a real expert on auras, but somehow he knew.

Stop, he wanted to tell Annabeth and the others, but the words came out as a sort of croak that was drowned out by the buzz of adrenaline. It was too late, anyway. Her clear voice—"Fire!"—was out before he could do anything, accompanied by the twang of bows firing.

Percy didn't get to see what happened next. Before half the bows had even streaked ten feet up in the air, his head hit the grass with a soft thump. He didn't hear the worried voices of the campers around him, or Annabeth's scream. It felt like glass breaking. He could feel the edges cutting into his mind, hear it magnified to the point of pain, and his vision broke away like shards of glass, blurred color shattering into darkness.

Eragon hurled his mind into the army as if it were a spear.

He didn't know where he was, had only the faintest recollections of where he had been just a moment ago. For a brief, terrifying moment, he hadn't known who he was. His head throbbed and his energy, and thus his magic, was painfully limited.

A vague hole in his consciousness made him freeze in shock—until Saphira's familiar mind, as comforting and thoughtless as a hand being held, clicked into place by his, and he had a moment to register her reassuring presence under him. The wind whipped his disheveled mahogany hair about his almost feline face as he looked over Saphira's side. A hundred or so feet under him, his abnormally sharp sight put a swarm of unusually armed soldiers in sharp relief.

Saphira-!

I see them, little one.

Empire?

But even as he shared the automatic suspicion, he shook his head. The Empire's standard and black-and-red garb was absent, and the armor of the soldiers was unnervingly foreign. Their weapon style included the usual swords, pikes, maces, spears (even hammers—Roran was not alone), et cetera, but their make and substance was…strange. The architecture struck him as unfamiliar, as well. And over there, blended in with the rest of the warriors, were those…?

Female warriors? Eragon asked in bewilderment. Of course, elves let their women fight alongside the men (Arya had taught him that the hard way), but these were humans, and humans did nothing of the sort. Where in Alagaesia are we?

Are we even in Alagaesia? Saphira wondered.

Let's find out…

And so it came to be that Eragon dove towards the ground, hurtling into the first mind he reached for its information. Not physically, of course; with the unfamiliar territory, Eragon forwent his usual practice of opening his mind and weaving through the thoughts of others, which left him vulnerable to mental assault, and thus had to manually dive-bomb the mind of the first stranger he came across.

He wasn't completely able to understand what occurred next, although he spent a few moments in the future puzzling it out. He met a resistance as he hit the mind, but somehow the force of his attack met the shield, slowed briefly, then crashed straight through it. Before the break, he was able to grasp that the shield had been solid and encompassed the entire mind of his victim. Usually, a mage searched for a chink in their opponent's mental armor, or a small spot of weakness, or perhaps a way to play around with some of the stray tendrils of thought that drifted just outside the barrier. However, this wall had been near perfect, and by all rights Eragon's mental dive should have ended with him slamming his mental face into a mental brick wall. Instead, he blew right through it. It was a bit like running into a door, only to realize it was a curtain.

Nonetheless, he was in. Briskly, with the practiced air of someone who was quite used to intruding upon complete strangers' thoughts (which, of course, he was) he grabbed the most important-seeming ribbon of thought. When that lacked the information he wanted, he advanced to the next, and so on. Perseus Jackson. Son of…Poseidon? USA, Long Island, New York, Manhattan…

It was no use; none of it made sense to him, or even sounded familiar. The he came across something else. It wasn't a thought; rather, it was another shield. Eragon was reminded of a trinket he had seen in Ellesmera, of a box inside of a box, which, in turn, was inside of a box. The new barrier was more like what Eragon was accustomed to dealing with, except in what seemed to be the shape of a human body. He sensed, rather than saw, a small gap, set directly in the center of humanoid figure's back, and lunged forward.

It felt like glass breaking. He could feel the edges cutting into his mind, hear it magnified to the point of pain, and his vision broke away like shards of glass, blurred color shattering into darkness.

At the same time Annabeth screamed Percy's name, Saphira cried, Eragon!

Saphira almost failed to notice the faint whistle of arrows, but when she did, it was too late. In the confusion, dragon and Rider had failed to notice how weak their wards were. Most of the arrows swerved at the barriers or shattered against her scales, but two pierced either wing, and she was down.

A/N: I wrote this entire thing on my iPod...then retyped it. My fingers hurt.

Yeah, not so fond of this chapter...very little of either Percy or Eragon's characters show in the writing style. Ah, well-I've got the rest of the story for that.

For those of you who suggested Eragon or Percy fainti-I mean, blacking out (though why you would want that I haven't the slightest idea), I hope you liked that bit. Just keep in mind that I won't always be able to do what you guys suggest, because I do have a plotline set.

Sincere thanks to anyone who sent a nice review. You're the ones motivating me to write. :) Again, anyone with typos to report, advice, or if you just want to say you like the fic, I will be eternally grateful for any reviews I can get. And, yes, that includes flames. Hopefully, the next chapter won't take months to post.