Since the weather is allowing it this time, Jenn’s lesson is held at the amphitheatre again. She’d originally planned it to be up closer be Peleus or at the dining pavilion…. But that was during her initial plan to have a singular lesson on both drakons and dragons. Unfortunately, while Jenn would have been happy to have them rolled into one and go on and on about what she researched in one go, she’s fairly sure it wouldn’t be well received by others because of how long the notes were getting.

So for today, it’s just drakons, and dragons will be covered in her next lesson. She’s set up the blackboard on the amphitheater’s stone stage. A table has been drawn up:

“So today and in the next lesson, I don’t have a date for it it, we’re covering drakons and dragons - no dungeons - and the differences between them,” Jenn begins, once everyone seems to have found a spot to sit. “They’re both big reptilian monsters with incredible tough hides, and the word ‘dragon’ is derived from ‘drakon’, which in turn roughly means ‘serpent’, but they are separate things, and there are even different species or subspecies… if such terms can be applied to monsters.”

Jenn’s not really sure if they do. Given how many monsters were created by deities, they sort of fall outside of typical taxonomical family trees… but then again, various animals are also credited to the gods. Her brow creases in a deep frown as these thoughts from when she was studying resurface, but she continues with the lesson.

“There are also dracaenae, partially reptilian women, but they’ll be a separate lesson at some point, I might cover them in June. So, since the word drakon essentially means dragon in Ancient Greek, but we use them as separate words in English, there’s a bit of confusion about exactly which one is being referred to in some of what I read, and when you consider that the stories got spread around a while before being written down it all gets a bit muddled. But I’ve done my best here to try and sort them out.

“Today, it’s just drakons.” She begins pacing a bit beside the board. “Drakons have existed for much longer than dragons, and they have incredibly long lifespans - the fact that they’re really hard to kill helps, obviously, but they still don’t die of senescence quickly. Senescence, that’s ageing but way more fun to say. They‘re serpentine in form, but may still have legs, depending on the type of drakon… it sounds like it isn’t common, though. I’ve been able to find information on four main species of drakons - Lydian, Aethiopian, Thebian, and Maeonian, which are all named after a town or region where they were first encountered.”

Jenn stops pacing for now, redirecting that energy into tapping her knuckles against each other. “I’m going to lump Lydian and Maeonian together, since they’re likely closely related, and I think Maeonian might be a subspecies of Lydian if not just the same species, sort of the opposite of cryptic species - Lydia was a kingdom located in what’s now Turkey, and Maeonia was a town in Lydia, or another name for Lydia. Lydian drakons are the most ancient and dangerous species. There are two Lydian drakons mentioned in the classical stories, and Heracles killed one of them, because of course he did. We all know he’s a prolific monster hitman and will probably be mentioned in about ninety percent of these lessons for killing something.”

Jenn begins absentmindedly picking at her fingers as she talks, occasionally glancing at the notes she has.

“This one wasn’t actually one of his labours, just a little - little,” she rolls her eyes at herself, “request by Queen Omphale of Lydia. The drakon was terrorising a town, it killed the men, it destroyed their crops, it griefed their Minecraft servers, and she needed big ol’ Heracles to kill it - so he did. Zeus made some fanart and put it up in the sky, and called the constellation Ophiucus, the bonus thirteenth zodiac sign- reminder that astrology is bullshit, by the way. If it turns out that’s real like the gods too, I will just up and die. Anyway, Zeus paid Heracles with exposure by constellation, Heracles said this stupid, I don’t want to deal with this, and since I did it anyway I want to be paid, so Queen Omphale gave him his rewards and he went back home.

“The other guy who killed a Lydian drakon was Damasen, who gets the fitting name of Damasen Drakon-Killer. His drakon has also been labelled a Maeonian drakon, hence the confusion around the species. Damasen was a giant and a son of Gaea,” Jenn stomps once on the stone floor, “created through parthenogenesis because who needs a man? So this drakon had been terrorising the area - uprooting trees, eating innocent travellers, being a dank memer. Eventually a naiad, Moria, witnessed the millionth person walking by her river get killed by it, and she despaired that someone so young had lost their life. By some accounts, this was actually her brother, making it even more distressing. She got ready to fight the drakon away from the body - but the she remembered how terrifying it was, and she just screamed out for help. Same, Moria.

“Enter stage left, Damasen the giant! The naiad pleaded with him and he just… took up a tree and battled the drakon to avenge a man who it turned out had been his friend. He killed it… and then out came Mr Drakon’s wife. Fortunately, she didn’t attack Damasen. She picked a flower that was an antidote of death, revived her mate, and the two of them went to hide together, happily ever after, I guess.”

Jenn takes a breath. Slow down, don’t talk so fast, she reminds herself. But this one’s a long topic, long as the drakons she’s discussing, and she worries that sooner or later people will just… leave.

“I was also able to find some information on drakons seen in more recent times too - during the Second Titanomachy in two-thousand-nine, the Titan army included a Lydian drakon, which was slain by a daughter of Ares.

“So what can a Lydian drakon actually do, and what does it look like? Most noticeably, its eyes glow, which is the indicator that it can make you play freeze-tag whether you want to or not. This isn’t like Medusa’s petrification, its technically temporary - but that’s only if you survive, which you are not likely to do if you’re fighting a drakon on you’re own and you’ve just been frozen in place. I am talking paralysed-frozen, by the way, not ice-frozen, and that goes for any drakons with this ability. Lydian drakons also have highly acidic, corrosive spit. They don’t have legs and they can reach two hundred feet long at least, and the smaller ones can wrap around prey like a boa constrictor - the bigger ones can, too, but at that point it’s more like being crushed between solid walls. Lydian drakons have incredibly sharp teeth, and they are loud. You can hear them miles away if they want you too, and at that point it could easily be too late.”

Jenn pauses for a few seconds, before moving on to discuss the other types.

“The other species of drakon I’ve been able to find information on is Aethiopian. As the name suggests, they originate from Africa, and while they aren’t as dangerous as Lydian drakons… they are still drakons, which already makes them very dangerous.”

Jenn flinches slightly, having dug too deep at the edge of her nail. She clasps her hands behind her back instead, to not allow herself the distraction.

“They don’t tend to grow as big as Lydian drakons either, but can still reach around a hundred and eighty feet, and they supposedly are known to eat elephants. There aren’t any specific examples that I was able to find stories about, though.” It’s a shame; Jenn has found she enjoys recounting the myths.

“That said, I do have a couple more example of specific in the myths, who is not assigned to a sespific species- specific species,” she mutters. Aside from the misspeaking, that’s just so redundant. Ack. “But yeah, anyway. The first one’s name was Sosipolis, and he was the demigod son of… Eileithyia.” For once, Jenn is forced to slow down a little to get that right; it’s too many Es and Is and als all together, but she’d rehearsed the name several time earlier, walking in circles about her room in Cabin 18 and whispering Eileithyia, Eileithyia, stopping when she realised she probably didn’t want this particular goddess to think she was praying for something. “Eileithyia is the goddess of childbirth and midwifery. Sosipolis lived in Elis, which was located in the Peloponnese. You may hear his name and think of a word like ‘metropolis’ - the ‘polis’ part means city, no relation to Among Us planet, and Sosipolis is named the city saviour.

“He was forced into that role as a baby. The Arcadians were invading, and the Eleans - again, no relation to other planets, that’s Eleans and not aliens - marched out to meet them. A lone woman marched with the soldiers, carrying little baby Sosipolis. She said that she received a vision in a dream - you can thank Morpheus for that - telling her that this boy should be offered up as a champion.

“Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone told me to offer a literal baby as a champion on the battlefield… I wouldn’t do it. I’m sorry? But I’m not gonna think that’s the gods telling me that, it sounds unhinged - I’d think it’s literally just a dream, because what’s some little baby gonna do? Maybe the Arcadians would just gush over the baby and forget about fighting. But this woman went along with it, and I guess it worked out for the Eleans, although I’m not sure how Sosipolis really would have felt if he had a choice. The Arcadians attacked and suddenly this little baby was turned into a drakon, which sent the Arcadian soldiers into a rout and secured victory for the Eleans. The Eleans built a sanctuary to Sosipolis and Eileithyia, and he… just stayed as a drakon from what I can tell.”

Admittedly, this story did make Jenn wonder whether a drakon-transformation potion, or one for other types of monsters, would be possible. If so, it would no doubt be far more difficult to create than a magpie potion, but it could be interesting… so long as it’s not permanent.

“Drakons have attacked Camp Half-Blood before - one of them was apparently two or three years ago. That was before I got here, fortunately for me, but any of you who were here then already know what I’m talking about. It was a sea drakon? Then, obviously, more recently, we had the one that attacked with the Titans. So that one was the original Drakon Gigantomakhios, or the Drakon of the Giant War. You can thank one of the satyrs for that identification. It seems to be a different species from the ones I was able to look into, but anyway, in ancient times, during a war between the gods and… the giants, shockingly, the giants literally threw a drakon at Athena. Athena, being a badass, caught it - so by dodgeball rules, that giant should be out the war - and speared it ‘upon the pole of heaven’, and it was put up in the constellations for thousands of years until it appeared here to terrorise us.

“I didn’t personally fight it, I’m not a fighter, buuut one of my cabinmates did, so you can thank him for telling me a bit about it. Unlike a lot of other drakons, this one didn’t have paralysing eyes and apparently no acid spit. Still, it had a really tough hide and some attacks just glanced off of its scales. It was legless, like drakons tend to be.” Jenn glances down at the note describing it as shiny. How much of that is a property of the drakon itself and how much was the Titan’s doing, for whatever reason - because the glance she got of one of the other creatures showed it as pretty shiny too.

“That’s pretty much what I’ve got,” Jenn finishes with a shrug. “I think I said at the start my next lesson would be dragons, right? Well, they’re on here, so…” she gestures to the board briefly before lowering her hand, picking at the edge of her thumb’s nail. “You can ask questions and stuff, if you have any”