Hurricane ~ L. Valdez

1.36- My Brother And I Kind of Go on a Power Trip

Once the wolves launched themselves at us it was chaos. I could barely concentrate as I worked with Piper to fight off the Earthborn.

The nice thing was that Piper's Aphrodite 'Beauty Queen' thing was very helpful for distracting the Earthborn. Once she smiled at them it was easy to slice them apart.

I tried to keep my focus on them and not on Leo, who had taken on Khione all by himself. The good thing was, if anyone was a perfect fit to fight her it was Leo. She kept trying new icy things to throw at him, ice daggers, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it.

He looked like he had been set on fire, and it was hard to see him through the flames covering his body.

I made a mental note to take Leo out on a date or something after this. He was probably the only reason we were alive. I could feel the warmth from the fire around him, even though we weren't near each other at all.

As Leo melted everything in his path, Khione went through a rollercoaster of emotions. Her expression changed from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer and closer to her.

Jason had completely obliterated the wolves, and was running out of enemies as some ran away. Piper and I stabbed the last Earthborn, high-fiving each other after we had finished him off.

Jason rode his storm-horse, which he had just summoned and I was very jealous of, and flew it through the last of the anemoi thuellai.

I watched with baited breath as Leo took on Khione.

"You're too late," she snarled at him. "He's awake! And don't think you've won anything here, demigods. Hera's plan will never work. You'll be at each other's throats before you can ever stop us."

Leo set two hammers on fire and threw them at the goddess, but she quickly turned into snow, creating a Khione snow man— woman.

Leo's hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush. He let out a deep breath, letting out his flames, and I ran over to him, jumping in his arms.

"That was really hot." I whispered in his ear, causing him to turn red (and not from the fire this time).

Leo went to reply, but we heard a cracking sound, and spun around. The ice on Hera's cage melted off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, "Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"

Honestly Hera needed to check her attitude.

Jason dismounted his fancy horse and we all jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.
Leo frowned. "Uh, Tía Callida, are you getting shorter?"

"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"

Okay, don't confuse my concern with appreciation for Hera... but I was concerned.
Hera wasn't just sinking, the ground around her was rising as if it was water filling up a pool. I'm talking growing dirt. Ew.

"The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!" And she couldn't have warned us a couple minutes ago?

"On it," Leo said. "Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage."

"What?" she questioned, wrinkling her nose. "Talk to it. Use everything you've got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I—"

"Right!" Piper cleared her throat, cutting him off. "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I'm tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"

I could hear Piper growing more confident as she continues to speak, and even I was starting to yawn, rubbing my eyes. Surprisingly, it actually seemed to be working. The mud was starting to rise more slowly. The tendril bar things seemed to soften.