"After all those years on the streets, I finally feel like I'm home"
"You're lying" Leo didn't even have to look up, he knew her better than anyone.
"You're right, I was always at home with you"
In which there's an unlikely friendship (... and ma...
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A wolf launched itself at Alex but she slid underneath it an hit him on his butt, sending him flying toward Jason who hit the wolf on his head- hard.
Then Alex turned to the Earth borns. She would lower herself to the ground ever so often to create rifts in which the six armed ogres and wolves would fall into, but she couldn't stay still for longer than a few seconds.
She swung her icy piece of wood and slashed through Earth Borns and venti with such skill that at one point she was sure someone was staring at her. She soon realised it was Leo and she flashed him a smirk.
"Like what you see?" She taunted using his own words. "Speak up while I'm single- I won't be for too long"
"Shut up Ariel" Leo burned through Khione's ice daggers. His whole body flickered with red tongues of flame like he'd been doused with gasoline. He advanced on the goddess, using two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers to smash any monsters that got in his way.
Alex frowned at the nickname but she realised she wasn't using her powers. She felt around for water, and only then realised there was a storm around her.
She focused on the water in the air and ice and willed it to do what she wanted. Several ice daggers impaled themselves into an Earth Born as it dissolved into clay. She looked back an Leo and realised he was the only reason they were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione's winter magic. Without him, they would've been frozen like the Hunters long ago. Wherever Leo went, ice melted off the stones. Even Thalia started to defrost a little when Leo stepped near her.
Khione slowly backed away. Her expression went from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer.
Alex was running out of enemies. The cracks in the earth slowly mending themselves but most of the wolves were nowhere to be found. Piper stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. Jason rode a ventus in the form of a horse through the last ventus, breaking it into vapor. Then he wheeled around and saw Leo bearing down on the goddess of snow.
"You're too late," Khione snarled. "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 his hammers ablaze and threw them at the goddess, but she turned into snow-a white powdery image of herself. Leo's hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush.
Piper was breathing hard, but she smiled up at Jason. "Nice horse."
"He says his name is Tempest" Alex translated for Piper when she appeared by her side. "You're awesome Tempest"
Tempest reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. A complete show-off. Then Alex heard a cracking sound behind Jason. The melting ice on Hera's cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, "Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"
The four demigods jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.
Leo frowned. "Uh, Tia Callida, are you getting shorter?"
"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"
As much as Alex disliked Hera, what she saw inside the cage alarmed her. Not only was Hera sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins. "The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!"
"On it," Leo said. "Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage."
"What?" she said.
"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-"
"Forge and dove shall break the cage! Right" Alex exclaimed
"Right!" Piper cleared her throat and said, "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I'm tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"
The more she talked, the more confident she sounded. Alex felt her own eyes getting heavy, and she had to force herself not to focus on her words. It seemed to have some effect on the cage. The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little-becoming more like tree root than rock.
Alex pressed her palm to the ground too and seeped out the water. The cage seemed to weaken, but not as much as it was weakening with Piper's powers.
Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, Alex had no idea. Then Leo looked at the cord and grunted in frustration. "I don't have anywhere to plug it in!"
The spirit horse Tempest jumped into the pit and talked.
Plug it in but don't ever mention it again
Alex translated and almost laughed but stopped when she saw the look Tempest was giving her.
"Really?" Leo asked.
Tempest dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. Leo looked dubious, but he held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse's flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the prongs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.
"Sweet!" Leo grinned. "Your horse comes with AC outlets!"
Their good mood didn't last long. On the other side of the pool, the giant's spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth. Alex hadn't thought anything could be scarier than Enceladus.
She was wrong.
Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped. He didn't radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him-a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field.
Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armour, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon's legs; but his skin was the colour of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons-daggers, axes, and full-size swords, some of them bent and bloody-maybe trophies taken from demigods eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.
