𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 •| ⊱ Jason Grace¹

•| ⊱ TWENTY-FOUR

[ chapter twenty-four: hermia ]

° • ° • °

Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet. "So, guys, long as you're cuddled up for story time ... something I've been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in-"

"Wheel of Fortune?" Piper asked. Hermia wanted to believe Leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.

"The thing is," he said, "my dad Hephaestus talked to me."

Leo told them about his dream. In the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. Hermia could imagine the static-filled voice of the god warning about giants who were the sons of Tartarus, and about Leo losing some friends along the way. Mia had a sick feeling she could be one of them.

But still she tried to concentrate on something good: Jason's arms around her, the warmth slowly spreading into her body, but she was terrified. "You know this whole time I've been so confused over everything that's happened." The group watched as Mia spoke. "I'm not like you guys. I didn't grow up learning anything about Greece or the Gods. But I also definitely don't understand this. If us demigods and the gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would they stay silent?"

"She's right," Piper said. "If they need us-"

"Ha," said Coach Hedge. "The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus."

"Coach," Piper said, "that was almost an intelligent comment." Hermia smiled at the satyr.

But he just huffed. "What? I'm intelligent! I'm not surprised you cupcakes haven't heard of the Giant War." Hermia rose her hand, as if telling him she hadn't heard the story before. "Of course you haven't, but the gods don't like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That's just embarrassing."

"There's more, though," Jason said. "When I dreamed about Hera in her cage, she said Zeus was acting unusually paranoid. And Hera-she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone's influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?"

Hermia shuddered. She definitely knew Jason was right. Behind all this was Gaea and it didn't surprise Mia if Gaea was manipulating things behind the scenes, helping the giants. Gaea was pretty much keeping her followers informed about their movements. Gaea had probably even knocked Happy the dragon out of the sky in Detroit.

Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. "Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn't say. Like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don't know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible-like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn't supposed to tell me."