SANITY; heroes of olympus

05.7

[act five; chapter seven     -     to lose control]

Piper and Andy watched in horror as the giant king rose to his full height—almost as tall as the temple columns. His face looked just as she remembered—green as bile, with a twisted sneer, his seaweed-coloured hair braided with swords and axes taken from dead demigods.

He loomed over the captives, watching them wriggle. "They arrived just as you foresaw, Enceladus! Well done!"

Their old enemy bowed his head, braided bones clattering in his dreadlocks. "It was simple, my king."

The flame designs gleamed on his armour. His spear burned with purplish fire. He only needed one hand to hold his captive. Despite all of Percy Jackson's power, despite everything he had survived, in the end he was helpless against the sheer strength of the giant—and the inevitability of the prophecy.

"I knew these two would lead the assault," Enceladus continued, but there was something more to his voice, an edge, that made Andy want to smile. They had expected her to arrive as well, to be at their sides, and she wasn't there. "I understand how they think. Athena and Poseidon...they were just like these children! They both came here thinking to claim this city. Their arrogance has undone them!"

Over the roar of the crowd, Andy was deaf to the sound of a voice, one creeping up from behind and clouding her senses. One that tore down her defences and walls and catapulted poison into her mind. And just like that, the amethyst string connected to the Fates was tugged, and Andromeda Storm's body was now a cage, a coffin, the perfect weapon for a god.

She couldn't stop herself from taking the first step forward, nor the second, or the third, or the ones that followed. Before she knew it, Andromeda Storm, under the control of Gaea herself, was being brought in front of a titan like a cow up for slaughter.