madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-this barbie is a leopard-

Leo tried to prop Teqi against the wall, but she was too heavy, so she stayed on the floor. He sat next to her as Hazel and Frank wobbled up the steps and into the room. Hazel's left eye twitched, maybe from the Taser shock. Otherwise, she looked okay. "Uh, what exactly happened?"

"An eye for an eye," Leo muttered. They must have seen her as well, because Hazel let out a few words she must have learnt from Percy that one time he stubbed his toe in the middle of the night and woke everyone up with his language. Frank gasped.

"What- how- why...why does she have a-" Hazel started, her fingertips brushing the black pirates eyepatch that was over Teqi's right eye. It had been hard to get it on her, but it was better than the alternative, which was the two previously unconscious demigods seeing the ichor staining her eyelashes.

Frank picked up the in moving sphere, with its bent spindly legs. Leo motioned to it a little, but he was more focused on trying not to let more tears fall, and unwrapping another square of ambrosia with his shaking hands. "It, it...it malfunctioned. I mustn't've fixed them all right. Went, it went right through her... eye."

"Well, she has two," Hazel said sternly, like she was trying to reassure them all, but it was obvious she was just freaked out as the boys. She snatched up the godly food and pushed it into Teqi's mouth. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she kept glancing at Leo like she wasn't sure if she should.

He pointed to the black sword that had fallen underneath the table. "That's your brothers, right? "You tracked him with your metal-finding senses."

Hazel groaned into her hands, her shoulder shaking. Frank patted her shoulder, but he kept glancing nervously at the sphere, as if it might decide it needed to blind more people. ""But that's impossible! Nico's sword was with him in the bronze jar. Percy saw it in his dream!"

"Either the dream was wrong," Leo said in a bland tone, "or the giants moved the sword here as a decoy."

"So this was a trap," Frank said. "We were lured here."

"But why?" Hazel cried, picking up the sword cautiously. She traced the hilt, as if her metal detector powers would help her now. "Where's my brother?"

A hissing sound filled the control booth. At first, Leo thought the eidolons were back. He couldn't go through that again. Then he realized the bronze mirror on the table was steaming.

Ah, my poor heroes.

The sleeping face of Gaea appeared in the mirror. As usual, she spoke without moving her mouth, which could only have been creepier if she'd had a ventriloquism puppet. Leo hated those things. He held onto Teqi's ripped jacket sleeve, and noticed a streak of dried blood on her arm. He moved the white material over it subtly.

You had your choice, Gaea said. Her voice echoed through the room. It seemed to be coming not just from the odd mirror, but from the stone walls as well.

Leo realized she was all around them. Of course. They were in the earth. They'd gone to all the trouble of building the Argo II so they could travel by sea and air, and they'd ended up in the earth anyway. It was inevitable. In the same way Nemesis would always take what she gave. Why hadn't he listened to Teqi, when he opened the cookie, or at least when she warned him about the stray sphere?

I offered salvation to all of you, Gaea said. You could have turned back. Now it is too late. You've come to the ancient lands where I am strongest— where I will wake.