The Veiled Legacy | PJO - Book Two

fourteen

Ariana's eye snapped open, her body flung itself forward; she would've fallen off the dragon had it not been for Piper who grabbed her.

Her eyes rapidly looked around. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion - had it been a dream?

"The cyclops-" She looked at Piper, and her ankle. "I'm so confused."

Piper caught Ariana up with everything - how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory.

Ariana was impressed. Taking out three Cyclopes with nothing but a tool kit? Not bad. It didn't exactly scare her to hear how close she'd come to death, but it did make her feel horrible.

She was meant to protect the trio and yet she spent the whole fight knocked out whilst they fended for themselves.

What kind of protector was she?

When Piper told her about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, Jason spoke.

"I'm not alone, then," he said. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Piper said, "you were never alone. You've got us."

" I know ... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..."

He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage.

"An exchange?" Piper asked. "What does that mean?"

Jason shook his head. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way-"

"Or save us," Piper said hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

Leo cleared his throat. "About that ... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

"Did you say ... Porta-Potty?"

Leo told them about the big face in the factory yard.

"don't know if she's completely unkillable," he said, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Pfft, right, I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge."

"She's trying to divide us." Ariana said, her head felt like she was going to explode.

"What's wrong?" Jason asked Piper.

"I just ... Why are they toying with us? Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?"

"Enceladus?" Said Jason.

"I mean .." Piper's voice quavered. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."

Leo scratched his head. "Well, I dunno about Enchiladas-"

"Enceladus," Piper corrected.

"Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?"

"Porphyrion?" Ariana  asked. "He was the giant king. ."

"I'm going to take wild guess," Jason said. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods."

"I think so," Ariana agreed. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I just remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."