Plexure (leo Valdez x male reader)

38) Entertaining a giant

A WOLF LAUNCHED ITSELF AT ME. I stepped back and swung my sword into the beast's snout with a satisfying crack. Maybe only silver could kill it, but I can hurt them pretty bad.
Jason using the plank as probably the most funniest thing ever. We ran into each other and switch weapons. He got my sword as I got the wooden plank. Jason was able to fight normally as I just hit the wolves with one hit and they were knocked out.
"Yeah, you work better with that," Jason said facing me.
I looked at the wooden plank. "I just work with things a little faster than you think."
"I noticed, you already picked up my fight techniques."
"I know. Your techniques are weird."
Jason looked at me slightly offended and swung at a wolf. "My fighting style is not going crazy and swinging at everything you see hoping you land something."
Now, it was my turn to be offended. "First of all," I started knocking a wolf out. "I don't swing around hoping to land a hit. I just go into battle hoping for the best. And I don't know about you, but I don't have time to just stand there and analyze the person techniques in the middle of battle."
He took a step closer to me. "If you practice it would be a problem."
I groaned making a face. "Jason, really. Are all roman demigods this dense?"
His eyes widen and stabbed a wolf that was about to hit me. "You know."
"I'm smart you idiot."
"I'm the idiot. You almost just got bitten, you greek."
I gasped putting my hand on my heart. "I didn't know you had it in you."
"Stop talking, and start fighting! Alister for the love of the gods!" Hera yelled at us.
We both charged back into battle. I was swinging my icy piece of wood, knocking aside wolves and plunging straight through other venti.
Through the chaos, I caught glimpses of my friends. Piper was surrounded by Earthborn, but she seemed to be holding her own. She was so impressive-looking as she fought, almost glowing with beauty, that the Earthborn stared at her in awe, forgetting that they were supposed to kill her. They'd lower their clubs and watch dumbfounded as she smiled and charged them. They'd smile back—until she sliced them apart with her dagger, and they melted into mounds of mud.
Jason was somehow riding a horse.
"What the hell," I said watching him. "I want a horse!"
Leo had taken on Khione herself. While fighting a goddess should've been suicide, Leo was the right man for the job. She kept summoning ice daggers to throw at him, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it. 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.
I realized that Leo was the only reason we were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione's winter magic. Without him, we 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.
Jason and I were running out of enemies. Wolves lay in dazed heaps. Some slunk away into the ruins, yelping from their wounds. Piper stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. Jason rode Tempest 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."
      Tempest reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. A complete show-off.
"Don't fill his ego," I told Piper jokingly.
Jason eyes narrowed at me. "Ohh you're one to talk."
Then I heard a cracking sound behind him. 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!"
We four demigods jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.
Leo frowned. "Uh, Tía Callida, are you getting shorter?"
"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"
As much as I disliked Hera, what I saw inside the cage alarmed me. 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—"
"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. I felt my own eyes getting heavy, and I had to force myself 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. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, I 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 jumped into the pit and whinnied.
"Really?" Jason 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!"
"Dude your horse you crazy!" I said in shock.
Our 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.
I hadn't thought anything could be scarier than Enceladus. I 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 armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon's legs; but his skin was the color 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.
"Alive!" he bellowed. "Praise to Gaea!"
"Welp, fuck," I said.
"Leo," Jason said.
"Huh?" Leo's mouth was wide open. Even Piper seemed dazed.
"You guys keep working," Jason said. "Get Hera free!"
"What are you going to do?" Piper asked. "You can't seriously—"
"Entertain a giant?" Jason said. "I've got no choice. Alister is going to join me."
I made a noise. "I did not agree."
Jason gave me a look. I somehow shivered.
"I agree. You guys continue what you are doing. I will entertain a giant."
"Excellent!" the giant roared as Jason and I approached. "An appetizer! Who are you two—Hermes? Ares?"
I shrug. "Sadly, neither. Son of Enyo, at your serv—" I shut my mouth. Not a thing to say at a giant.
"I'm Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."
Those white eyes bored into Jason's. Behind us, Leo's circular saw whirred, and Piper talked to the cage in soothing tones, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. "Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you. Enyo, your only son for me. I feel spoiled."
The sky didn't even rumble. My mother did nothing. No help from above. We were on our own.
I dropped my makeshift club. My hands were covered in splinters, but that didn't matter now. I had to buy Leo and Piper some time, and I couldn't do that without a proper weapon.
It was time to act a whole lot more confident than I felt.
"If you knew who I was," Jason yelled up at the giant, "you'd be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because I'm going to send you right back to Tartarus."
The giant's eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent. "So ... we'll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demigod. I am Porphryion, king of the giants, son of Gaea. In olden times, I rose from Tatarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the gods. To start the war, I stole Zeus's queen." He grinned at the goddess's cage. "Hello, Hera."
"My husband destroyed you once, monster!" Hera said. "He'll do it again!"
"But he didn't, my dear! Zeus wasn't powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demigod to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaea is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth—and we will destroy you at the roots."
"You wouldn't dare," Hera said, but she was weakening. I could hear it in her voice. Piper kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, but the earth was still rising inside Hera's prison, covering her up to her waist.
"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees—your eldest roots torn out and burned."
The giant frowned at Piper and Leo, as if he'd just noticed them working at the cage. I stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion's attention.
"You said a demigod killed you," I shouted. "How, if we're so puny?"
"Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus's replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife—or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!"
He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty- foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon's feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather—storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king's call.
"Great," Leo muttered. "We needed more enemies."
"Hurry," Hera said.
"I know!" Leo snapped.
"Go to sleep, cage," Piper said. "Nice, sleepy cage. Yes, I'm talking to a bunch of earthen tendrils. This isn't weird at all." Porphyrion raked his spear across the top of the ruins, destroying a chimney and spraying wood and stone across the courtyard. "So, child of Zeus and Enyo! I have finished my boasting. Now it's your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?" I looked at the ring of monsters, waiting impatiently for their master's order to tear them to shreds. Leo's circular saw kept whirring, and Piper kept talking, but it seemed hopeless. Hera's cage was almost completely filled with earth.
"I'm the son of Enyo!" I yelled trying not to sound scared. "I undertook a quest across the United States to find the entrance to the Underworld and stop a war between Zeus and Poseidon by giving Zeus his lighting bolt back. I journey to the eponymous Sea of Monsters to retrieve the Golden Fleece in order to save the tree barrier that protects camp Half-Blood," I took a deep breath. "I went to rescue the goddess Artemis from Atlas and fought Atlas with Artemis on my side. I went to Daedalus's labyrinth to prevent Kronos army invading Camp Half-Blood and by preventing Luke from getting the Ariadne's string. I attack Kronos and was able to stop him from ruling the world. I have yet to lose a battle."
        Porphyrion eyes narrowed at me like he recognized me.
"I was also found worthy in your mothers eyes that she gave me her power to kill Kronos's army."
Porphyrion took a step back. I looked at Jason.
"I'm the son of Jupiter!" he shouted, and just for effect, he summoned the winds, rising a few feet off the ground. "I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion." He held out his arms, showing the tattoo of the eagle and SPQR, and to my surprise the giant seemed to recognize it.
For a moment, Porphyrion actually looked uneasy.
"I slew the Trojan sea monster," Jason continued. "I toppled the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."
"Wow, dude," Leo muttered. "You both been eating red meat?"
"Show off," I told Jason.
"Really right now."
I shrug and launched myself at the giant, determined to tear him apart.
The idea of fighting a forty-foot-tall immortal bare handed was so ridiculous, even the giant seemed surprised. Half flying, half leaping, Jason landed on the giant's scaly reptilian knee and climbed up the giant's arm before Porphyrion even realized what had happened.
"You dare?" the giant bellowed.
Jason reached his shoulders and ripped a sword out of the giant's weapon-filled braids. He yelled, "For Rome!" and drove the sword into the nearest convenient target—the giant's massive ear.
Lightning streaked out of the sky and blasted the sword, throwing Jason free. I closed my eyes expecting to get lightninged as well, but I didn't. When I opened my eyes and looked up, the giant was staggering. His hair was on fire, and the side of his face was blackened from lightning. The sword had splintered in his ear. Golden ichor ran down his jaw. The other weapons were sparking and smoldering in his braids.
Porphyrion almost fell. The circle of monsters let out a collective growl and moved forward—wolves and ogres fixing their eyes on Jason.
"No!" Porphyrion yelled. He regained his balance and glared at the demigod. "I will kill him myself."
The giant raised his spear and it began to glow. "You want to play with lightning, boy? You forget. I am the bane of Zeus. I was created to destroy your father, which means I know exactly what will kill you."
Something in Porphyrion's voice told me he wasn't bluffing.
I looked at Jason and gave him a thumbs up telling him he's on his own. "I will fight the other things!"
Jason's mouth opened in shocked.
"You made things personal with him, not me."
"Got it!" Leo yelled.
"Sleep!" Piper said, so forcefully, the nearest wolves fell to the ground and began snoring.
The stone and wood cage crumbled. Leo had sawed through the base of the thickest tendril and apparently cut off the cage's connection to Gaea. The tendrils turned to dust. The mud around Hera disintegrated. The goddess grew in size, glowing with power.
"Yes!" the goddess said. She threw off her black robes to reveal a white gown, her arms bedecked with golden jewelry. Her face was both terrible and beautiful, and a golden crown glowed in her long black hair. "Now I shall have my revenge!"
The giant Porphyrion backed away. He said nothing, but he gave Jason one last look of hatred. His message was clear: Another time. Then he slammed his spear against the earth, and the giant disappeared into the ground like he'd dropped down a chute.
Around the courtyard, monsters began to panic and retreat, but there was no escape for them.
Hera glowed brighter. She shouted, "Cover your eyes, my heroes!"
I closed my eyes and covered my face with my shirt just in case. Gods she must look awful.