madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-the chapter you've all been waiting for-

that DING really freaked y'all out fr-

<3

Maybe Hazel had forgotten to block out a few sounds.

The wall of rock that had become walls and a ceiling and given her a safe space from Leo's grief crumbled, as did her willingness to give up.

Percy held Annabeth's arm; eyes squinted. He obviously didn't understand anything around them.

Hazel stood shakily, sword back in hand, and saw the chaos that had unfolded in the eleven minutes she'd spent sobbing her heart and lungs out and scratching her short-broken fingernails up and down her arms.

Hecate was where she'd been the whole time, watching with a face Hazel couldn't even begin to read while Leo swayed, alone, surrounded by ashy wreckage of the House of Hades. The skulls were still burning brightly, and the jewels were melted blobs.

Even the diamonds were wobbly and smoking.

Leo's face was ashy.

He looked numb. Tears rolled down his cheeks, leaving tracks in the soot that settled over everything.

He was lit up by the stars and the moon that everyone could see from the wide hole in the roof where it had fallen in. Around the black rubble was what was left of the bubbling Giant, smoky and charred and just a fly on the windscreen that was the coals of everything else.

Hecate stepped forwards, her heels clicking until they sunk into a puddle of Clytius.

He gurgled, and that was that.

Leo looked around with dark eyes. Cracks of fire still flowed under his skin, veins of fire, that Hazel could see from the other side of the rocky destroyed cavern.

He turned to the control panel, all robot like, and then pushed the big green button.

Hazel winced at the shriek of metal doors, and then a flurry of feathers and scales and skin erupted with hisses and yells and a loud groan. Her shoulders sank. She tightened her grip on her sword.

Another door opened, a misty one, and Hecate dropped her hand once four people stepped through.

"Sorry we're late," Jason said, a cut on the side of his head, of course. His eyes landed on the feathered woman wriggling through the elevator. "Is this the guy who needs killing?"

"Leo sorted him out," Hazel said weakly, and Piper stumbled out, Frank and Nico following with weapons and sceptres and confused expressions.

"Miss Dodds?"

Hazel ignored Percy's deranged murmuring and stalked towards the three Furies, ready to take her anger out on the monsters that dared to not be her friend until they were begging for mercy she would never give them.

But then the three Furies shifted out of the way and pushed a battered, fuming Teqi into the ash covered clearing.

Towards Hades.

"We got him sir!"

The tall god, Hazel's sort of father, the greek version, stood next to Hecate as if he'd been there in a dark business suit leaning on a cane made of pearly white bones the whole time.

"Teqi!" Jason cried out, whacking at Piper unhelpfully. Tears swelled and fell from their eyes as quickly as their grins appeared and sparks of electricity ran up and down Jason's bruised arms.