THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

sixteen

Everything went immediately wrong.

The giants vanished in twin puffs of smoke. They reappeared halfway across the room,each in a different spot. I sprinted toward Ephialtes, but slots in the floor opened under my feet, and metal walls shot up on either side, separating me from everyone else. Jasper who had been running behind me ran straight into them banging his head. He rubbed his forehead gingerly before pulling on the bars trying to get to me. 

The walls started closing in on me like the sides of a vise grip. I jumped up and grabbed the bottom of the hydra's cage. I caught a brief glimpse of Piper leaping across a hopscotch pattern of fiery pits, making her way toward Nico, who was dazed and weaponless and being stalked by a pair of leopards.

Meanwhile Jason and Percy charged at Otis, who pulled his spear and heaved a great sigh, as if he would much rather dance Swan Lake than kill another demigod.I registered all this in a split second, but there wasn't much I could do about it. The hydra snapped at me. I swung and let go, landing in a grove of painted plywood trees that sprang up from nowhere. The trees changed positions as he tried to run through them, so I slashed down the whole forest with my dagger.

"Wonderful!" Ephialtes cried. He stood at his control panel about sixty feet to my left. "We'll consider this a dress rehearsal. Shall I unleash the hydra onto the Spanish Steps now?"

He pulled a lever, and I glanced behind me. The cage I had just been hanging from was now rising toward a hatch in the ceiling. In three seconds it would be gone. If I attacked the giant, the hydra would ravage the city.

Cursing, I shot an arrow. The Celestial bronze arrow  sliced through the chains suspending the hydra. The cage tumbled sideways. The door broke open, and the monster spilled out—right in front of me.

"Oh, you are a spoilsport, Corbyn!" Ephialtes called. "Very well. Battle it here, if you must, but your death won't be nearly as good without the cheering crowds."

I stepped forward to confront the monster—then realized I'd never faced a hydra before and I didn't know how to defeat it. A bit of bad planning on my part.I rolled to one side as all eight hydra heads spit acid, turning the floor where I'd been standing into a steaming crater of melted stone. My gut instinct was to slash at the heads, but a hydra simply grew two new ones for each one it lost. The hydra lashed out. I shot an arrow at its leg causing it to stumble giving me time to hide. I ducked behind a giant hamster wheel and scanned the room, looking for the boxesI'd seen in my dream. I remembered something about rocket launchers.

At the dais, Piper stood guard over Nico as the leopards advanced. She aimed her cornucopia and shot a pot roast over the cats' heads. It must have smelled pretty good, because the leopards raced after it.

About eighty feet to Piper's right, Jason and Percy battled Otis, swords against spear. Otis had lost his diamond tiara and looked angry about it. He probably could have impaled them several times, but the giant insisted on doing a pirouette with every attack, which slowed him down.

Meanwhile Ephialtes laughed as he pushed buttons on his control board, cranking the conveyor belts into high gear and opening random animal cages. Jasper was the unfortunate victim of those random animal's as he tried to fight to his way through to the control panel.

The hydra charged around the hamster wheel. I swung behind a column, grabbed a garbage bag full of Wonder bread, and threw it at the monster. The hydra spit acid, which was a mistake. The bag and wrappers dissolved in midair. The Wonder bread absorbed the acid like fire extinguisher foam and splattered against the hydra, covering it in a sticky, steaming layer of high-calorie poisonous goo.

As the monster reeled, shaking its heads and blinking Wonder acid out of its eyes, I looked around desperately. I didn't see the rocket-launcher boxes, but tucked against the back wall was a strange contraption like an artist's easel, fitted with rows of missile launchers. I spotted a bazooka, a grenade launcher, a giant Roman candle, and a dozen other wicked-looking weapons. They all seemed to be wired together, pointing in the same direction and connected to a single bronze lever on the side. At the top of the easel, spelled in carnations, were the words: HAPPY DESTRUCTION, ROME!