THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

t h i r t e e n

The next day, there weren't many answers.

After the explosion, Jasper and I headed back to regroup with the others. But Leo did not reappear. The entire Hephaestus cabin scoured the valley, finding bits and pieces of the Argo II's broken hull, but no sign of Festus the dragon or his master.

All the monsters had been destroyed or scattered. Greek and Roman casualties were heavy, but not nearly as bad as they might have been.

Overnight, the satyrs and nymphs disappeared into the woods for a convocation of the Cloven Elders. In the morning, Grover Underwood reappeared to announce that they could not sense the Earth Mother's presence. Nature was more or less back to normal. Apparently, our plan had worked. Gaia had been separated from her source of power, sung/commanded to sleep and then atomized in the combined explosion of Leo's fire and Octavian's man-made comet.

An immortal could never die, but now Gaia would be like her husband, Ouranos. The earth would continue to function as normal, just as the sky did, but Gaia was now so dispersed and powerless that she could never again form a consciousness.At least, that was the hope ...

Octavian would be remembered for saving Rome by hurling himself into the sky in a fiery ball of death. But it was Leo Valdez who had made the real sacrifice.

The victory celebration at camp was muted, due to grief – not just for Leo but also for the many others who had died in battle. Shrouded demigods, both Greek and Roman, were burned at the campfire, and Chiron asked Nico to oversee the burial rites.

Luckily, no one from the Apollo cabin was killed. We had all managed to survive this war. Some were heavily injured but still alive.

The hardest part was afterwards, when Nico and the six demigods from the Argo II met on the porch of the Big House.

Jason hung his head, his eyes lost in shadow. "We should have been there at the end. We could've helped Leo."

"It's not right," Piper agreed, wiping away her tears. "All that work getting the physician's cure, for nothing."

Hazel broke down crying. "Eliana, where's the cure?"

I hesitantly reached into my pocket and brought it out. 

When I unfolded the cloth it was empty.

"How?" Annabeth asked.

Jasper put his arm around me. "In Delos, Leo pulled the two of us aside. He pleaded with us to help him."

Through my tears, I explained how I had switched the physician's cure  – a trick of the lighting– so that Leo could keep the real vial. Jasper told them about Leo's plan to destroy a weakened Gaia with one massive fiery explosion. After talking with Nike and Apollo, Leo had been certain that such an explosion would kill any mortal within a quarter of a mile, so he knew he would have to get far away from everyone.

"He wanted to do it alone," Jasper said. "He thought there would be a slim chance that he, a son of Hephaestus, could survive the fire, but if anyone was with him ... He said that Eliana and I, , would understand about sacrifice since I was Roman and she could see the future. But he knew the rest of you would never allow it."

At first the others looked angry, like they wanted to scream and throw things. But, as Jasper and I talked, the group's rage seemed to dissipate. It was hard to be mad at us when

I was crying and Jasper was nearly in tears as well (he was trying to stay tough and refused to cry in front of other people but it wasn't really working). Also ... the plan sounded exactly like the sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.