RECLUSE - (n) a person who lives a solitary life and tends to avoid other people.
MAISIE ELLIOT WAS ANGRY.
Angry at the world.
Angry at the Gods.
Angry at the demigods who seemed to move on too fast.
And when forced onto a quest with three stranger...
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MAISIE FIDDLED WITH HER RINGS
She would never admit it, but the cyclopses had really scared her. More than she would have liked to admit. Knowing that she was hanging helplessly and didn't even try to escape scared her. Why wouldn't she fight back?
Jason jolted behind her. "Cyclops!" He shouted.
"Woah, sleepyhead." Piper sat behind him on the dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced.
"D-Detroit," he stammered. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"
"It's okay," Leo said. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"
"How did you— the cyclops—"
"Leo ripped them apart." Piper said. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"
"It was nothing." Leo said quickly.
Piper laughed. "Shut up, Leo. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."
Piper continued to rant about how amazing Leo was, and how Ma Gasket mentioned eating a Latin speaking, purple shirt kid.
They all continued to talk about how 'Jason might not be alone' and 'why was Hera talking to them', but Maisie just felt horrible. She had made that deal with the woman in her dreams. She had to betray them. She wondered if accepting the deal is what made the dragon crash in the first place.
She listened back into the conversation when she heard a familiar name. Enceladus.
"Enceladus?." Jason asked, they hadn't heard that name yet.
"I mean ..." pipers voice quavered. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."
She was lying. Nobody they had met yet mentioned that giant. Was she also visited by the Woman? What if they all were?
"Well I don't know about enchiladas—" Leo began.
"Enceladus," Piper corrected.
"Whatever. But old potty face mentioned another name. Porpoise fear, or something?"
"Porphyrion." Maisie stated. "He was a giant king."
"I'm going to take a wild guess," Jason started. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and gods."
"I think so," Piper agreed. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted the story to survive. I just remember that there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."
"Heroes and gods had to work together, that's what Hera told me." Jason said.
"That's kinda hard to do," Leo grumbled. "When the gods won't even talk to us."
