madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-mazes and sad dark haired boys-

I'm sorry for the title I was just watching newt edits :/

Leo pulled a tiny screwdriver from his tool belt. He stabbed a slice of banana and passed it to Coach Hedge. Then he pulled out another screwdriver and speared a second chunk for himself.

"So, the twenty-million-peso question," Leo said, wiping his mouth. "We got this slightly used forty-foot-tall statue of Athena. What do we do with it?"

Reyna squinted at the Athena Parthenos. "As fine as it looks on this hill, I didn't come all this way to admire it. According to Annabeth, it must be returned to Camp Half-Blood by a Roman leader. Do I understand correctly?"

Annabeth nodded. "I had a dream down in... I was on Half-Blood Hill, and Athena's voice said, I must stand here. The Roman must bring me."

"It makes sense," Nico said. He was eating slices of orange, but it was that kind of orange that you cut in half only to realise its red on the inside. He looked a bit like a Vrykolakas, from Lou Ellen's picture books. Teqi looked away before he could make eye contact. "The statue is a powerful symbol. A Roman returning it to the Greeks...that could heal the historic rift, maybe even heal the gods of their split personalities."

Coach Hedge swallowed his banana along with the entire screwdriver. "Now, hold on. I like peace as much as the next satyr—"

"You hate peace," Leo said, narrowing his eyes.

"The point is, Valdez, we're only—what, a few days from Athens? We got an army of giants waiting for us there. We went to all the trouble of saving this statue—"

"Annabeth, went to all the trouble," Teqi corrected.

Annabeth jolted, and then she was being yanked backwards and dragged towards the pit still leaking cold air.

"—because that prophecy called it the giants' bane," the coach continued, now picking grass out of the ground and eating it. "So why aren't we taking it to Athens with us? It's obviously our secret weapon. It looks like a ballistic missile to me. Maybe if Valdez strapped some engines to it—"

Piper put her raspberry biscuit down. She was twirling her knife between her fingers. "Uh, great idea, Coach, but a lot of us have had dreams and visions of Gaea rising at Camp Half-Blood... Since we got back to the ship. I've been seeing some bad stuff in the knife. The Roman legion is almost within striking distance of Camp Half-Blood. They're gathering reinforcements: spirits, eagles, wolves."

"Octavian," Reyna growled. "I told him to wait."

"When we take over command," Frank suggested, dipping celery sticks into the peanut butter, "our first order of business should be to load Octavian into the nearest catapult and fire him as far away as possible."

"But for now—"

"He's intent on war," Annabeth put in. "He'll have it, unless we stop him."

Piper turned the blade of her knife. "Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. I saw images of a possible future—the camp in flames, Roman and Greek demigods lying... dead. And Gaea..." Her voice faltered.

Teqi didn't want to know who those Greek demigods lying dead had been.

She didn't want to think of the battle coming, the one she probably wouldn't be there for. How was she supposed to save her friends on the other side of the world? How was she going to pull herself up and out of that pit of grief if any more of her family was gone when she returned?