HORIZON ⸺ jason grace

iii. leo puts jason and violet on blast

VIOLET'S FIRST IMPRESSION of the Romans; they knew how to eat.

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirits— aurae—swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies. Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts— Lares—in togas and legionnaire armor.

Around the edges of the feast, satyrs (no, fauns) trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change. In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs. O'Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits.

The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Violet vertigo. Her mind was racing to process too much input, and her sickening feeling hadn't gone away.

But she would have to wait to think on it. If their quest was going to succeed, they needed these Romans, which meant getting to know them and building some goodwill.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the gods) sat with the Argo II crew. Percy joined them with his two new friends, Frank and Hazel.

Violet sat in between Jason and her brother, fidgeting slightly. As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over and whispered, "I want to show you around New Rome. The place is incredible."

Violet nodded, though she couldn't help but assume that Jason had similar plans in mind. How would she explain that?

She tried not to stare at the new marks on Percy's forearm—an SPQR tattoo like Jason's. At Camp Half-Blood, demigods got bead necklaces to commemorate years of training. Here, the Romans burned a tattoo into your flesh, as if to say: You belong to us. Permanently.

She swallowed back some biting comments. "Percy, we have a lot to talk about—" she stopped as Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the two groups began exchanging stories. Jason explained how he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he'd gone on a quest with Violet, Piper, and Leo to rescue the goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick—she was equally insufferable in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California.

"Impossible!" Octavian broke in. "That's our most sacred place. If the giants had imprisoned a goddess there—"

"They would've destroyed her," Violet said. "And blamed it on the Greeks, and started a war between the camps."

"Now, be quiet and let Jason finish," Piper used her charmspeak, so when Octavian opened his mouth, no sound came out.

Violet spotted Reyna, whose eyes were flitting between her and Jason, as if trying to figure out what they were to each other.

"So," Jason continued, "that's how we found out about the earth goddess Gaea. She's still half asleep, but she's the one freeing the monsters from Tartarus and raising the giants. Porphyrion, the big leader dude we fought at the Wolf House: he said he was retreating to the ancient lands—Greece itself. He plans on awakening Gaea and destroying the gods by...what did he call it? Pulling up their roots."

Percy nodded thoughtfully. "Gaea's been busy over here, too. We had our own encounter with Queen Dirt Face."

Percy recounted his side of the story. He talked about waking up at the Wolf House with no memories except for two names—Violet and Annabeth.

Percy told them how he'd traveled to Alaska with Frank and Hazel—how they'd defeated the giant Alcyoneus, freed the death god Thanatos, and returned with the lost golden eagle standard of the Roman camp to repel an attack by the giants' army.