madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-jason's impaling [one of two?]-

⋆˖⁺‧₊🌥️🪽🏛️⭐🐺₊‧⁺˖⋆

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Jason slashed his gladius in a wide arc, vaporizing the nearest suitors, then he scrambled onto the table, kicking over plates of meat and piles of fruit as he did. He nearly slipped and cracked his head open on an orange. He jumped right over Antinous's head.

In midair he willed his blade to extend into a javelin - a trick he'd never tried with this sword - but somehow, he hoped it would work. Somehow, it did.

He landed on his feet holding a six-foot-long pilum, as sharp as Leo's wit when you woke him up early. As Antinous turned to face him, Jason thrust the Imperial gold point through the ghoul's chest.

Antinous looked down incredulously. "You-"

"Enjoy the Fields of Punishment." Jason yanked out his pilum and Antinous crumbled to dirt.

Jason kept fighting, spinning his javelin - slicing through ghosts, knocking ghouls off their feet, stopping to sneeze when he kicked up too much dust. The usual.

He glanced around the courtyard quickly. There were still at least a hundred or so enemies cracking their knuckles. Through a gap in the ghostly crowd, he spotted Annabeth cracking skulls with her drakon-bone sword.

Piper was beckoning a bloodied Greek soldier towards her, knife behind her back. Her other hand was shielding a very lost looking Teqi.

"I WILL END-"

"I'm busy," Jason snapped, and tore a hole through the stomach of the suitor.

He knocked another guy down and ran along a few benches pulled together to avoid a brawl. An arrow whistled towards his face. He blew it aside with a gust of wind and noticed a dozen suitors regrouping by the fountain to charge Piper. Teqi was standing next to her with her hands over her ears.

He lifted his javelin to the sky. A bolt of lightning ricocheted off the point and blasted the ghosts to ions, leaving a smoking crater where the sand filled fountain had been.

Piper whipped around, hair spiked up and full of static. "Dude!"

"I saved you!" he argued.

"I just washed my hair!" she argued back, gutting the Greek soldier from his armpit to his hip. Goulash intestines and chunks of flesh spilled out all over her hand. She wrinkled her nose. "Ew!"

Another one ran at her from behind, and someone was loading the catapult with suitors in their direction. She pushed Teqi out of the way again, picking up her serving jug and lifting it above her head.

Jason grabbed his friend's arm and tugged them out of the fray. He yelled over the sound of breaking bones and pottery. "I've got her!"

For the first time since waking up in Arizona with his memories erased, Jason felt like he could take on everyone here without a scratch. It was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. A chopped off arm flew past him.

He knew who he was.

He had chosen his family, and it had nothing to do with Beryl Grace or even Jupiter. His family included all the demigods who fought at his side, fallen out of the sky [so many times, so many times] at his side, sat around the kitchen table planning routes at his side.