Forgotten memories

I should not be in a bar?

Midtown looked like the end of the world. Smoke curled into the night sky. Fires flickered in shattered windows. Everywhere I turned, there were little pockets of chaos—tiny wars inside the big one.

A giant was tearing up trees in Bryant Park while dryads swarmed him, pelting acorns and pinecones like machine gun fire. Outside the Waldorf Astoria, a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin was beating a hellhound senseless with a rolled-up newspaper. At Rockefeller Center, three Hephaestus campers were going head-to-head against a squad of dracaenae, sparks flying with every clash of metal.

I wanted to stop. Gods, every part of me screamed to help. But the smoke ahead told me everything I needed to know—the real fight, the one that mattered, was further south. Our defenses were crumbling, and the enemy was closing in on the Empire State Building.

We'd set up our last stand on Thirty-Seventh, just three blocks north of Olympus. Hunters held the line where I ordered them to dig in. To the east, on Park Avenue, Jake Mason and his crew of Hephaestus kids were leading an army of statues into battle like some kind of mechanical phalanx. To the west, the Demeter cabin and Grover's nature spirits had turned Sixth Avenue into a full-blown jungle, roots and vines strangling Kronos's troops at every turn.

The south was holding for now—but the enemy flanks were curling inward like claws. We had minutes. Maybe less. Then we'd be surrounded, crushed, and Olympus would fall.

Annabeth, Christine, and I were locked in a desperate fight with a Hyperborean giant, one of those massive frost monsters that could make the temperature plummet just by breathing. The giant Orion was somewhere out there, arrows flying like artillery shells in the distance, but we'd been split apart in the chaos.

And then—out of nowhere—a shadow tore across the sky. A sound like ripping wind. I glanced up just in time to see Percy Jackson, riding Pegasus like some kind of freaking aerial cavalry charge, diving toward us at the speed of a jet.

He launched off Pegasus mid-air and came down hard on the giant's head.

The Hyperborean roared, staggering under the impact. Percy didn't stop—he slid down the giant's face like it was a playground slide, shield-first, and smashed the monster right in the nose on the way down.

"RAWWWR!" The giant reeled backward, blue blood spraying from his nostrils like busted plumbing.

Percy hit the pavement running. The Hyperborean exhaled a freezing cloud that turned the entire street white. Ice spread across the ground like wildfire—except, you know, cold. The spot where Percy had landed glittered like a frozen lake, and Percy himself looked like a human sugar doughnut, glazed in frost.

"Hey, Ugly!" Christine yelled, and for half a second, I prayed she wasn't talking to me.

The giant spun toward her voice, bellowing in rage—and that's when Percy made his move. He lunged forward and drove Riptide straight into the back of the monster's knee.

The Hyperborean let out a strangled wail and dropped to one leg, clutching at the wound. Then something weird happened. He stopped moving. Completely.

At first, I thought he'd frozen in fear, but then I saw the cracks. They started at the wound and spiderwebbed across his entire body. Ice crystals burst from the fractures, spreading so fast I barely had time to blink before the giant was nothing but a jagged blue statue. One second later—CRASH! He shattered into a mountain of glittering shards that sparkled under the streetlights.

"Thanks," Annabeth panted, bracing herself on her good arm. She looked like she'd just run a marathon with a spear through her shoulder. "The pig?"

"Pork chops," Percy said without missing a beat.