madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-Ooh, what a waste of-

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Teqi trudged into the mess hall, scratching her hip where creases in the sheets had left red imprints. She kind of felt like she might puke from nerves after she remembered what day it was, only she hadn't had any breakfast yet.

Sometime late last night the ship docked at the harbour in Piraeus, on the outskirts of Athens, and the crew had tossed and turned in their beds and tried not to think about what was waiting for them over the hills at the Acropolis.

"Like your zodiac sign?" Percy asked at the table. "I'm a Leo."

Teqi was a Leo sign as well. The first date that made someone a Leo, actually.

"No, stupid," Leo said. "I'm a Leo. You're a Percy."

"Will you two stop it?" Hazel chided in a voice that told Teqi the poor girl had been dealing with them all morning. "I think he means gemini like doubled – half man, half snake. That's what his people are called. He's a geminis, singular."

She paused halfway to the kitchen and turned around. Okay. So, the morning had started without her.

A monster who could only be described as a snake man was seated between her friends, carrying a jewel-topped spears and sharing plates of orange ringed cake that Leo was already digging into.

His curled hair was oily, which matched his vaguely shiny human skin and the scales on his lower half. Being an eight foot long snake tail wrapped around the chair he was perched on.

He leaned away from Hazel as if she somehow offended him, wrapping his Greek robes further around himself. "Yes... Millennia ago, we were driven underground by the two-legged humans, but I know the ways of the city better than any. I came to warn you. If you try to approach the Acropolis aboveground, you will be destroyed."

Jason stopped nibbling his cake.

Colour had returned to his face, and he was drinking apple juice with the outward dismay of someone who favoured orange juice, so he was obviously feeling better. "You mean ... by you?"

Teqi walked to the table, the leftover fruit salad in the fridge forgotten. "And, uh, who are you?"

"I am Kekrops, the King of Athens," he said tiredly. She supposed he'd already done his introductions. "And you will not be destroyed by my men, but Porphyrion's armies. The Acropolis is ringed with great siege weapons – onagers."

"More onagers?" Frank protested. "Did they have a sale on them or something?"

She didn't like to think of the massive fiery catapults rolling up on the hill, beside Thalia's tree and the fluttering Golden Fleece. Pointed at her camp.

She took a little chunk of cake off of Leo's plate and didn't let her siblings and Will stay on her mind. "I thought you'd be subscribed to all the ancient Greek weapon magazines, you didn't get us any?"

"War Machines Weekly doesn't deliver outside the States," Leo said.

"The Cyclopes," Hazel guessed. "They're supplying both Octavian and the giants."

Percy grunted. "Like we needed more proof that Octavian is being manipulated by the wrong side."

"That is not the only threat," Kekrops warned them. He sighed, and rolled the spear in his hands. "The air is filled with storm spirits and gryphons. All roads to the Acropolis are patrolled by the Earthborn."