madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-falling trees, get off your knees-

we're gonna finish this i promise this story is fucking haunting me i'm tryna graduate and this story comes up behind me and whispers evil into my ear like the fucking green goblin mask i need to be free

⋆˖⁺‧₊🪞🗡️🕊️🕯️🐚₊‧⁺˖⋆

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For the next three minutes, life was rad.

So much happened at once.

Jason fell onto King Porphyrion with such force and power, literal, electrical, power, that the giant stumbled to his knees and jerked with shock– stabbed in the neck with a golden gladius. Jason flew around the waving's fists to pull his weapon back out, dodging flying volleys of earthborn weapons.

The earth itself shook, effects of the giants howls and roars and general stomping and thumping as they were hit in every direction by very small demigods.

Frank raked his eagle talons across a stray giants face and then flapped to a landing on the tallest temple column, where he became Frank with a bow and a quiver and a backup quiver. He drove the giants surrounding them back, back into the smoking fields, with an unrelenting onslaught of arrows that Piper couldn't keep track of until they appeared in flesh.

Then he began picking off every cyclopes and ogre that tried to defend their leaders.

Arion hit the ground running, a wake of gold and dust behind him. Hazel zipped between the giants like a balloon losing air, leaving behind confused giants with shredded legs and no enemy. Arrows quickly sprouted in the wounds.

Piper laughed as she turned, watching the fight. She tipped sideways a little trying keeping her footing on the cracked and shifting temple grounds.

An ogre beat its chest and charged at her. Piper caught the edge of its blow with her shoulder and then sunk her sword into the back of its neck, kicking it to the ground once it went limp. Another grunted its way over and she yelled "Fuck off!" with so much charm speak that it nodded quickly and turned tail.

Her hair whipped around her face as the winds picked up. Jason landed next to her, his sword back in his hand.

"Fancy seeing you here," Piper panted, pushing her fringe from her eyes. She checked the skies again. "Where's-"

"Technical difficulties," Jason quipped, and then grabbed her arm and they made a run for cover as the old giant Thoon trampled everything in its path. It blundered past, panicked. Percy was not far behind, waving his sword and yelling swear words.

Piper stood back to back with Jason as they surrounded themselves in showers of golden dust, hacking down cyclopes who blinked obliviously at their wounds and then dissipated. She turned to him, "What do you-"

"The Argo II isn't doing great," Jason said quietly to her, and then impaled an earthborn before it smashed his face in with its many hands. "I don't-" he looked away. "Leo's trying, but it'd do more use to just fly it into a giants face."

A stupid, naive, wildly optimistic hope that may have jinxed the entire battle flitted into Piper's head as she watched her friends fight. She knew it was idiotic, but looking around Piper thought that maybe they wouldn't need the failing Argo II, and Leo and Teqi. They were holding their ground.

With extremely bad timing, Kekrops and his snake people chose that moment to join the fight. In four or five places around the ruins, the ground turned to green goo and armed gemini burst forth, Kekrops himself in the lead.