The Blood of Olympus - Pompeii to Évora

“For Rome!” Reyna cried hoarsely. She slashed her gladius through one earthen ghost and stabbed her dagger in another’s chest. “Twelfth Legion Fulminata!”

All around her, zombies fell. Some were crushed in battle. Others disintegrated on their own as the residual power of Diocletian’s scepter finally failed.

The earthen ghosts closed in—a sea of misshapen faces with hollow eyes.

“Reyna, now!” Nico yelled. “We’re leaving!”

She glanced back. Nico had harnessed himself to the Athena Parthenos. He held the unconscious Gleeson Hedge in his arms like a damsel in distress. Aurum and Argentum had disappeared—perhaps too badly damaged to continue fighting.

Reyna stumbled.

A rock fist gave her a glancing blow to the rib cage, and her side erupted in pain. Her head swam. She tried to breathe, but it was like inhaling knives.

“Reyna!” Nico shouted again.

The Athena Parthenos flickered, about to disappear.

An earthen ghost swung at Reyna’s head. She managed to dodge, but the pain in her ribs almost made her black out.

Give up, said the voices in her head. The legacy of Rome is dead and buried, just like Pompeii.

“No,” she murmured to herself. “Not while I’m still alive.”

Nico stretched out his hand as he slipped into the shadows. With the last of her strength, Reyna leaped toward him.

[...]

THE LAST THING NICO HEARD was Coach Hedge grumbling, “Well, this isn’t good.”

He wondered what he’d done wrong this time. Maybe he’d teleported them into a den of Cyclopes, or a thousand feet above another volcano. There was nothing he could do about it. His vision was gone. His other senses were shutting down. His knees buckled and he passed out.

He tried to make the most of his unconsciousness.

Dreams and death were old friends of his. He knew how to navigate their dark borderland. He sent out his thoughts, searching for Thalia Grace.

He rushed past the usual fragments of painful memories—his mother smiling down at him, her face illuminated by the sunlight rippling off the Venetian Grand Canal; his sister Bianca laughing as she pulled him across the Mall in Washington, D.C., her green floppy hat shading her eyes and the splash of freckles across her nose.

[...]

Rachel set down her marking pen. “Annabeth knows what she’s doing. We have to try for peace. Unless we can unite the Greeks and Romans, the gods won’t be healed. Unless the gods are healed, there’s no way we can kill the giants. And unless we kill the giants—”

“Gaea wakes,” Connor said. “Game over. Look, Clarisse, Annabeth sent me a message from Tartarus. From fricking Tartarus. Anybody who can do that...hey, I listen to them.”

Clarisse opened her mouth to reply, but when she spoke it was Coach Hedge’s voice: “Nico, wake up. We’ve got problems.”

[...]

NICO SAT UP SO QUICKLY he head-butted the satyr in the nose.

“OW! Jeez, kid, you got a hard noggin!”

“S-sorry, Coach.” Nico blinked, trying to get his bearings. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t see any immediate threat. They were camped on a sunny lawn in the middle of a public square. Beds of orange marigolds bloomed all around them. Reyna was sleeping curled up, with her two metal dogs at her feet. A stone’s throw away, little kids played tag around a white marble fountain. At a nearby sidewalk café, half a dozen people sipped coffee in the shade of patio umbrellas. A few delivery vans were parked along the edges of the square, but there was no traffic. The only pedestrians were a few families, probably locals, enjoying a warm afternoon.

The square itself was cobblestone pavement, edged with white stucco buildings and lemon trees. In the center stood the well-preserved shell of a Roman temple. Its square base stretched maybe fifty feet wide and ten feet tall, with an intact facade of Corinthian columns rising another twenty-five feet. And at the top of the colonnade...

Nico’s mouth went dry. “Oh, Styx.”

The Athena Parthenos lay sideways along the tops of the columns like a nightclub singer sprawled across a piano. Lengthwise, she fit almost perfectly, but with Nike in her extended hand she was a bit too wide. She looked like she might topple forward at any moment.

“What is she doing up there?” Nico asked.

“You tell me.” Hedge rubbed his bruised nose. “That’s where we appeared. Almost fell to our deaths, but luckily I’ve got nimble hooves. You were unconscious, hanging in your harness like a tangled paratrooper until we managed to get you down.”

Nico tried to picture that, then decided he’d rather not. “Is this Spain?”

“Portugal,” Hedge said. “You overshot. By the way, Reyna speaks Spanish; she does not speak Portuguese. Anyway, while you were asleep, we figured out this city is Évora. Good news: it’s a sleepy little place. Nobody’s bothered us. Nobody seems to notice the giant Athena sleeping on top of the Roman temple, which is called the Temple of Diana, in case you were wondering. And people here appreciate my street performances! I’ve made about sixteen euros.”

He picked up his baseball cap, which jangled with coins.

Nico felt ill. “Street performances?”

“A little singing,” the coach said. “A little martial arts. Some interpretive dance.”

“Wow.”

“I know! The Portuguese have taste. Anyway, I supposed this was a decent place to lie low for a couple of days.”

Nico stared at him. “A couple of days?”

“Hey, kid, we didn’t have much choice. In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve been working yourself to death with all that shadow-jumping. We tried to wake you up last night. No dice.”

“So I’ve been asleep for—”

“About thirty-six hours. You needed it.”

Nico was glad he was sitting down. Otherwise he would’ve fallen down. He could’ve sworn he’d only slept a few minutes, but as his drowsiness faded, he realized he felt more clear-headed and rested than he had in weeks, maybe since before he went looking for the Doors of Death.

His stomach growled. Coach Hedge raised his eyebrows.

“You must be hungry,” said the satyr. “Either that, or your stomach speaks hedgehog. That was quite a statement in hedgehog.”

“Food would be good,” Nico agreed. “But first, what’s the bad news...I mean, aside from the statue being sideways? You said we had trouble.”


- The Blood of Olympus, Chapters 8, 13, and 14