SANITY; heroes of olympus

05.2

Piper shook her head, "No, you need to get back to the ship! You can't fight like this."

But Andy was stubborn as she stumbled to her feet, Mania somehow back in her hand, it's magic connected to her own. "I'm fine." She cut down a ghoul when it lunged her way. "Let's just get this over with."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched an arrow as it whistled towards Jason's face. He blew it aside with a gust of wind, then cut through a line of sword-wielding ghouls and noticed a dozen suitors regrouping by the fountain to charge Annabeth. 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 fountain had been.

He summoned the winds and flung three ghouls off the side of the hill like rag dolls. He skewered a fourth, then willed his javelin to shrink back to a sword and hacked through another group of spirits.

Soon no more enemies faced him. The remaining ghosts began to disappear on their own. Annabeth cut down Hasdrubal the Carthaginian, and Jason made the mistake of sheathing his sword.

And Andy felt something flare across her body, stemming from her back, near the centre. She knew that feeling, recognised it. The power of the mystical connection to another weapon rooted from Mania—a warning.

So she once again did what she always does: protects. She parried with the remaining ghouls and zig zagged her way towards Jason, towards her partner and shielded his body with her own, gasping when a sharp pain flared right where that thrum had originated from.

Next to her ear, Michael Varus snarled, "Not the one I was aiming for, but you'll do. Born a Roman, die a Roman."

The tip of a golden sword jutted through the front of Andy's shirt, just below her ribcage. She fell to her knees, Jason going with her as he wrapped her up in his arms. Piper's scream sounded miles away and Annabeth's shout of fury echoed in her ears. She felt like she'd been immersed in salty water—her body weightless, head swaying.

Piper charged towards them. She watched with detached emotion as her sword passed over his head and cut through Michael Varus's armour with a metallic slice.

Jason tightened his arms around her as she began to shiver from a sudden burst of cold on her back. His hands were braced around the sword, around the wound. He pressed his head against hers, and tapped his fingers along her spine several times, a silent pattern that only a Roman would know.

It was him telling her to stay alive, to stay out of Elysium, that it was not time for her to join the great heroes yet.

Annabeth ran to their side. She had a nasty cut on the side of her neck and observed the situation, no doubt trying to come up with a plan.

"Gods." Annabeth stared at the wound in Andy's gut. "Oh, gods."

"Pull it out." Andy gasped. She saw the way all of her friends looked at her—like she was crazy. So she said again, "Pull it out, or I will."

They all knew she was being honest, so Jason clutched the hilt of the sword and pulled. The redhead choked in all of the noises of pain that were trying to escape her, pressing her face into his shoulder as her body tensed, arching into the agony. The blonde lowered her to the ground, his hands pressing into the wound.

Andy wheezed as her lungs worked overtime. "Fuck."

Her arms and legs started to tingle as her body went into crisis mode, sending all the blood to her chest. She thought the scars on her back were bad...this was a new pain, a different kind. A worse kind. The pain was dull, which surprised her, but her shirt was soaked red, the shirt that had been given to her by Paul for Christmas. The wound was smoking. She was pretty sure sword wounds weren't supposed to smoke, and could practically hear Will Solace scolding her.