plague bringer - a heroes of olympus insert

𝗑𝗑𝗏𝗂𝗂𝗂. 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍 𝗎𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍?

Things went wrong immediately. The giants vanished in twin puffs of smoke. They reappeared halfway across the room, each in a different spot. Percy and Aria sprinted toward Ephialtes since he was manning the control panel, but slots in the floor opened under their feet, and metal walls shot up on either side, separating them from their friends.

The walls started closing in on them like the sides of a vise grip. Percy jumped up and grabbed the bottom of the hydra's cage before pulling Aria up to join him. She caught a brief glimpse of Piper leaping across a hopscotch pattern of fiery pits, making her way toward Nico, who was dazed and weaponless and being stalked by a pair of leopards. Meanwhile Jason charged at Otis, who pulled his spear and heaved a great sigh, as if he would much rather dance Swan Lake than kill another demigod.

Aria registered all this in a split second, but there wasn't much she could do about it. The hydra snapped at her hands. They both swung and dropped, landing in a grove of painted plywood trees that sprang up from nowhere. The trees changed positions as they tried to run through them, so Percy slashed down the whole forest with Riptide.

"Wonderful!" Ephialtes cried. He stood at his control panel about sixty feet to Aria's left. "We'll consider this a dress rehearsal. Shall I unleash the hydra onto the Spanish Steps now?"

He pulled a lever, and Aria glanced behind her. The cage the two of them had just been hanging from was now rising toward a hatch in the ceiling. In three seconds it would be gone. If they attacked the giant, the hydra would ravage the city. Cursing, Percy threw Riptide like a boomerang. The sword wasn't designed for that, but the Celestial bronze blade sliced through the chains suspending the hydra. The cage tumbled sideways. The door broke open, and the monster spilled out—right in front of the pair.

"Oh, you are a spoilsport, Jackson!" Ephialtes called. "Very well. Battle it here, if you must, but your death won't be nearly as good without the cheering crowds."

Percy almost stepped forward to confront the monster, but Aria held him back. "Go get your sword. I got this one, trust me."

He nodded and went to get his sword as Aria stepped forward to attack the hydra. Luckily, this was one of the monsters that she knew a bit about.

She rolled to one side as all eight hydra heads spit acid, turning the floor where she'd been standing into a steaming crater of melted stone. Aria really didn't like hydras. It was almost a good thing that she hadn't drawn her sword yet, since her gut instinct would've been to slash at the heads, and a hydra simply grew two new ones for each one it lost.

She knew she couldn't cut off parts of the hydra, but maybe, just maybe, she could use something else. Aria summoned her bow and fired a couple shots at the hydra, causing it to roar in pain. The hydra lashed out. Aria ducked behind a giant hamster wheel and scanned the room, looking for some other weapon she could use.

At the dais, Piper stood guard over Nico as the leopards advanced. She aimed her cornucopia and shot a pot roast over the cats' heads. It must have smelled pretty good, because the leopards raced after it. About eighty feet to Piper's right, Jason battled Otis, sword against spear. Otis had lost his diamond tiara and looked angry about it. He probably could have impaled Jason several times, but the giant insisted on doing a pirouette with every attack, which slowed him down. Meanwhile Ephialtes laughed as he battled Percy. Although her friend was doing damage, the giant was regenerating. He would occasionally move from the fight to push buttons on his control board, cranking the conveyor belts into high gear and opening random animal cages.

The hydra charged around the hamster wheel. Aria swung behind a column, grabbed a garbage bag full of Wonder bread, and threw it at the monster. The hydra spit acid, which was a mistake. The bag and wrappers dissolved in midair. The Wonder bread absorbed the acid like fire extinguisher foam and splattered against the hydra, covering it in a sticky, steaming layer of high-calorie poisonous goo.