nobody said life's fair
The chimes stilled leaving an eerie silence within the grove.
Hina's mouth felt dry as she stared at the tree in horror. It had to be a mistake- the bronze fire-eater, the four-seater.
Her hand covered her mouth, afraid of throwing up.
Meg watched Apollo wearily. Her glasses nothing but spiderwebbed glass in cat eye frames.
"That prophecy," she said. "Did you understand it?"
"Perhaps. Some of it. We'll need to talk to Rachel—" Apollo started.
"There's no more we." Meg's tone was cold. "Do what you need to do. That's my final order."
Hina felt a punch to the gut, shocking her out of the trance that had overtook her. "What?"
"Meg, you can't," Apollo tried weakly. "You claimed my service. Until my trials are over—"
"I release you."
"No!" Apollo cried. "You can't possibly believe in Nero now. You heard him explain his plans. He means to level this entire island! You saw what he tried to do to his hostages."
"He—he wouldn't have let them burn. He promised. He held back. You saw it. That wasn't the Beast."
"Meg," Hina pleaded.
"Nero is the Beast. He killed your father," Apollo said.
"No! Nero is my stepfather. My dad...my dad unleashed the Beast. He made it angry."
"Meg—"
"Stop!" She covered her ears. "You don't know him. Nero is good to me. I can talk to him. I can make it okay."
Regardless of their victory, Hina would do it all over again if she could protect Meg. The girl was young, her reasoning irrational and beyond help.
Apollo edged forward, but Peaches snarled.
Meg backed away. "We're done."
"We can't be," Apollo said. "We're bound, whether you like it or not."
She gave them one last look through her cracked lenses. Hina wished Meg would grin and blow a raspberry but instead she fled. Peaches followed and the two melted into the trees.
It was just Apollo and Hina. They stood in silence, eyes locked on where Meg had once stood. The wind picked up, playing random notes on the wind chimes, but this time, no voices spoke.
"We should go," Hina whispered, giving up any hope Meg would return.
Reluctantly, Apollo turned. Hina led the way, her head hung low.
Behind her, Apollo stopped. Hina glanced towards him and watched as he reached down to pick up a stray arrow with green fletching.
How it had gotten there, Hina wasn't sure but she continued on, too dazed to make sense of it.
When they made it back to the entrance of the grove, Austin had freed the rest of the hostages.
They looked like they had been dipped in a vat of glue and cotton swabs, but otherwise they seemed remarkably undamaged. Ellis staggered around with his fists clenched, looking for something to punch. Cecil sat on the ground trying to clean his sneakers with a deer's thighbone. Austin had produced a canteen of water and was washing the Greek fire off of Kayla's face. Miranda Gardiner, the head counselor of Demeter, knelt by the place where the dryads had sacrificed themselves. She wept silently.
At the sight of Hina and Apollo Kayla ran forward pulling Hina into a tight hug. While Apollo spoke to Paulie the geyser god, Hina held onto Kayla a little longer than usual. She needed the support to stop her mind from spiraling.
With Paulie gone, the campers gathered around Apollo, Hina doing her best to blend in with the crowd.
Miranda looked passed him to the grove of Dodona. Her eyes were still puffy from crying. "So, the voices I heard from that grove...It's really an oracle? Those trees can give us prophecies?"
Hina noticed the fear pass over Apollo's face before he answered, "Perhaps."
"Can I see—?"
"No," He said instantly. "Not until we understand the place better."
"I don't get it," Ellis grumbled. "You're Apollo? Like, the Apollo."
"I'm afraid so. It's a long story."
"Oh, gods..." Kayla scanned the clearing. "I thought I heard Meg's voice earlier. Did I dream that? Was she with you? Is she okay?"
Apollo's eyes met Hina, agreement passing over the two.
"She's...alive," Apollo managed. "She had to leave."
"What?" Kayla asked. "Why?"
"Nero," Hina spoke up. His name felt like venom in her mouth. "She...she went after Nero."
"Hold up." Austin held his hands up in a t, like a referee signalling a timeout. "When you say Nero..."
Apollo did his best to fill the demigods in on their captor as Hina tied up any loose ends. The five deserved to know what had happened.
Yet, Hina felt that something was missing. Nero had called the grove a distraction, but from what?
Suddenly, Apollo's face paled. "Oh, gods. The Colossus."
"What Colossus?" Kayla asked. "You mean the Colossus of Rhodes?"
"No," he said shakily. "The Colossus Neronis."
Cecil scratched his head. "The Colossus Neurotic?"
Ellis Wakefield snorted. "You're a Colossus Neurotic, Markowitz. Apollo's talking about the big replica of Nero that stood outside the amphitheater in Rome, right?"
"I'm afraid so," Apollo said. "While we're standing here, Nero is going to try to destroy Camp Half-Blood. And the Colossus will be his wrecking crew."
Miranda flinched. "You mean a giant statue is about to stomp on camp? I thought the Colossus was destroyed centuries ago."
Ellis frowned. "Supposedly, so was the Athena Parthenos. Now it's sitting on top of Half-Blood Hill."
"Speaking of Athena..." Austin picked some incendiary fluff off his shoulder. "Won't the statue protect us? I mean, that's what she's there for, right?"
"She will try," Apollo guessed. "But you must understand, the Athena Parthenos draws her power from her followers. The more demigods under her care, the more formidable her magic. And right now—"
"The camp is basically empty," Hina finished.
"Not only that," Apollo said, "but the Athena Parthenos is roughly forty feet tall. If memory serves, Nero's Colossus was more than twice that."
Ellis grunted. "So they're not in the same weight class. It's an uneven match."
Cecil stood a little straighter. "Guys...did you feel that?"
Hina frowned, prepared to do some serious damage if Cecil had decided to start playing a prank. Then, the ground shook again, ever so slightly. From somewhere in the distance came a rumbling sound like a battleship scraping over a sandbar.
"Please tell me that was thunder," Kayla said.
Ellis cocked his head, listening. "It's a war machine. A big automaton wading ashore about half a klick from here. We need to get to camp right now."
Despite the fact that they were all still very flammable and had been awake for under an hour, the five demigods had rose to the challenge.
"How do we get out of here?" Austin asked. "The myrmekes' lair?"
Hina felt suffocated. Everyone looked between her and Apollo. She had no answers. They were so far from camp, they'd never make it on foot if they even made it out of the ants' nest.
Apollo stared at the Vince sized hole in the canopy. "I don't suppose any of you can fly?"
They shook their heads.
"I can cook," Cecil offered.
Ellis smacked him on the shoulder.
"I think there's a way," Apollo said. "But I'll need your help."
Austin balled his fists. "Anything you need. We're ready to fight."
"Actually...I don't need you to fight. I need you to lay down a beat."
Realization set over Hina. "You can't be serious."
What followed was the world's worst talent show Hina had ever had the horror of witnessing.
They looked like half-plucked, highly combustible chickens, as the demigods danced and kept an upbeat tempo.
Cecil despite his best efforts had zero sense of rhythm and waved his hands in the air in some kind of hip-hop preacher dance.
Apollo launched into a very scratchy rendition of "Mama", singing directly into the tunnel, allowing the pathways to carry his voice.
The ground began to rumble beneath them. The ragtag band continued, following Apollo's orders to not stop until the song ended, adjusting their feet to avoid toppling over.
Even so, they wavered as the ground burst open. Everyone's eyes had been fixed on the tunnels but Mama did not use tunnels. Dirt spewed in all directions as she dug her way up twenty yards away from the demigods. She scuttled forward, mandibles clacking, wings buzzing, dark Teflon eyes focused on me. Her abdomen was no longer swollen, no ant babies wiggling to be freed.
Behind her, three winged soldiers clambered out of the earth. They flanked the queen as she approached Apollo.
The song finished and Apollo dropped to his knees. "Mama," He said, "we need a ride."
Then, the queen grabbed Apollo in her mandibles and threw him into the air like a ragdoll. With a high pitched scream, he landed on the queen's back, letting out a series of yelps.
After a minute of composing himself, Apollo grinned down. "Join me! It's perfectly safe!"
Everyone hesitated. The ants did not however. Mama grabbed hold of Kayla and tossed her behind Apollo. The two closest soldier ants each took two demigods, leaving the last for Hina.
The four myrmekes revved their wings with a noise like radiator fan blades.
Hina held onto the myrmeke as tightly as she could. "Thank you ant. Please don't kill me," She thought to herself as Mama soared into the air, breaking a second hole in the canopy.
The ants followed, hovering high in the sky. It was almost reassuring to be in the sky again, a reminder of the adventures she had survived.
As they veered east screams echoed from Camp Half-Blood.
A hundred foot tall bronze statue waded through the waters of Long Island Sound, its face bearing near perfect resemblance to the Apollo Hina had met years ago.
In his hands he held a ship's rudder attached to fifty foot long pole, which he used to smash Camp Half-Blood to bits.
All across the valley campers screamed and ran for their weapons. Will and Nico floundered in the lake, their canoe capsized and drifting away from them. Chiron galloped through the dunes, harrying the Colossus with his arrows. He used his centuries of training as he aimed for weak spots in the giant: his joints and seams, but nothing seemed to bother it.
"More quivers!" Chiron shouted. "Quickly!"
Rachel Dare stumbled from the armory carrying half a dozen, and she ran to resupply him.
The statue brought down his makeshift weapon over the dining pavilion but his blade bounced off the camp's magical barrier, sparking as if it had hit solid metal. He tried to take another step inland but the barrier resisted, pushing the statue away with the force of a gale-wind.
On Half-Blood Hill, a silver aura surrounded the Athena Parthenos. Every so often, a beam of ultraviolet light shot from Athena's helmet, hitting the Colossus and pushing the invader back.
If it had been a stray monster Hina wouldn't be worried, but the Athena Parthenos was a first line of defense, not a destroyer. It would only be minutes before the Colossus would break through the barrier and crush anything in its path.
Even against the odds, more campers joined the battle. Sherman had harnessed two pegasi to a chariot and circled the statue's legs, while Julia and Alice threw electric javelins at the Colossus's knees. The missiles stuck in his joints, discharging tendrils of blue lightning, but the statue barely seemed to notice. Meanwhile, at his feet, Connor and Harley used twin flamethrowers to give the Colossus a fire bath, while the Nike twins manned a catapult, lobbing boulders at the Colossus's Celestial bronze crotch.
Malcolm took charge organizing attacks, using his strategy prowess gifted to him by his mother, Athena. Nyssa had spread war maps across a card table and were shouting targeting coordinates, while Chiara, Damien, Paolo, and Billie rushed to set up ballistae around the communal hearth.
In all the chaos, Malcolm seemed composed, no trace of fear anywhere in his eyes as he shouted commands. The only thing missing from the teenaged war commander, were pants- his red briefs contrasting against his armor like a very painful target for weapons.
Suddenly, Mama dove towards the Colossus, leading the charge as the other ants followed. Hina held on for her life as her stomach remained somewhere above them.
The closer the got the more Hina felt like throwing up. Besides being impossibly huge and formidable, the statue was a complete replica of Apollo, leaving nothing up to imagination and she wasn't sure she'd ever recover from the hyper realistic and disgusting image that had burned itself into her mind.
The last thing Hina wanted to see before she died was a full frontal, let alone one of her godly father in the form of a bronze statue with bloodlust.
As they neared, Apollo yelled as loudly as possible, "Imposter! I am the real Apollo and you're ugly!"
What his goal was, Hina wasn't sure.
In response, the Colossus swung its rudder upwards as the ants veered away. In a horrifying second, Hina realized they weren't fast enough to evade the rudder as it neared them.
"Duck!" She called, flattening herself against the back of the myrmeke.
They plunged downward and Hina felt the edge of the rudder graze the ants' wings, the wind of the attack shoving them through the air.
Of all her crash landings, Hina had to rank the myrmekes' as the least painful. The ant she sat on skidded across the beach, spraying Hina with a sandcastle's worth of dirt.
As they slowed, the myrmeke toppled over, sending Hina hurdling into the sand.
Hina rose, dusting off the sand from her body as she approached the ant. She rested a hand on its back as he shook his wings clean. "Thanks."
The Colossus stared down at them, perhaps trying to decide if they had any life ending injuries before smashing them out of existance.
Austin and Kayla helped Apollo to his feet as he took in the scene. Turning to the ants, he gave them a soft smile. "Thank you. Now save yourselves. Fly!"
They didn't need to be told twice and took off into the sky.
Miranda looked after them. "I never thought I'd say this about bugs, but I'm going to miss those guys."
"Hey!" called Nico. He and Will scrambled over the dunes, still dripping from their swim in the canoe lake.
"What's the plan?" Will seemed calm, but Hina knew him well enough to recognize the sliver of fear hiding behind his hopeful eyes.
The ground shook. One more step and the Colossus would leave them as pancakes beneath its foot.
"Isn't there a control valve on its ankle?" Ellis asked. "If we can open it—"
"No," Apollo shook his head. "You're thinking of Talos. This is not Talos."
"Then what?" Nico wiped his soaking wet hair from his face.
Apollo glanced up at the statue, Hina following his gaze. From where they stood, they got a lovely view of the Colossus's nose. Its nostrils were sealed with bronze, hiding any nose hair that Hina assumed would attack them too.
Beside her Apollo yelped.
Kayla grabbed his arm. "Apollo, what's wrong?"
"Hina, Will, Kayla, Austin," he said, "come with me."
"And Nico," said Nico. "I have a doctor's note."
"Fine!" Apollo relented. "Ellis, Cecil, Miranda—do whatever you can to keep the Colossus's attention."
The shadow of an enormous foot darkened the sand.
"Now!" Hina yelled. "Scatter!"
Like crabs discovered under a rock, Miranda, Cecil, and Ellis ran in different directions, screaming insults at the Colossus and waving their arms. It gave the rest a few seconds to sprint for the dunes, but Hina knew it wouldn't be long before the Colossus came looking for Apollo.
Apollo pointed to Sherman, as he continued circling the Colossus's knees. "We need to commandeer that chariot!"
"How?" Kayla asked.
Before anyone could answer, Nico grabbed his boyfriend's hand and stepped into Apollo's shadow. In an instant the two disappeared.
Austin shuddered. "I hate it when Nico disappears like that. What's our plan?"
"You three are my backup," Apollo said. "If I miss, if I die...it will be up to you."
"Whoa, whoa," Kayla interjected, holding up her hands. "What do you mean if you miss?"
In response, he drew the arrow Hina had seen in the woods. "I'm going to shoot that gorgeous gargantuan in the ear."
Kayla and Austin exchanged looks, silently asking the other if Apollo had finally lost his mind. Hina's answer was 'yes, of course he has,' but they didn't seem interested in her opinion.
"A plague arrow," Apollo explained. "I'm going to enchant an arrow with sickness, then shoot it into the statue's ear. Its head is hollow. The ears are the only openings. The arrow should release enough disease to kill the Colossus's animating power...or at least to disable it."
"How do you know you can still do that?" Hina asked, thinking back to his sudden burst of strength in the forest.
"I don't, but—"
The conversation was ruined by the sudden appearance of the Colossus's foot approaching them.