"Excellent!" the giant roared as Jason approached. "An appetizer! Who are you—Hermes? Ares?"
Jason thought about going with that idea, but something told him not to. "I'm Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."
Those white eyes bored into him. Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. "Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you."
The sky didn't even rumble. No help from above. They were on their own.
"And how about you?" he asked. "Are you a daughter of Zeus as well? Or perhaps Hades? Or Athena?"
Cressida's spear echoed as she banged it on the ground, the grapevines stiffening in attention. "Cressida Lynn. I'm the daughter of Dionysus."
The giant laughed again. "You will make a delicious second course."
"If you knew who I was," Jason yelled up at the giant, "you'd be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because we're going to send you right back to Tartarus."
The giant's eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent. "So ... we'll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demigod. I am Porphryion, king of the giants, son of Gaia. In olden times, I rose from Tatarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the gods. To start the war, I stole Zeus's queen." He grinned at the goddess's cage. "Hello, Hera."
"My husband destroyed you once, monster!" Hera said. "He'll do it again!"
"But he didn't, my dear! Zeus wasn't powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demigod to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaia is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth— and we will destroy you at the roots."
"You wouldn't dare," Hera said, but she was weakening, you could hear it in her voice.
"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaia is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees—your eldest roots torn out and burned."
Cressida's eyes were on fire at the mention of the Titan war and how insignificant he made it sound when she and dozens others lost so much.
"You said a demigod killed you," he shouted. "How, if we're so puny?"
"Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus's replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife—or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!"
He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty-foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon's feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather—storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king's call.
"Great," Leo muttered. "We needed more enemies."
"Hurry," Hera said.
"I know!" Leo snapped.
"Go to sleep, cage," Piper said. "Nice, sleepy cage. Yes, I'm talking to a bunch of earthen tendrils. This isn't weird at all."
Porphyrion raked his spear across the top of the ruins, destroying a chimney and spraying wood and stone across the courtyard. "So, child of Zeus! Daughter of Dionysus! I have finished my boasting. Now it's your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?"
The two of them stared at the ring of monsters waiting impatiently for their master's orders to tear them to shreds. Leo's circular saw kept whirring, and Piper kept talking, but it seemed hopeless. Hera's cage was almost completely filled with earth.
"I'm the son of Jupiter!" he shouted, and just for effect, he summoned the winds, rising a few feet off the ground. "I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion." Jason didn't know quite what he was saying, but he rattled off the words like he'd said them many times before. He held out his arms, showing the tattoo of the eagle and SPQR, and to his surprise, the giant seemed to recognize it.
For a moment, Porphyrion actually looked uneasy.
"I slew the Trojan sea monster," Jason continued. "I toppled the black throne of Kronos and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."
"Wow, dude," Leo muttered. "You been eating red meat?"
And then the ground began to shake as Cressida's hands burst into flames and her grapevines wrapped around her feet as they lifted her up into the air.
"I am the daughter of Dionysus!" she bellowed, her voice so loud their eardrums vibrated. "I am the leader of Camp Half-Blood. I've led its troops into battle. I blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus. I bore the weight of the sky; I took on Atlas' curse. I've saved Artemis. I've journeyed into the Labyrinth, into the Underworld. I've decimated Kronos' army. I helped turn the Titan Hyperion into a damned tree. I fought Kronos myself. I defended Manhattan. I defended Olympus. I saved New York. I saved the gods. And you will not undo everything I've done! You, Porphyrion, you, will be the latest line to my list of conquests."
And she let out a battle cry as she and Jason launched themselves at the giant king, determined to tear him apart.
Jason landed on the giant's knee, climbing up his arm before Porphyrion even realised what had happened.
"You dare?!" the giant shouted.
Jason reached his shoulders and ripped a sword out of the giant's weapon-filled braids. He yelled, "For Rome!" and drove the sword into the nearest convenient target—the giant's massive ear.
Lightning streaked out of the sky and blasted the sword, throwing Jason free. He rolled when he hit the ground. When he looked up, the giant was staggering. His hair was on fire, and the side of his face was blackened from lightning. The sword had splintered in his ear. Golden ichor ran down his jaw. The other weapons were sparking and smouldering in his braids.
And then Cressida struck.
Her spear was thrown into his throat, ichor spilling out of the wound as Cressida's vines launched her onto his head, into the fire. Her arms danced out as the orange fire turned purple before it disappeared and she let out a scream as her vines shot up from the ground, the plants as thick as the plane Piper's father owned as they wrapped around the giant, slithering up him like a serpent and like the dirt had done to Hera.
"NO!" Porphyrion yelled to his troops as he began stabbing at the vines with his own spear and trying to shake Cressida from his head. "I will kill them myself."
The giant raised his spear and it began to glow. "You want to play with lightning, boy? You forget. I am the bane of Zeus. I was created to destroy your father, which means I know exactly what will kill you."
While Jason looked nervous, Cressida was unfazed.
"But you know nothing of what can kill me. For Olympus!" she said as her thyrsus appeared in her hand, and she drove the sharpened point into the giant's skull as if she was planting a flag.
The giant cried out in agony as he reached for his head, only for Cressida to jump free, a grapevine diverting course as she slid down it like she was on a surfboard and back onto the ground.
Her thyrsus was the size of a toothpick in the giant's hand as he managed to pluck it out and toss it away, growling at them as he prepared to attack.
"Got it!" Leo yelled.
"Sleep!" Piper said, so forcefully, the nearest wolves fell to the ground and began snoring. The stone and wood cage crumbled. Leo had sawed through the base of the thickest tendril and apparently cut off the cage's connection to Gaia. The tendrils turned to dust. The mud around Hera disintegrated. The goddess grew in size, glowing with power.
"Yes!" the goddess said. She threw off her black robes to reveal a white gown, her arms bedecked with golden jewellery. Her face was both terrible and beautiful, and a golden crown glowed in her long black hair. "Now I shall have my revenge!" The giant Porphyrion backed away. He said nothing, but he gave the spawn of Zeus one last look of hatred.
His message was clear: Another time. Then he slammed his spear against the earth, and the giant disappeared into the ground like he'd dropped down a chute, Cressida's vines holding nothing.
Around the courtyard, monsters began to panic and retreat, but there was no escape for them. Hera glowed brighter. She shouted, "Cover your eyes, my heroes!"
While Cressida ducked down as she squeezed her eyes shut and covered her face, Jason was too much in shock.
He watched as Hera turned into a supernova, exploding in a ring of force that vaporized every monster instantly. Jason fell, light searing into his mind, and his last thought was that his body was burning.