The group of demigods moved quickly, stuffing the things they wanted to keep from their cabins into bags that were slung onto their backs before they all got into position, Leo at the helm, Jason tied to the mast and everyone else below deck in the hold.
And Zeus tossed the ship up and spiked it overhand like a volleyball. The sky turned black. The ship rattled and creaked. The deck cracked like thin ice and, with a sonic boom, the Argo II hurtled out of the clouds.
"Jason!" Leo shouted. "Hurry!"
His fingers felt like melted plastic, but Jason managed to undo the straps. Leo was lashed to the control console, desperately trying to right the ship as they spiralled downward in free fall. The sails were on fire. Festus creaked in alarm. A catapult peeled away and lifted into the air. Centrifugal force sent the shields flying off the railings like metal Frisbees. Wider cracks opened in the deck as Jason staggered towards the hold, using the winds to keep himself anchored.
Then the hatch burst open. Frank and Hazel stumbled through, pulling on the guide rope they'd attached to the mast. Piper, Annabeth, Cressida and Percy followed, all of them looking disoriented.
"Go!" Leo yelled. "Go, go, go!" For once, Leo's tone was deadly serious.
Buford the table saved them. He clattered across the deck with his holographic Hedge blaring, "LET'S GO! MOVE IT! CUT THAT OUT!"
Then his tabletop split into helicopter blades and Buford buzzed away. Frank changed form. Instead of a dazed demigod, he was now a dazed grey dragon. Hazel climbed onto his neck. Frank grabbed Annabeth in one of his front claws and Cressida and Percy in the other, the two of them pressed together so tightly that they were basically one person, he then spread his wings and soared away.
Jason held Piper by the waist, ready to fly, but he made the mistake of glancing down. The view was a spinning kaleidoscope of sky, earth, sky, earth. The ground was getting awfully close.
There was no way Leo was going to make it.
The Argo II had been their home for so long. Now they were abandoning it for good – and leaving Leo behind. Jason hated it, but he saw the determination in Leo's eyes. Just like the visit with his father, Zeus, there was no time for a proper goodbye. Jason harnessed the winds, and he and Piper shot into the sky.
******************************************************************
There were so many monsters – cynocephali, two-headed men, wild centaurs, ogres and others he couldn't even name – surrounding two tiny islands of demigods. At the crest of Half-Blood Hill, gathered at the feet of the Athena Parthenos, was the main force of Camp Half-Blood along with the First and Fifth Cohorts, rallied around the golden eagle of the legion. The other three Roman cohorts were in a defensive formation several hundred yards away and seemed to be taking the brunt of the attack.
Frank the grey dragon flew alongside with his passengers. "Hazel!" Jason yelled. "Those three cohorts are in trouble! If they don't merge with the rest of the demigods –"
"On it!" Hazel said. "Go, Frank!"
Dragon Frank veered to the left with Annabeth in one claw yelling, "Let's get 'em!" and Percy in the other claw screaming, "I hate flying!" along with Cressida who said,
"I am so not living past 17!"
And as Jason and Piper reunited with Reyna and the ranks of Camp Jupiter, a massive cheer went up from their right as Percy, Annabeth and Cressida reunited with the force of Camp Half-Blood, Pollux standing at the forefront as his sister came up to his side, a look of absolute relief on his face.
"Greeks!" Percy yelled. "Let's, um..."
As usual, Cressida saved him as she held her drakon-bone sword in the air, her voice, her weapon, her visage, a pillar of hope for the exhausted demigod armies.
"LET'S FIGHT STUFF!"
And they yelled like banshees as they charged.
Percy had been both Greek and Roman and he had to say, the Greeks were home. They had no organisation whatsoever, but they made up for it with enthusiasm and raw brute force.
And for a moment, they were feeling good about the battle, except for two big questions: Where was Leo? And where was Gaia?
Unfortunately, they got the second answer first.
The earth rippled as if Half-Blood Hill had become a giant water mattress. Demigods fell. Ogres slipped. Centaurs charged face-first into the grass.
AWAKE, a voice boomed all around them.
A hundred yards away, at the crest of the next hill, the grass and soil swirled upward like the point of a massive drill. The column of earth thickened into the twenty-foot-tall figure of a woman – her dress woven from blades of grass, her skin as white as quartz, her hair brown and tangled like tree roots.
"Little fools." Gaia the Earth Mother opened her pure green eyes. "The paltry magic of your statue cannot contain me."
Now it made sense.
The Athena Parthenos had been protecting the demigods, holding back the wrath of the earth, but even Athena's might could only last so long against a primordial goddess.
Fear as palpable as a cold front washed over the demigod army. "Stand fast!" Piper shouted, her charmspeak clear and loud. "Greeks and Romans, we can fight her together!"
"The whole earth is my body," Gaia boomed. "How would you fight the goddess of –"
FOOOOMP!
In a flash of bronze, Gaia was swept off the hillside, snarled in the claws of a fifty-ton metal dragon. Festus, reborn, rose into the sky on gleaming wings, spewing fire from his maw triumphantly. As he ascended, the rider on his back got smaller and more difficult to discern, but Leo's grin was unmistakable.
"Pipes! Jason!" he shouted down. "You coming? The fight is up here!"