╔═══════════════╗
37. Porphyrion
╚═══════════════╝
Before they charged into the battle, Lorna pulled Jason back. She kissed him straight on the lips. She figured that if she was going to die anyway, she should just take the risk.
"Good luck." She whispered and left Jason standing there, star struck.
A wolf launched itself at Lorna. She stabbed it and it dissolved. Lorna swung Tremor as it stabbed wolves, knocked them aside and plunged it straight into storm spirits.
Lorna could see Jason charging into battle, swinging his icy piece of wood, on a storm spirit horse. Every time it plowed through one of his brethren, it discharged so much electricity, the other spirit vaporized into a harmless cloud of mist. Piper was surrounded by Earthborn, but she seemed to be holding her own. She was so impressive-looking as she fought, almost glowing with beauty, that the Earthborn stared at her in awe, forgetting that they were supposed to kill her. They'd lower their clubs and watch dumbfounded as she smiled and charged them. They'd smile back—until she sliced them apart with her dagger, and they melted into mounds of mud. Leo had taken on Khione herself. While fighting a goddess should've been suicide, Leo was the right man for the job. She kept summoning ice daggers to throw at him, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it. His whole body flickered with red tongues of flame like he'd been doused with gasoline. He advanced on the goddess, using two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers to smash any monsters that got in his way.
Lorna realized that Leo was the only reason they were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione's winter magic. Without him, they would've been frozen like the Hunters long ago. Wherever Leo went, ice melted off the stones. Even Thalia started to defrost a little when Leo stepped near her. Khione slowly backed away. Her expression went from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer. Lorna was running out of enemies. Wolves lay in dazed heaps. Some slunk away into the ruins, yelping from their wounds. Piper stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. Jason rode his horse through the last ventus, breaking it into vapor. Jason turned towards Lorna and held his hand out. Lorna got on the horse and said, "Hi."
Hello, Lorna heard in her head. Tempest.
"Lorna." Lorna replied. Jason gave her a weird look. Then he wheeled around and saw Leo bearing down on the goddess of snow.
"You're too late," Khione snarled. "He's awake! And don't think you've won anything here, demigods. Hera's plan will never work. You'll be at each other's throats before you can ever stop us."
Leo set his hammers ablaze and threw them at the goddess, but she turned into snow—a white powdery image of herself. Leo's hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush. Piper was breathing hard, but she smiled up at Jason.
"Nice horse." Tempest reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. A complete show-off. Then Lorna heard a cracking sound behind her. The melting ice on Hera's cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, "Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"
Jason and Lorna dismounted and told Tempest to stay put.
This boy got nerve. Tempest said in Lorna's head.
The four demigods jumped into the pool and ran to the spire. Leo frowned. "Uh, Tía Callida, are you getting shorter?"
"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"
As much as Lorna disliked Hera, what she saw inside the cage alarmed him. Not only was Hera sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins.
"The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!"
"On it," Leo said. "Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage. "
"What?" she said.
"Talk to it. Use everything you've got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I—"
"Right!" Piper cleared her throat and said, "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I'm tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"
The more she talked, the more confident she sounded. Lorna felt her own eyes getting heavy, and she had to force herself not to focus on her words. It seemed to have some effect on the cage. The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little—becoming more like tree root than rock. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, Lorna had no idea.
Then Leo looked at the cord and grunted in frustration. "I don't have anywhere to plug it in!"
The spirit horse Tempest jumped into the pit and whinnied. Try me.
"Really?" Lorna asked.
Tempest dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. Leo looked dubious, but he held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse's flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the prongs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.
"Sweet!" Leo grinned. "Your horse comes with AC outlets!"
I don't like him, Tempest said.
"Don't worry, boy. I don't like him either." Lorna told the horse.
"I hope you aren't talking about me." Jason said.
Their good mood didn't last long. On the other side of the pool, the giant's spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth. Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped than Enceladus. He didn't radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him—a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field. Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon's legs; but his skin was the color of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons—daggers, axes, and full-size swords, some of them bent and bloody—maybe trophies taken from demigods eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.
"Alive!" he bellowed. "Praise to Gaea!"
"Leo," Lorna said.
"Huh?" Leo's mouth was wide open. Even Piper seemed dazed.
"You guys keep working," Lorna said. "Get Hera free!"
"What are you going to do?" Piper asked. "You can't seriously—"
"Entertain a giant?" Lorna said. "I've got no choice."
"Excellent!" the giant roared as Jason approached. "An appetizer! Who are you—Hermes? Ares?"
"I'm Lorna Jackson," Lorna said. "Daughter of Poseidon."
Jason appeared beside her. "Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."
Those white eyes bored into her. Behind them, Leo's circular saw whirred, and Piper talked to the cage in soothing tones, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed.
"Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, Poseidon you sacrifice a child 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. Jason dropped his makeshift club.
"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 I'm 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 Gaea. 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. Gaea 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. Lorna could hear it in her voice. Piper kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, but the earth was still rising inside Hera's prison, covering her up to her waist.
"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea 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."
The giant frowned at Piper and Leo, as if he'd just noticed them working at the cage. Jason stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion's attention.
"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! I have finished my boasting. Now it's your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?"
Jason looked at the ring of monsters, waiting impatiently for their master's order 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 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."
Lorna 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."
"I literally defeated Echidna, the mother of monsters." Was all Lorna said.
"Wow, dude," Leo muttered. "You been eating red meat?"
Lorna jumped at the giant, bringing a wave behind her. She shot her arms at the giant and the wave hit him so hard, he tumbled. Unfortunately, he didn't fall, but his big ugly feet crushed a few Earthborns.
Jason launched himself at the giant, determined to tear him apart. The idea of fighting a forty-foot-tall immortal bare handed was so ridiculous, even the giant seemed surprised. Half flying, half leaping, Jason landed on the giant's scaly reptilian knee and climbed up the giant's arm before Porphyrion even realized what had happened.
"You dare?" the giant bellowed.
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 smoldering in his braids. Porphyrion almost fell. The circle of monsters let out a collective growl and moved forward—wolves and ogres fixing their eyes on Jason.
"Okay. Wow. Hot." Lorna said. Thankfully, no one heard.
"No!" Porphyrion yelled. He regained his balance and glared at the demigod. "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."
Something in Porphyrion's voice told Lorna he wasn't bluffing. Lorna and her friends had had a good run. The four of them had done amazing things. Yeah, even heroic things. But as the giant raised his spear, Lorna knew there was no way he could deflect this strike. This was the end.
"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 Gaea. 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 jewelry. 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 Jason 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. 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!"
Lorna didn't like the idea of listening to Hera but she didn't like the idea of dying even more. She closed her eyes shut.