YOU WILL DIE.

That peaceful feeling everyone had? Yeah, that disappeared faster than a leaf in a tornado.

Wind swept across the hillside, and the ground liquefied, becoming fluid and sticky. Grass pulled at my shoes.

A FUTILE GESTURE.

Each word shook the earth, resonating from every blade of grass, every tree, every growing thing connected to the earth, as if we were standing on her vocal cords.

BUT IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY, YOU MAY DIE TOGETHER.

Octavian scrambled backwards, mumbling. The wimp broke and ran, shoving through his own troops.

Reyna (the real leader of the legion) yelled, "CLOSE RANKS!"

Our lines merged. Greek and Roman stood shoulder to shoulder, united as the earth shook beneath and around us.

Octavian's auxilia troops surged forward, surrounding us in a sea of enemies. Together, we were dots on the hillside.

We would make our final stand on Half-Blood Hill, with the Athena Parthenos as our rallying point.

But even here, in our home, we were on enemy ground, because Gaea was the earth. And the earth was awake.

Thankfully for us, Gaea didn't attack right away, which I found weird, but I had other problems: Her monsters attacked immediately.

I found myself next to Malcolm as we defended against the onslaught. I had a feeling (I know, Athena kids don't usually go on feelings, but I had learned to trust my instincts) that something was going to happen that we wouldn't like.

"Hey, Malcolm?" He glanced towards me. "Whatever happens, I want you to know I'm honored to call you my brother."

He grinned, and bumped my shoulder—both in acknowledgment of what I had said and in saying that he felt the same—and we fought for our lives, our future, and our home.

A while later, it could have been minutes or hours, I had no idea of the time, I was battling some kind of two-headed man I had no real name for when I heard a loud BOOM! Almost like lightning had struck the hillside. As we had no children of Zeus here, I doubted that was actually the case.

I managed to turn the evil two-headed man into a complacent no-headed pile of dust and glanced up in time to see a very familiar ship plummeting toward the ground. The quest had returned. A large shape and a small shape lifted off from the main deck, while the ship tumbled down into the hills opposite the battle. I prayed no one was one that ship, as anyone who was would die as soon as the ruined piece of metal landed.

Battling another monster—this time a wild centaur—I kept turning my battle to be able to see in the direction of the questers.

The larger shape and the smaller shape hovered next to each other a moment, then the small came toward us, while the large went to help three cohorts that had been separated from us.

Piper and Jason landed on the hill just behind me and drew their swords. Wait, since when did Piper have a sword? I'll have to ask about that later, as the sword look like sharpened ice. Anyway, they landed on the hill, and a cheer went up all around.

The centaur I was battling received a sword through the torso, and an enemy cyclops took its place.

"About time!" Reyna, who was a short ways away, called. "Glad you could join us!"

Piper grinned at her. "We had some giants to kill!"

"Excellent!" Reyna grinned back. "Help yourself to some barbarians."

"Why, thank you!"

I chuckled at their conversation. We're in the middle of battle and they're joking about being late.

Piper and Reyna started battling together, and Nico joined Jason. I maneuvered close to them, hoping to hear anything about the other five.

"…everyone okay?"

Jason glanced toward the ship. "Leo…"

Oh, no. I glanced at the comet streaking toward the western hills. Leo was fireproof. Surely, he would survive.

I looked at the sea of monsters in front of me.

For Leo. I waded through monsters with renewed vigor. No matter how many I killed, more monsters kept appearing. Grain spirits, wolf-headed men, and gryphons attacked from every direction. I also saw some lumpy clay humanoid thing that made me think of the Play-Doh men I made when I was little. That is, until I saw one of them throw another camper thirty feet. I decided I would avoid the Play-Doh men.

I had battled my way over next to the Romans when Reyna yelled, "Eiaculare flammas!" A wave of flaming arrows cut through the platoon of ogres in front of us. The Romans moved forward, trampling ogres and impaling wild centaurs.

Downhill from me, someone else called out, "Repellere equites!"

A herd of centaurs parted like the Red Sea as three cohorts plowed through in perfect formation, spear tips bright with monster blood.

"Ave, Praetor Zhang!" Reyna called.

"Ave, Praetor Ramirez-Arellano!" he returned. "Let's do this. Legion, CLOSE RANKS!"

The Roman legion cheered as the five cohorts converged into a massive well-oiled killing machine. They marched forward, the praetors in the lead. Reyna had a spear and dagger, while Praetor Zhang wielded a sword in one hand and a golden eagle-on-a-stick (their standard, I guess) in the other. Lightning arced from the eagle, frying several hundred monsters to dust. Yup, definitely their standard.

"Legion," Reyna commanded, "cuneum formate! Advance!"

While the Romans had been reuniting, someone else had made it to us.

A loud cheer rose from the Greeks, including me, when Percy and Annabeth joined our lines.

"Greeks!" Percy yelled. "Let's, um, fight stuff!" I laughed outright. Only Percy I thought, shaking my head.

Percy and Annabeth entered the fray, and I started making my way toward them—I wanted to be near Annabeth—but I didn't get halfway before the earth rippled like a water bed. Monsters fell. Demigods slipped. Centaurs charged face first into grass.

AWAKE.

At the crest of the next hill, grass and dirt swirled upward like a tornado forming from the ground. The earth column thickened into the twenty-foot tall figure of a woman, skin white as quartz, wearing a dress woven from grass, and hair a deep brown and tangled like tree roots.

"Little fools." Gaea's pure green eyes seemed to be able to pick me out of the crowd. I resisted the urge to run, and clenched and unclenched my hands to keep from freezing in panic. "The paltry magic of your statue cannot contain me."

So, that was why she had waited this long to appear. She had been awake all this time, but the Athena Parthenos had been holding her back. Too bad Athena's magic could only last so long.

Fear washed over our lines, and I again resisted the urge to bolt.

"Stand fast!" Piper shouted. "Greeks and Romans, we can fight her together!" I knew she was using charmspeak, but I let it calm me. I would be no good in battle if I was scared out of my mind.

Gaea laughed, and the sound rippled through the air. This was no laugh of warmth and mirth. This was more of a cruel, cold, sarcastic laugh—typical evil villain laugh—and it made my blood run cold.

Gaea spread her earthen arms, and the earth bent toward her. Trees tilted, bedrock groaned, and soil rippled in waves. Monsters and demigods alike sank into the quicksand-like ground.

"The whole earth is my body! How would you fight the goddess of—"

FOOOOMP!

In a flash of bronze, the claws of a fifty-ton metal dragon swept the goddess of self-centeredness off the hillside.

No reviews on the last chapter. Let me know what you thought and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!