Hey, Everyone!

And here we are again, another chapter of my House of Hades story ready to be published and ready to be read!

Enjoy!

Chapter 41

Jason

Jason didn't know what he was supposed to do about the horrified look on Piper's face, but he knew one thing: they had to get Nico out.

"Jason, what should we do?" Leo asked, his expression not desperate, but determined.

"We get him out of there," Jason replied. "I bet I can fly up there and break open that lock, but only if-"

"AAAUUUUGGHHHH!" An agitated cry rocked the room and shook the cages, and the three demigods standing in the room.

The force of the shout knocked Leo off his feet, and Jason had to stifle his laugh as he watched his friend try to stand up again.

"My poor, poor babies! Oh, Gaea will be so upset! Dear dear…!" the voice sounded feminine, kind of like an old lady, but a little younger. Maybe 50?

There was a scuttling noise, and suddenly a long, dark, thick shadow came crawling from the ceiling, along the wall in front of them, and down onto the floor.

And Jason could swear he'd seen this scene before, play out somewhere in front of him. Except there was something missing, the feeling of intense terror that had made him tremor.

That feeling he could never forget.

But where had he gotten it from…?

And then there was suddenly a hand around his bicep, and he looked back and saw Piper, gripping his arm, her face as white as a sheet.

"Pipes?" he asked, worried.

"The dream," she whispered.

And everything came flooding back to him. That dream he'd had right after Percy and Annabeth had been lost to Tartarus. Before they'd lost Nico again. Before any of this had truly started to unravel.

Jason had been right about what he'd told Leo on the deck that night—it really was a lead.

"Ugh, if I'm going to replace that good-for-nothing wench Demeter after Gaea takes over the world, than I have to be able to take of a roomful of flowers, right? You guys agree, don't you?" the voice continued to ramble.

"Who are you?" Jason called to the beast.

The shadow was of a character he'd never heard of before, that looked like it was separated into three segments like an ant, but with four legs on each side of the middle section. And there were odd…things, protruding from all the sections that Jason couldn't make-out from just a shadow.

"Show yourself!" he called again.

"What do you mean, 'replace Demeter?'" Piper called.

"When Gaea takes over the world, she wishes to disgrace Demeter by giving her job to a creature," the thing rambled. "And she chose me. And now, I have to learn how to gardern! This is very inconvenient, seeing as we're taking over the world in a few days! We just need the sacrifices from Tartarus, and then we'll be ready, but…oohh!" she wailed. "This is so stressful!"

"Oh my gods," Piper whispered to the boys. "We're dealing with a self-conscious gardener creature that can't even garden. We've got this in the bag!"

"Self-conscious?" Leo asked.

Jason couldn't see a single way the creature was self-conscious.

"Oh," the creature wailed suddenly, "are you three talking about me? What are you saying? Please don't be calling me fat, I'm just a larger than most! Oh, I knew Gaea was mistaking when she said I was special, the first of my kind, whatever else, but she was so wrong! I'm a freak!"

"Gods, she sounds like a teenage girl complaining about her mom!" Leo said.

"Ugh, you all probably hate me!"

"Well, we do, but not for that reason," Jason called to her.

There was a long swishing sound, and suddenly the monster croaked, "You…you hate me? Why?"

"Because you have our friend Nico locked up there, and when we last saw him his bone was sticking through his leg, so we're simply assuming it's your fault. Correct us if we're wrong." Jason raised an eyebrow at the beast.

"Well…it wasn't…you see…Gaea said he was bad! I didn't know people would hate me for it!"

"He has a sister," Leo shook his head at the thing. "She's been worried sick about him."

"She's traveling with us, actually," Piper said. "She's been looking for him for days."

"Wait…" the monster stopped. "You just said you're traveling with his sister…and he's bad…which means she's bad…which means you're bad."

Piper's face paled.

"Sorry, guys, but I hate you, too," the beast replied. "And I have to kill you now."

She stepped out from the shadows, finally, and Jason was actually shocked by what he'd found.

A lion's body morphed into two, circular segments, a front and middle, with the two front paws and the face of a lion, with the exception of mandibles connected to the corners of the mouth, on the front.

On the middle segment, a green, scaly serpent protruded from the center of the top, hissing and snapping and slithering. It also had eight long, sharp, black spider legs, four on each side, covered in hairs visible to Jason's eyes from the distance.

And the last segment transferred from lion to goat, including the two back legs and the little white goat tail to boot.

And, it was three times the size of Jason.

"Goodbye, evil demigods. Gaea will rule the world," she said wistfully, her lion mouth moving.

When she shrieked, the lion mouth opened, the snake mouth opened, and the mandibles clicked together quickly and repeatedly.

Jason was so baffled about the mutated chimera in front of him that he only had time to draw his sword before she lunged at them.

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