The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

at least they resembled humans. The old primordial gods like Gaia and Tartarus … How could you leave home and ever be independent of your parents, when they literally encompassed the entire world?
    ‘So …’ she said. ‘You don’t mind us fighting your mom?’
    Damasen snorted like a bull. ‘Best of luck. At present, it’smy father you should worry about. With him opposing you, you have no chance to survive.’
    Suddenly Annabeth didn’t feel so hungry. She put her bowl on the floor. Small Bob came over the check it out.
    ‘Opposing us how?’ she asked.
    ‘
All
of this.’ Damasen cracked a drakon bone and used a splinter as a toothpick. ‘All that you see is the body of Tartarus, or at least one manifestation of it. He knows you are here. He tries to thwart your progress at every step. My brethren hunt you. It is remarkable you have lived this long, even with the help of Iapetus.’
    Bob scowled when he heard his name. ‘The defeated ones hunt us, yes. They will be close behind now.’
    Damasen spat out his toothpick. ‘I can obscure your path for a while, long enough for you to rest. I have power in this swamp. But eventually they will catch you.’
    ‘My friends must reach the Doors of Death,’ Bob said. ‘That is the way out.’
    ‘Impossible,’ Damasen muttered. ‘The Doors are too well guarded.’
    Annabeth sat forward. ‘But you know where they are?’
    ‘Of course. All of Tartarus flows down to one place: his heart. The Doors of Death are there. But you cannot make it there alive with only Iapetus.’
    ‘Then come with us,’ Annabeth said. ‘Help us.’
    ‘HA!’
    Annabeth jumped. In the bed, Percy muttered deliriously in his sleep, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’
    ‘Child of Athena,’ the giant said, ‘I am not your friend.I helped mortals once, and you see where it got me.’
    ‘You helped mortals?’ Annabeth knew a lot about Greek legends, but she drew a total blank on the name Damasen. ‘I – I don’t understand.’
    ‘Bad story,’ Bob explained. ‘Good giants have bad stories. Damasen was created to oppose Ares.’
    ‘Yes,’ the giant agreed. ‘Like all my brethren, I was born to answer a certain god. My foe was Ares. But Ares was the god of war. And so when I was born –’
    ‘You were his opposite,’ Annabeth guessed. ‘You were peaceful.’
    ‘Peaceful for a giant, at least.’ Damasen sighed. ‘I wandered the fields of Maeonia, in the land you now call Turkey. I tended my sheep and collected my herbs. It was a good life. But I would not fight the gods. My mother and father cursed me for that. The final insult: one day the Maeonian drakon killed a human shepherd, a friend of mine, so I hunted the creature down and slew it, thrusting a tree straight through its mouth. I used the power of the earth to regrow the tree’s roots, planting the drakon firmly in the ground. I made sure it would terrorize mortals no more. That was a deed Gaia could not forgive.’
    ‘Because you helped someone?’
    ‘Yes.’ Damasen looked ashamed. ‘Gaia opened the earth, and I was consumed, exiled here in the belly of my father Tartarus, where all the useless flotsam collects – all the bits of creation he does not care for.’ The giant plucked a flower out of his hair and regarded it absently. ‘They let me live, tending my sheep, collecting my herbs, so I might know theuselessness of the life I chose. Every day – or what passes for day in this lightless place – the Maeonian drakon re-forms and attacks me. Killing it is my endless task.’
    Annabeth gazed around the hut, trying to imagine how many aeons Damasen had been exiled here – slaying the drakon, collecting its bones and hide and meat, knowing it would attack again the next day. She could barely imagine surviving a
week
in Tartarus. Exiling your own son here for centuries – that was beyond cruel.
    ‘Break the curse,’ she blurted out. ‘Come with us.’
    Damasen chuckled sourly. ‘As simple as that. Don’t you think I have tried to leave this place? It is impossible. No matter which direction I travel, I end up here again. The swamp is the only thing I know – the only destination I can imagine. No, little demigod. My curse has overtaken me. I have no hope left.’
    ‘No hope,’ Bob echoed.
    ‘There must be a way.’ Annabeth couldn’t stand the expression on the giant’s face. It reminded her of her own father, the few times he’d confessed to her that he still loved Athena. He had looked so sad and