XXV

Percy broods over Iris’s well-meant “man satchel” and his failures: leaving Hazel and Frank, breaking down at the sight of the enemy army, and the worsening ache of lost memories—especially Annabeth’s fading face. Iris’s tea eases him physically, but mentally he fears Alaska will erase what remains.

As Percy drives the Pax north, Frank recounts Iris’s tip about the blind seer Phineas in Portland but avoids explaining how he killed the basilisks, clearly uneasy about his spear’s broken tip. Hazel describes contacting Reyna via Fleecy’s “direct number,” confirming the Roman camp’s preparations and the urgency to free Death and recover the eagle.

Exhausted, Percy enlists a killer whale to tow them north, then sturgeons upriver, and he sleeps. He dreams of past battles on Mount Tam, then a nearly finished warship whose engine troubles may delay aid by days. He next sees a ragged Cyclops and a colossal black dog searching for him, calling him “brother.”

Gaea intrudes, promising Percy’s preservation while letting his friends die, then shows him an Alaskan glacier hosting a massive Roman-style fort. In its principia, a gold-skinned giant presides over frozen legion banners, including the eagle, while a dark-robed figure—Thanatos—stands shackled outside. The giant boasts that his armies will destroy the camps as Percy fumbles north.

Percy wakes to cold rain as the Pax docks in Portland via the Willamette. He shares his dreams, emphasizing possible help from the warship and the searching Cyclops, and the need for Phineas to identify the correct glacier. The trio disembarks into drizzly downtown, resolved to find the blind seer.