The Heroes of Olympus, #2
The Son of Neptune
by Rick Riordan
Contents
XXVI Percy
Overview
Percy, Hazel, and Frank find Phineas at a Portland food-cart lot, where he cruelly torments starving harpies under Gaea’s new life-and-death rules. Phineas confirms Thanatos is held at Alcyoneus’s lair but demands they capture a red harpy for him. The trio rejects helping him, recognizing they need another plan.
Summary
In rainy Portland, Percy, Hazel, and Frank follow shouts and find a food-truck square where a blind old man in a bathrobe and bunny slippers uses a weed whacker to drive off starving harpies from a heaped picnic table. The trio recognizes him as Phineas, the prophetic seer they were sent to find.
Phineas identifies them by scent and lineage, jabbing Percy’s eyes and revealing sharp, taunting truths: Hazel is supposed to be dead, Frank’s life depends on a burned stick, and Percy’s past is hidden. He boasts that after Gaea revived him through the opened Doors of Death, the curse reversed—now the harpies are bound to his food, trapped in Portland, unable to die, and forced to starve while he gorges.
When Hazel condemns his cruelty, Phineas blames the gods and hints Hazel’s past enabled Alcyoneus’s rise. He confirms the quest target: Thanatos is imprisoned at Alcyoneus’s lair in Alaska. Then he sets terms—capture the wily red-feathered harpy, bind her for him, and he will share the exact location.
Repulsed, Percy, Hazel, and Frank silently agree they will not help Phineas torture a living creature. Yet recognizing they need his information to save Camp Jupiter and their friends, they retreat to seek an alternative plan.
Who Appears
- Percy JacksonLeader of the group; confronts Phineas, rejects his demand to capture the red harpy.
- PhineasBlind prophetic seer, revived by Gaea; torments harpies and withholds Thanatos’s location unless they deliver a red harpy.
- Hazel LevesqueDenounces Phineas’s cruelty; rattled when he links her past to Alcyoneus’s rise.
- Frank ZhangShocked as Phineas exposes his life-tied firewood secret; refuses to aid Phineas.
- Harpies (including a red-feathered one)Starving bird-women cursed to Phineas’s table and Portland; the red one repeatedly evades capture.