XX

Piper and Annabeth are overwhelmed by terror in the Spartan shrine as the giant Mimas attacks. Recognizing the temple amplifies fear, Piper drags the traumatized Annabeth into darkness, refusing to rely on plans. Piper insists they accept fear rather than reason with it, using emotion to stay mobile and unbalance Mimas.

They are forced back to the shrine room, where Piper repeatedly wounds the giant while keeping Annabeth moving. Mimas boasts he ruins plans and was born to kill Hephaestus, triggering Annabeth’s rage when he insults Damasen. Working in tandem, they harry him and retreat again as the chamber destabilizes.

Realizing the shrine honors Fear and Panic and that Ares was chained to remind warriors of war’s consequences, Piper decides to act irrationally and emotionally. She offers her cornucopia, confesses her terror, and decapitates Ares’s statue, releasing the makhai—fiery battle spirits that promise to answer her once when needed. The statue crumbles, and the room begins to collapse.

Mimas charges, but Annabeth and Piper coordinate: Annabeth staggers him, Piper stabs him, and the stone face of Panic breaks loose and crushes him. Mimas disintegrates into ash. Annabeth questions what the makhai’s promise means for their cure, while Piper hopes Artemis and Apollo will explain.

With the shrine disintegrating, Piper offers Mimas’s severed ear to Fear as a sacrifice for escape. Hand in hand, Piper and Annabeth choose the remaining doorway under Fear’s face and plunge into the darkness as the chamber falls apart above them.