The Son of Neptune

Hazel takes her friends to the house she and her mother once rented that was now used as storage. Inside she discovers pictures that she once hung on the wall are still there. She shows her friends a picture of Sammy and a photo of her mother. Frank goes into town for clean clothes. They clean up and go into town for lunch. The journey to Hubbard Glacier is treacherous, and they likely won’t make it on time. As they eat, a gryphon arrives. It calls to others, and they see a mass of them coming over the horizon. They prepare to fight, but Arion arrives just in time to whisk them over the water to Hubbard Glacier.

Although the glacier is three hundred miles away from Seward, Arion arrives within minutes. The glacier itself is breaking up, but they manage to get to the top with Arion’s help. They find a frozen camp that looks like Camp Jupiter, but there is no one around. When they enter the camp and approach the Via Praetoria, they see a robed figure bound in chains. As they approach him, the camp comes to life, and they are quickly surrounded by armed ghost soldiers.

Hazel recognizes the soldiers as men from the 1980 Twelfth Legion, Fifth Cohort expedition. They are armed with Imperial gold weapons that are deadly to monsters and demigods. She asks the robed figure, Thanatos, to tell them they are there to help, but Thanatos tells her he does not control them—Alcyoneus does. Hazel demands to know how to free Thanatos, but he counters with the fact that he could send her back to the Underworld if he were free. She insists it doesn’t matter and asks again. Thanatos tells her the only way to break his chains is to use the fire of life. Before she and Frank can respond to that, Alcyoneus arrives.