Love, Fear and Sacrifice

Nico tells his friends about the encounter with his father. Suddenly, they hear the howl of wolves and before they know what's happening, they are surrounded by a pack. One of the wolves stands in front of them and transforms into a man. The man claims to be Lycaon, the first werewolf. Nico summons a wall of bones to protect him and his friends from the wolves. While Nico was trying to find a way to shadow travel, they hear a large bow being drawn and a voice yelling "STOP THEM!", but Nico manages to teleport him and his friends out of there just in time.
The crew of the Argo II manage to secure the poison of Pylos relatively easily, and their next destination is Sparta to find the "chained god". Frank believes that it is a statue of Ares, his dad, and Piper has a vision of her touching the statue while flames swirled around her. The journey to Sparta should take about a day. Jason is still sick because of the Imperial Gold sword wound. Piper has a dream vision of her flying to the Acropolis where he sees Porphyrion, the giant king. Piper hears the giantess Periboia say that when "the blood of the last heroes is spilled here" Gaea shall be raised. Annabeth wakes Piper and she tells her about her vision. When they reach Sparta, Annabeth and Piper decide to go together to retrieve the statue. On the ancient Spartan ruins, they found three pits that randomly spewed fire. Piper took the risk and jumped in through the one the right, while Annabeth followed her fastening a rope to the edge. After cutting the head of a metallic dragon, who was responsible for the fire, there they found the statue and hear a heartbeat inside. While they were coming up with a plan to get the statue out, the giant Mimas came out from the shadows. Annabeth and Piper fought him. Piper, as a daughter of Aphrodite, understood the purpose and emotion of the temple, while Annabeth could not understand why Piper wasn't doing things rationally. Piper understood that she had to free the spirits of battle. She set her cornucopia as a sacrifice to Deimos and Phobos, and slashed the head of the statue. The spirits of battle swirled around her and answer to he command. Piper now has the power to kill Mimas and she does. The cave was collapsing, Piper offered the ear of the giant to Phobos and asked him for a way out. Piper decided to go through the doorway trusting her heart, and they plunged into the dark.
Nico shadow jumps the other group to San Juan, Reyna's home. Rayna is not sure if Nico can endure another shadow-jump, he is starting to turn into a shadow and fading away from reality. Before Reyna can come up with a plan someone shoots her in the neck with a silver dart and carries her away. The person who kidnapped her was Talia Grace, Jason's sister. Talia is a hunter working with the Amazons to stop Gaea. The Hunters are hoping to stop Orion using Reyna as bait. The Hunters lead Reyna to their leader, Reyna's sister: Hylla. Hello explains that Orion is a great threat to the hunters and she agrees to help Reyna deliver the Athena Parthenos after Orion is defeated. Orion launches a surprise attack which the Hunters were not prepared for. Reyna and Hylla flee while the other Amazons and Hunters protect them. Orion catches up to them and the three of them battle, Nico and Coach Hedge join the battle and destroy Orion's bow. Hylla and the remaining hunters agree to slow Orion while Nico, Reyna and Coach Hedge make their escape with the Athena Parthenos.
Back on the Argo II a heavy storm is striking the ship. Percy and Jason agree to go under water in order to figure out whats causing it. Percy can breath underwater as a son of Poseidon while Jason creates a bubble around himself. In the deep ocean they find a twenty foot-tall woman who claims to be Percy's sister and says that she wanted to meet him before he died. The woman is a minor goddess named Kymopoliea. She is upset that no one worships her and she went to Gaea's side. Her mission is to detain Percy and Jason, while Polybotes kills them. Jason and Percy destroy Polybotes' swimming basilisks, but when Polybotes poisons Percy. Jason is at a disadvantage. Jason realizes that he must try to make an agreement with Kymopoliea, he promises a shrine and an action figure, She accepts and decapitates Polybotes with one hit. Kymopoliea heals Percy and warns him that his blood will awake Gaea. Percy and Jason return to the ship and Jason realizes that his wound had been healed.
The latest shadow jump brings the crew of the Athena Parthenos to South Carolina. Nico is loosing his connection to the real world dangerously fast. Nico and Reyna talk about their past and Reyna confesses a secret that she doesn't tell many people: that she killed her own father. Someone was listening as she was telling her secret to Nico: a Roman legionnaire who makes his presence known by saying that Reyna will be executed.

At the feet of Ares, she set her cornucopia. (Riordan 216)

While Piper had earned the cornucopia and she had had it for a long time she sacrificed it without complaining. Through the fight with Mima,s Piper was the one to show strength and she kept herself calm. Annabeth is usually the one who gets her friends out of difficult problems using her wits but this time as piper made pretty clear, her wits would not help her but Piper's emotions will. Piper knows that the quest is really important and that sacrifices will have to be made. Piper was able to control her emotions during that fight she came to the conclusion that Fear and Panic were not that different from love, Phobos and Deimos were sons of Ares and Aphrodite therefore war and love. People need love in order to have something to fight for. She trusted herself and understood that sacrifices were necessary.

My guards will buy you time!" Hylla shouted. "Your quest must succeed! (Riordan 242)

Sacrifice is a really strong theme in this book. Every character understands that their end goal is more important than any of their individual lives and are able to give them up. Each one of our heroes knows that the might not all make it in the end. The death of a well developed character is always an emotional moment in a book and in this occasion Reyna was not happy with the idea that her sister might give up her life for her, but she understood that their quest was the most important thing at the moment.

I found this part of the book specifically interest because of Piper's reflection on fear and love. Strong emotions are related to one another when you don't have nothing to love you have nothing to fear. Annabeth learned a lot from Piper at that moment, she understood that not everything can be solved with logic and science, but that some problems and conflicts are solely based on emotion. She should learn to use emotion and reasoning even though they might contradict each other at some point.