Of Greeks And Romans (Leo Valdez x Reader)

XLVII

Frank

Frank was relieved when the wheels finally fell off of the chariot.

He’d already thrown up twice from the back of the chariot, which was not fun at the speed of sound. The horse seemed to bend time and space as he ran, blurring the landscape and making Frank feel like he’d just drunk a gallon of whole milk without his lactose-intolerance medicine.

The harpy that had spontaneously joined them, Ella, didn’t help matters. She kept muttering: “Seven hundred and fifty miles per hour. Eight hundred. Eight hundred and three. Fast. Very fast.”

The horse sped north across Puget Sound, zooming past islands and fishing boats and very surprised pods of whales. The landscape ahead began to look familiar—Crescent Beach, Boundary Bay. Frank had gone sailing here once on a school trip. They’d crossed into Canada.

The horse rocketed onto dry land. He followed Highway 99 north, running so fast, the cars seemed to be standing still.

Finally, just as they were getting into Vancouver, the chariot wheels began to smoke.

“Hazel!” Frank yelled. “We’re breaking up!”

She got the message and pulled the reins. The horse didn’t seem happy about it, but he slowed to subsonic as they zipped through the city streets. They crossed the Ironworkers bridge into North Vancouver, and the chariot started to rattle dangerously. At last Arion stopped at the top of a wooded hill. He snorted with satisfaction, as if to say, That’s how we run, fools. The smoking chariot collapsed, spilling Percy, Frank, and Ella onto the wet, mossy ground.

Frank stumbled to his feet. He tried to blink the yellow spots out of his eyes. Percy groaned and started unhitching Arion from the ruined chariot. Ella fluttered around in dizzy circles, bonking into the trees and muttering, “Tree. Tree. Tree.”

Only Hazel seemed unaffected by the ride. Grinning with pleasure, she slid off the horse’s back. “That was fun!”

“Yeah.” Frank swallowed back his nausea. “So much fun.”

Arion whinnied.

“He says he needs to eat,” Percy translated. “No wonder. He probably burned about six million calories.”

Hazel studied the ground at her feet and frowned. “I’m not sensing any gold around here.…Don’t worry, Arion. I’ll find you some. In the meantime, why don’t you go graze? We’ll meet you—”

The horse zipped off, leaving a trail of steam in his wake.

Hazel knit her eyebrows. “Do you think he’ll come back?”

“I don’t know,” Percy said. “He seems kind of…spirited. This makes it kind of hard to go back for Y/n...”

"I don't think we can," Hazel said, looking in distress as Arion dissapeared from view.

Frank almost hoped the horse would stay away. He didn’t say that, of course. "Hazel's right," was all he said. "I think that harpy made it pretty clear she was in a place we can't follow. Regardless, we need to get to Alaska and free Thanatos, or we're all doomed."

Ella fluttered back over to them, seeming content.

"Hey, Ella," Percy said. "Are you sure Y/n is ok?"

Ella nodded. "Y/n took care of Phineas. Bad man gone now. She can take care of herself."

That seemed to atleast settle some of their nerves, so they went back to cleaning up the wreckage.

Hazel and Percy started salvaging supplies from the chariot wreckage. There had been a few boxes of random Amazon merchandise in the front, and Ella shrieked with delight when she found a shipment of books. She snatched up a copy of The Birds of North America, fluttered to the nearest branch, and began scratching through the pages so fast, Frank wasn’t sure if she was reading or shredding.