Leo's tour was going great until we taught him about the dragon.
Everything they showed Leo was so amazing, that it should've been illegal. Real Greek warships moored at the beach and sometimes had practice fights with flaming arrows and explosives. Sweet! Arts & crafts sessions where you could make sculptures with chain saws and blowtorches? Leo was like sign me up!
The woods were stocked with dangerous monsters, and no one should ever go in there alone? Nice! And the camp was overflowing with fine-looking girls. Aria knew Leo didn't quite understand the whole related-to-the-gods business, but he hoped that didn't mean he was cousins with all these ladies. That would suck. At the very least, he wanted to check out those underwater girls in the lake again. They were worth drowning for.
Will and Aria showed him the cabins, the dining pavilion, and the sword arena.
"Do I get a sword?" Leo asked.
Will glanced at him like he found the idea disturbing and Aria laughed, finally speaking up. "You'll probably make your own, seeing as you're in Cabin Nine."
"Yeah, what's up with that? Vulcan?"
"Usually we don't call the gods by their Roman names," Will said. "The original names are Greek. Your dad is Hephaestus."
"Festus?" Leo said. "Sounds like the god of cowboys."
"He-phaestus," Will corrected. "God of blacksmiths and fire."
"So the flaming hammer over my head," Leo said, looking between the two demigods. "Good thing, or bad thing?"
Aria took a while to answer. "You were claimed almost immediately. That's usually good."
"But that Rainbow Pony dude, Butch—he mentioned a curse."
"Ah ... look, it's nothing. Since Cabin Nine's last head counselor died—"
"Died? Like, painfully?"
"We ought to let your bunkmates tell you about it."
"Yeah, where are my home dawgs? Shouldn't their counselor be giving me the VIP tour?"
"He, um, can't. You'll see why." Will forged ahead before Leo could ask anything else and Aria scrambled to catch up.
"Curses and death," Leo said to himself. "This just gets better and better."
Leo froze in his tracks.
"What's wrong?" Aria asked.
"That old lady ..." Leo said. "What's she doing here?"
Will tried to follow his gaze and Aria glanced at Will, worried. Had the whole storm spirit attack gotten to him? "What old lady?"
"Dudes, the old lady. The one in black. How many old ladies do you see over there?"
Aria glanced between Leo and Will, who was frowning. ¨I think you've had a long day, Leo. The Mist could still be playing tricks on your mind. How about we head straight to your cabin now?
Leo looked back at Hera's cabin, Aria could tell he wanted to protest. ¨Just messing with you, guys." Leo pulled some gears and levers from his pockets and started to fiddle with them. Aria knew the feeling. Of not wanting to have the entire camp think your crazy or evil.
¨ Let's go see Cabin Nine." Leo said suddenly. ¨I'm in the mood for a good curse.¨
From the outside, the Hephaestus cabin looked like an oversized RV with shiny metal walls and metal-slatted walls. The entrance was like a bank vault door, circular and several feet thick. It opened with a lot of brass gears turning and hydraulic pistons blowing smoke.
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𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞
Fanfiction"We've all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." Aria, daughter of Kronos, has spent her entire life in Tartarus, taught to hate the gods and everything they stand for. But whe...
