𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 (𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐨'𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐎𝐥𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐬)

TWELVE ; yay the sewers

     For something that didn't really have a physical form or, well, legs, the ventus moved incredibly fast. Festus picked up speed, almost like he had locked onto the monster as much as his four demigod charges. Eileen hooked her fingers firmly under his scales, wishing that they had back those seatbelts. She also wished that the sudden change in speed wasn't making her feel so motion sick.

     "Speed up!" Jason cried.

     "Bro," Leo said, "if I get any closer, he'll spot us. Bronze dragon ain't exactly a stealth plane."

     "Slow down!" Piper yelped.

     As the storm spirit dove down into the streets below, Festus attempted to tear after him. However, his wingspan was too wide. His left wing sliced through the head of a stone gargoyle like it was warm butter before Leo managed to pull him up.

     "Up?" Eileen suggested.

     "What?" Leo asked.

     "Get above the buildings," Jason said. "We'll track him from there."

     "You want to drive this thing?" Leo grumbled, but he did as Jason told him.

     Festus rose higher into the air, and for a few minutes they scoured the streets for their vapour buddy. Eileen leant back over the edge of the dragon's body, clenching her jaw firmly shut. The blissfully ignorant citizens of Chicago probably didn't want some unexpected showers of whatever was last in her stomach.

     Finally, she spotted it. The storm spirit terrorized the streets just below them, blowing past people, causing cars to slam on their breaks, knocking over restaurant signs.

     "Oh great," Piper said, sounding like what she saw was, in fact, not great. "There's two."

     A second ventus blasted around the corner, knocking over a table outside the Renaissance Hotel to meet up with the first. Together, they shot up and down skyscrapers, diving back down the streets in a frenzied dance like holographic black bullets, twisting around each other like two sides of the same spinning coin.

     "Those guys do not need any more caffeine," Leo commented.

     "I guess Chicago's a good place to hang out," Piper said. "Nobody's going to question a couple more evil winds."

     "There's more than a couple," Eileen said. "Look."

     Festus circled over a park nestled beside the lake, and they watched as more and more storm spirits joined the original one - roughly a dozen of them, all flirting with the group, whirling around a public art installation.

     Leo asked, "which one do you think is Dylan? I wanna throw something at him."

     Eileen wasn't about to tell him off for that. As passive as she liked to think she was, she would have quite liked to chuck a shoe at his handsome face herself. Perhaps knock out a couple of those blinding teeth.

     The storm spirits seemed to be particularly interested in this fountain. As Eileen watched, the video screens that made up the monolith beside a fountain flickered to display the face of a woman, her eyes closed. She looked to be asleep.

     "Leo..." Jason said nervously.

     "I see her," Leo told him. "I don't like her, but I see her."

     Eileen was smart enough to piece together that this woman must be the one Leo saw in the sludge. The one that had been haunting their journey from the very beginning.