True Blue ✷ Leo Valdez.

06: Blaire Meets The King Of Rock And Roll!

      THE ONLY THING even halfway appealing about the quest, Blaire found, was the veiw from the extreme height Valdez's dragon reached. As dawn dissolved into the earliest traces of dusk, casting an eerie bout of shadows upon the snowy rooftops the quartet flew over, the aforementioned group stared down in dumbfounded awe.

    "We're here," Piper said, reaching over Blaire's shoulder to shake Leo Valdez awake. He stirred in alarm with a gnarly grunt, rubbing the remenants of sleep from his large doe brown eyes.

   Below them, a city sat on a cliff overlooking a river. The plains around it were dusted with snow, but the city itself glowed warmly in the winter sunset. Buildings crowded together inside high walls like a medieval town. In the center was an actual castle with massive red brick walls and a square tower with a peaked, green gabled roof.

   "Tell me that's Quebec and not Santa's workshop," Leo murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep yet alight with intrest.

   "That's Quebec and not Santa's workshop," Blaire obeyed, though his command was quite rhetorical.

  He'd only just woken up and he was already cracking jokes. Great, Blaire thought. She figured it would get annoying really fast, for the boys often-times untimely humor already managed to weasel it's way beneath her skin and prod at her veins. It was as if he were picking at an exposed electrical wire, for Blaire felt like she'd too explode into an array of sparks any second if he didn't calm it on the humor.

   "Yeah, Quebec City," Piper confirmed. "One of the oldest cities in North America. Founded around sixteen hundred or so?"

  Leo raised an eyebrow. "Your dad do a movie about that too?"

  What is Valdez's obsession with Piper's dad?

    "I read sometimes, okay? Just because Aphrodite claimed me, doesn't mean I have to be an airhead."

  "Feisty!" Leo said through a half-smirk. "I like feisty."

  Suddenly, Blaire was the sweetest, most tame, and gentle person to have ever lived.

   "Since you know so much, what's that castle?" Leo continued, glancing back to his friends and Blaire, grinning wildly when he made eye contact with the latter. She didn't return the gesture though, instead her pale face scrunched up like she'd just eaten something sour, watching with concealed glee as the boy deflated.

  "A hotel, I think."

  Leo laughed in disbelief, he sounded like an amused toddler. "No way."

     But the closer they got, the more Leo seemed to believe in Piper's words. His jaw fell slack as he took in the doormen, valets and porters taking care of the bags, and helping guests from their shiny expensive cars.

    "The North Wind is staying in a hotel?" Leo murmured, mostly to himself. "That can't be—"

    "Heads up, guys," Jason interrupted. "We got company!"

    Blaire glanced down again and saw what Jason meant. Rising from the top of the tower were two winged figures—angry angels, with nasty-looking swords.

  

Blaire assumed the angel-guys were bad news judging by the dragons reaction to them. It halted mid-air and began quaking, a deep rumbling sound errupting from within it's throat.

    "Steady boy," Leo hummed, patting the side of the dragons head in a form of hopeful comfort. Leo's words seemed to ease the dragon slightly— which caused Blaire to roll her dark eyes. Of course Valdez was some kind of weird machine whisperer. It was very in charecter for him.