Petals on The Moon || Reyna Ramirez-Arellano x Fem!OC

LXXXIII

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Hello again.

"HEY!" I whipped the shoebill stag and hit its wing. It faltered, which almost made me feel bad, until I remembered that it wanted to kill me. "Lookie here!"

It dived, so I did too, and it missed me by just a few inches. A few feet away, Sebastian and Reyna were hauling pieces of the destroyed temple and stripped tree branches to build their catapult. I didn't see this going very well, but Romans are fast builders, and as the children of war, they definitely know how to build a catapult. Jason only got two more hits in before they had a fully constructed thirty-foot catapult. The base was the shield, weighed by rubble, with a stand of old tree branches, and a rope mechanism attached to the thirty-foot spear, which was capped with a strangely-constructed wooden bowl that Sebastian had slapped together at the last minute. Reyna wound the rope, which pulled the catapult halfway into position, and I admired the effort it took to wind it as tight as possible to properly release it. It wasn't your standard catapult. It actually looked like a very bad science project. But it'd have to do.

"We need ammo!" Jason cried.

Sebastian bolted. "I have blocks!" He lifted cracked stone blocks from the temple, and hauled them back to the catapult as Reyna prepped it. She strained, her veins bulging as she pulled the heavy weaponry down, working against the rope now to get it the rest of the way level to the ground. Sort of like a plastic spoon. You bend it back, back, back, then WHAM!

The parrostag dove for her, but Jason flew over and tackled it. He released his hold on it before it could scratch him, and they both soared off in different directions.

"Suki!" Sebastian called, loading the last of the stone bricks. "Take cover!"

I figured the safest place was to get anywhere behind the catapult. Jason whistled and flew in the catapult's line of fire, keeping the perytons trained on him. One tried to stray away, so I skidded to a halt and whipped it back the other way.

"Seriously?" Sebastian spread his arms. "Guys, we can't fire if-"

"We don't have a choice!" Jason called. "Just shout when you fire and I'll go!"

"Fine," Sebastian grunted. Jason whistled again.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Reyna fired and turned to Sebastian. "He didn't mean literally shout!"

The stones soared through the air, and Jason dropped, the winds giving out entirely. I screamed and caught him, but the velocity of his fall made us both have a rather painful tumble. The perytons screeched above us, and two fell down. One was dead as dead can be, and it faded into golden dust. One was crippled, on the other hand, the shadow in front of it shaped disturbingly familiar.

Jason got up and grabbed me by the shoulder. I was flat on my back in the grass. "Are you okay?"

I accidentally shoved him off of me. He tumbled back, and I realized why the shadow of the raven-stag was so familiar. My chest felt frozen, but not like ice. More like acid. Jason killed the raven stag, and I finally managed to sit up as the inky black shadow faded away.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH-"

The catapult fired. "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS, SEBASTIAN!" Reyna shoved him. "Not in my ears!"