victorious | jason grace ||| discontinued

f i v e

TAYLOR

Taylor was gripping the dragon tighter than normal, her thoughts keeping her more anxious than usual.

She couldn't seem to get the dream out of her mind. She could still feel the wind tickling her wings as she tried getting them to work, the boulders and small pieces of rubble that smashed into her wings and onto her spine, the darkness that seemed to stretch out for eternity, whispering into her ear all the dark things she'd ever wanted to do to someone, thought about someone or said about someone. She could still remember the pain her wings had gone through protecting her -and the two other people falling with her- from the impact on the floor. The pain seemed to have seared itself into her mind as she couldn't get it out of her head. It was like someone was ripping through her wings and burning at the same time as they twisted and bent out of shape- broken, and unable to use for a long time, if ever.

She couldn't stop the wince that escaped her, earning a concerned expression from Jason and a cautious one from Piper.

"Shut up, me," Leo said aloud.

"What?" Piper asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool"

"So we're hundreds of feet in the air, with a hallucinating driver controlling the thing we're flying on. That's cool, not worrying at all," Taylor remarked.

"Yep!" Leo said, before realizing how that sounded. "I mean, uh- I was joking. Not hallucinating or talking to myself or anything, just trynna break the ice." He cleared his throat awkwardly, before changing the subject. "So what's the plan, bro? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?"

As they flew over New England, Jason laid out the game plan. First, find the god of the north wind, Boreas, and interrogate him- not that he'll tell them anything, anyway, Taylor thought. Leo had interrupted, asking whether he was the god of boring.

"No, he's the god of the north wind. Ania was the goddess of distress, sorrow and boredom," Taylor corrected, earning bewildered looks from her companions behind her and an, 'it was a joke,' from Leo.

Their second job was finding the anemoi thuellai that had attacked them at the grand canyon-

"Can we just call hem storm spirits?" Leo asked. "Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks."

"Stop interrupting!" Taylor scowled at Leo.

And the last thing they had to do was figure out who was controlling the anemoi thuellai, so they could find and free Hera.

"So you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose," Leo said. "The guy who threw me off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds."

"That's about it," Jason said. "Well... there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she's friendly. She probably won't eat us, unless we show weakness."

Jason told them about his dream- the big nasty mother wolf and a burned-out house with stone spires growing out of the swimming pool.

"Uh-huh," Leo said. "But you don't know where this place is."

"Nope," Jason admitted.

"There's also giants," Piper added. "The prophecy said giants' revenge."

"Hold on," Leo said. "Giants- like more than one? Why can't it be just one giant who wants revenge?"

"I don't think so," Piper said. "I remember in some of the old Greek stories, there was something about an army of giants."

"Great," Leo muttered. "Of course, with our luck, it's an army. So you know anything else about these giants? Didn't you do a bunch of myth research for that movie with your dad?"