blueunicorn1818
Leo Valdez stared at Festus in a way only a broken, socially incapacitated child of Hephaestus could manage: a deep, cold glare, melancholically contemplating the meaning of life. But since Gaia had ruined his life, he had been unavoidably stricken with trauma, his fate laced with fire for eternity. He didn't think he'd ever quite forgive his father for one thing, though: his utter inability to interact with any sort of organic life forms. Just then, as he was laying down on the forest outside of camp ground, sun blaring above, shirt and hair slick with sweat and machine oil, Festus started to sputter. He would normally consider this not out of the ordinary; the bronze mechanical dragon had a history of odd outbursts. But now that Calypso, the love of his life, was missing, Leo refused to take any chances. He stroked Festus' cold, metallic ear and whispered,
"You can tell me anything, buddy."
Festus grunted some more, and usually Leo could understand the language of machines, but his father clearly wasn't having it today.
"Maybe if we get some lunch, we can come back and-"
Out of nowhere, thunder rumbled, seeming to rattle the very ground Leo stood on, and lighting struck the previously bright sky. Not a cloud rolled in though, bad weather having never been on the forecast.
The work of Zeus, no doubt, Leo reasoned with dread.
What if he was angry? Could Leo have accidentally done something to indirectly cause his best friend, the son of Zeus' death, like he had his mother's? He needed to get to the bottom of this, immediately. However, an overpowering voice reverberated through the sky, snapping Leo out of his self-hatred spiral. The forest, the animals, and Festus seemed to disappear as the son of Hephaestus stared up at the sky and heard the words,
"I know where Bianca Di Angelo is, half-blood."