chapter ten

─── hindsight is useful, i should've planned

          𝔗he silence on the back of the dragon was broken pretty quickly by Leo.

"Shut up, me."

"What?" Piper had to shout over the wind as I peered around her to watch the boy.

"Nothing," Leo turned around with a grin that didn't inspire a whole load of confidence in me. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool."

My eyebrows narrowed. Leo was driving, and I was starting to think that perhaps, I should have driven. Leo had perhaps read my mind because he spun back around again to placate us.

"Just joking." Leo laughed though it sounded nervous as I thanked the gods that I could fly. "So what's the plan, Cress? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?"

"Well, first we got to find the God of the North Wind, Boreas and grill him for information," I began as we flew over New England.

"His name is Boreas?" Leo let out a short laugh. "What is he, the God of Boring?"

"No." I rolled my eyes at the poor joke, shooting him a confused look. Now wasn't exactly the time for joking about peoples names. "After that, we've got to go and find the venti that attacked us at the Grand Canyon..."

"Can we just call them storm spirits?" Leo cut in again. "Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks from Starbucks."

"Alright, storm spirits then." I said, before listing off the third thing. "Finally, we've got to find out who the storm spirits work for so that we can then go and find Hera and free her from her cage."

"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."

"Yeah, that's about it." I shrugged in the process. "Well...there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she's friendly. She probably won't eat us, unless we show weakness. I hope."

I then went on to tell them about the first part of my dream - Lupa, the mother wolf and a burned out house with stone spires growing out of the swimming pool. I kept the dream about Octavian and the other girl to myself. It wasn't that I didn't trust them, but I didn't know them and this guy, this Octavian, he seemed to be special to me in some way. It was why I told Luke, because maybe, maybe Octavian was to me what Andromeda was to Luke and in that case, he understood what I was going through. 

Or, he understood what Octavian was going through, and if he was still going despite all of it, and still positive that they would find Andromeda then perhaps...perhaps Octavian was thinking the same thing and he was looking for me. He was going to try and find me.

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

"Nope," I admitted, scratching the back of my hair. Whenever I thought too deeply about something, I always got a migraine.

"There's also giants," Piper added. "The prophecy said the giants' revenge so don't forget that."

"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 shook her head, tugging on the end of her braids in what seemed to be a nervous tic but I didn't call her out on it. All of us needed something to do when we were nervous. "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?"

"Wait, your dad's an actor?" I looked down at her, my eyebrows furrowed. That was kind of cool.

Leo laughed. "I keep forgetting about your amnesia. Heh. Forgetting about amnesia. That's funny. But yeah, her dad's Tristan McLean."

"Everyone forgets the amnesia." I sulked, feeling kind of stupid if I was being honest and even more stupid at the next question. "What's he in?"

"It doesn't matter," Piper said quickly, waving it off. "The giants—well, there were lots of giants in Greek mythology. But if I'm thinking of the right ones, they were bad news. Huge, almost impossible to kill. They could throw mountains and stuff. I think they were related to the Titans. They rose from the earth after Kronos lost the war—I mean the first Titan war, thousands of years ago—and they tried to destroy Olympus. If we're talking about the same giants—"

"Chiron said it was happening again," I remembered that conversation with Chiron and Luke. "The last chapter. That's what he meant. No wonder he didn't want us to know all the details."

Leo whistled. "So...giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the time to bring up my psycho babysitter."

"Is that another joke?" Piper asked.

Leo told us about Tía Callida, who was really Hera, and how she'd appeared to him at camp. He also began to tell us about the night she died, saying the machine shop collapsed. And he told us about the strange woman in earthen robes who seemed to be asleep, and seemed to know the future. 

I didn't know what to say and I guessed that an entire state had passed before words formed into my mouth.

"That's...disturbing," Piper spoke first.

"I'm really sorry, Leo." I offered up, reaching forward to place a hand on his shoulder and squeeze gently.

"It's alright." Leo waved it off. "Thing is, everybody says don't trust Hera. She hates demigods. And the prophecy said we'd cause death if we unleash her rage. So I'm wondering...why are we doing this?"

"Because she chose us," I sighed, looking at the back of their head. "All three of us. We're the first of the nine who have to gather for the Great Prophecy. This quest is the beginning of something much bigger. Bigger than all of us and it's our duty...I think."

Duty seemed pretty important to me, if I could remember at all. But, then again, I had amnesia, what did I know? This who, being one of the Nine in the Great Prophecy just seemed like a lot of added pressure but if we were all apart of it, then we had a job to do and a role to serve, and no matter if I didn't want to do it, I would. Even if all I really wanted was to just know who I was and where I fit.

And my memories would also be kind of nice too.

"Besides," I continued, trying to bring myself out of the my thoughts, "helping Hera is the only way I can get back my memory. And that dark spire in my dream seemed to be feeding on Hera's energy. If that thing unleashes a king of the giants by destroying Hera—"

"Not a good trade-off," Piper agreed. "At least Hera is on our side—mostly. Losing her would throw the gods into chaos. She's the main one who keeps peace in the family. And a war with the giants could be even more destructive than the Titan War."

I nodded. "Chiron also talked about worse forces stirring on the solstice, with it being a good time for dark magic, and all—something that could awaken if Hera were sacrificed on that day. And this mistress who's controlling the storm spirits, the one who wants to kill all the demigods..."

"Might be that weird sleeping lady," Leo finished. "Dirt Woman fully awake? Not something I want to see."

"But who is she? That's what I want to know." I scrunched my nose up, groaning when nothing came to mind. "And what does she have to do with giants?"

But none of us had the answer to that question. We flew in silence for a while, the wind growing colder around us. Beneath us, the snowy forests seemed to go on forever and I wondered whether this meant we were getting closer to Quebec.

I felt a frown form on my face, but I didn't tell the others. How could I tell them that I was incredibly worried about this quest? I was supposed to be the leader, the strongest out of the three of us, the Daughter of Zeus, yet here I was, wondering whether or not we would actually be able to complete this. That wasn't very leader-ish of me.

"You should sleep, Piper." I muttered, looking at the daughter of Aphrodite. She cocked an eyebrow, looking like she wanted to protest, before reluctantly nodding.

"Wake me up if you want to sleep though, Cress." She squeezed my hand gently, before turning and leaning forward, her head hitting Leo's back. It was like a switch flipped, and all of a sudden, she was fast asleep, leaving me alone with my thoughts once more.

∘☽༓☾∘

Hiya,

So, Cress is a very nervous girl and doesn't know what to do. She's also hiding Octavian from everyone, apart from Luke cause she feels like he know her pain, which is true, he does. I'm super excited to get further into this tbh but I do need to get an exam out of the way first.

Let me know what you think,

Love Li xx