The Wake of War
LEO
Leo wasn't sure what he had expected after he and Calypso had taken to the skies. A romantic dragon ride over the clouds, "A Whole New World" playing in the background, maybe a sunset they could fly happily into. He hadn't been counting on a flock of Stymphalian birds to show up and ruin their evening.
The sun was setting when they showed up, their Celestial bronze beaks and metallic feathers glinting malevolently in the dying sunlight. They swarmed the two of them, circling their heads and destroying the tranquil atmosphere. Personally, Leo preferred doves for romantic kinds of things, but a demigod could only be so lucky.
There were only six of them, but they were vicious man-eating creatures who, like Leo, had had their night ruined by a few flying beasts. They were clearly not happy and definitely out for blood.
"Oh come on!" Leo complained as he clocked a metallic bird in the head with his hammer. Luckily, his tool belt had survived the blast that had destroyed Gaea. "I just came back to life this morning, and already I'm getting the charcoal beaten out of me!" He hammered another bird in the chest.
Calypso, for all of her time spent in a secluded paradise with no one but her invisible servants and the occasional demigod heartthrob of the century for company, was not too shabby a fighter. From one of her suitcases, she retrieved a washboard and began to beat the Stymphalian birds out of her way. "I am a goddess! You will not touch me!" she exclaimed.
That's Calypso for you, Leo thought. He was pretty sure he fell more in love with her with every brutal strike she landed on the bloodthirsty birds.
But really, the Stymphalian birds needed to calm down. They were loud and obnoxious and Leo didn't really need that right now. Dying and coming back to life was tiring and he could already feel a migraine coming on. He beat another bird upside the head.
Three of the birds had been beaten until their beaks were dented and had decided to leave them alone. The others had managed to evade severe damage up to that point.
A flash of bronze was the only warning Leo got to a barrage of blows from one of the birds. He deflected most of the attacks, but one got close enough to break his skin. It was only a light scratch and wasn't fatal, but it stung like crazy. He made a mental note not to let them get close like that again.
Calypso managed to beat another bird out of the sky. Her washboard was beginning to dent and she had a bruise on her forearm. Her hair was falling out of it's bun. Even with the murderous glint in her eyes, Leo found her stunning. Unlike the practiced hotness of the Aphrodite kids, Calypso was someone who was just naturally better looking than everyone. Except himself, of course. Leo was simply the hottest of the hot.
Leo remembered all the times he and the crew of the Argo II had fought off monsters together. His heart ached suddenly. He couldn't imagine how they felt right now, thinking he was gone for good. He had always been one for pranks, but this wasn't something he joked about. They would know he was seriously not coming back. He imagined his funeral, Jason and Piper and Hazel and all of his friends dressed in black, wiping tears from their eyes as they watched his shroud burn in the Camp Half-Blood fire pit, crying for the seventh wheel of a journey that had ended too quickly. He hoped they were all okay, or alive at least. He didn't think he could bear it if he had died and come back and Jason or Piper had not.
He pushed the thought out of his mind as he clobbered another Stymphalian bird. Priorities, he reminded himself. He wanted to show Calypso the world, and that couldn't happen if they were both eaten alive by killer birds from some Alfred Hitchcock film.
One left, and of course it had to be the biggest. To be honest, Leo was kind of sick of boss battles. Considering he had destroyed the ultimate goddess in his final moments, however long ago those may have been, Leo thought he should have been allowed a break.
Calypso took the thing out with her washboard, saving Leo the trouble. Instead of falling out of the sky, this one dissolved into dust, leaving it's Celestial bronze beak behind. It fell into Calypso's bag, but Leo plucked it up quickly and stuck it in his tool belt. He'd learned from his experience with Apollo that any flotsam and jetsam he could pick up had potential use, and the bronze beak looked like just the thing he could need later. What for he wasn't sure, but he had once said that thinking got in the way of being nuts, so he decided not to worry. After all, he had gotten a kiss on the cheek out of it.
Calypso sighed, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose during the fight behind her ear. She had a cute ear.
"Honestly, Valdez, must you keep a souvenir for everything?" Calypso complained, rubbing the bruise on her arm.
"I don't know why you're complaining, babe." Leo sang. "That little crystal from Ogygia got me back to you, so I would be grateful instead."
Calypso rolled her eyes, but Leo knew she wasn't really mad. Underneath her collected and irritable exterior, he could tell she was more excited than she had been in a long time. It was about time someone got her out of the house.
She put her washboard back in her suitcase and wrapped her arms around his waist again. Festus wavered in the air. Leo patted his side comfortingly. "Just a little longer, buddy." he promised. Festus creaked weakly in reply.
Poor Festus. Happy the Dragon hadn't gotten a chance to rest since Ogygia, and he was desperately due for repairs. His entire breastplate was smelted and twisted, just barely protecting the wiring underneath. His left front leg was twisted all the way around at the joint, which couldn't have felt good. Nevertheless, he endured the flight over the clouds and carried Leo and Calypso to freedom. Judging by the recent Stymphalian bird attack, they were out of Ogygia territory and home free.
At least, until they began to descend rapidly through the clouds.
"Festus!" Leo exclaimed, holding on tight to his beloved dragon. Festus creaked with alarm, informing Leo of his engine failure through Morse code.
From this height and without proper materials, Leo couldn't do much about their free fall. They pushed through the clouds, the ground hurtling towards them at an alarming pace. Ugh. How many times had Leo been in this situation now?
"Leo!" Calypso screamed over the wind in his ears. "Do something!" She had her arms wrapped tightly around him now, so if Leo could do anything he wouldn't have been able to.
"Hang in there, Festus!" Leo cried, ignoring the goddess screaming behind him. "It's gonna be a rough landing!" I am not losing you this way again, he added silently. He was not having another repeat of Omaha. To think that had only been . . . well, he didn't know how long it had been, but it felt like forever ago. Could have been a month or two, probably longer. But back then, when he had first lost Festus. . . . Leo had never felt more broken. You're the best thing I ever fixed.
Ugh, dying must have made Leo into a melancholic numbskull or something, because he would never get this nostalgic during a life or death situation. But as the ground got closer, Leo could see his life flashing before his eyes all over again, an experience he had hoped he wouldn't have to repeat ever again. Was that all he was? A pile of skin and bones filled to the brim with memories of friends and battles and loss and all that sappy stuff? Was that why the physician's cure worked? It brought life back to an old body. Everything can be reused.
Leo's ADHD must have gone dormant if these were the things he was thinking about. He blinked away the memories and shouted at Calypso to hold on. She replied with a shriek, which was all Leo needed for motivation. Everything could be reused, but not if the mechanic wasn't there.
Festus spiraled towards the earth, extending his wings and trying to level them out. It didn't help much, but it did carry them just above a beautiful bay surrounding an unfamiliar country. When they crash landed, Festus only sank into the water to his chest. However, the momentum kept them going, spraying water all over Leo, Calypso, and any unfortunate natives who may have been taking a pleasant evening stroll. Miraculously, Calypso's suitcases survived the experience without any damage. They were one hundred percent dry.
Festus's control panel told them they were in Tallinn, Estonia. Of all of the random places to end up, they ended up in freaking Estonia.
Leo didn't have a problem with Estonia. He hadn't even heard of the place until now. Its name kind of sounded like a disease, but otherwise it seemed fine. The only problem being Leo had no idea where on the entire planet they were. They could have been in some Canadian providence for all he knew.
Calypso sat up, peeling Leo's soaking and tattered shirt from her face. "Great job, Valdez." she muttered sarcastically. "What's next? A plunge into a volcano? Maybe we can crash land in a swamp, how does that sound?"
Leo sat up from Festus's neck, his hair dripping wet. "Sorry, Princess. Next time I blow a primordial goddess to smithereens, I'll be sure leave you behind in Ogygia so you don't get splashed."
Festus creaked and apology beneath them. "It's okay, big guy." Leo assured him. "Let's get you fixed up. Can you drag yourself over to that harbor over there?"
The bronze dragon carried them over to the dock, crowding the other boats. Luckily, at this time of night, things weren't too busy, but Leo didn't want to push their luck. If he could fix Festus by morning, he would be lucky enough as it was.
Come on, dad. I know you're up there. Could a kid get a little help here? Leo prayed silently, hopping off of his dragon's back and helping Calypso with her bags. I promise I won't tell the other Hephaestus kids that you did, he added.
There wasn't an answer. Leo sighed and watched as Festus did his best to clamber out of the water and onto the dock. His joints were creaking and something around his chest kept clanking around. The pitiable sight made Leo feel even worse.
Everything seemed great the moment he was revived just outside Ogygia. He cheated death, rediscovered an island that could only be found once and got the girl of his dreams with a magic dragon in tow. He had literally had the perfect ending heroes were supposed to have. Then the metal birds attacked, Festus lost altitude and they crash-landed in some Estonian bay. Even better was that fact that things could only get worse from there.
"Come on," Leo suggested. "We need to go find a repair shop to buy materials. Maybe we can figure out the date." He hoped Festus wouldn't attract too much attention without him. The last thing he needed was a giant bronze dragon on the cover of the Estonian newspaper, or whatever the Mist tricked the mortals into seeing.
Leo led Calypso away from the dock, but the initial shock from the landing must have evaporated. She gazed delightedly at every building, her head flicking around so quickly Leo was afraid she would break her own neck. Leo, who had hoped her first taste of the world outside of Ogygia would go a bit more smoothly with a little more sightseeing and a lot less getting lost, was getting concerned. What if something happened in Estonia that slowed them down? What if Calypso got so enthralled by the outside world that she completely forgot Leo and ran off with an Estonian mechanic with better machines? What if they got captured by Laestrygonians because Estonia happened to actually be a Canadian providence and they were eaten alive?
Okay, so that one was a little far-fetched. Also, this place seemed a little different than Canada. The buildings were whiter and had a more European accent.
Calypso hadn't strayed from his side despite her curiosities, so Leo figured he was safe from the second scenario. As for the first, well, Leo was a demigod. Danger and trouble followed him like he was magnetic. Not to mention he had a goddess and a giant bronze dragon following him around. It wasn't quite the lucky three demigods that typically teamed up for quests, but Leo's previous quest experience hadn't been any closer.
We'll just have to get lucky, Leo thought, which of course meant nothing was going to go his way.
Leo soon found out he hated Estonia for a multitude of reasons other than the fact that it was a small country located in Europe. For one thing, no one spoke English or Spanish. Everything was written in Estonian and Russian, which really bothered Leo's Greek brain. For another thing, there didn't seem to be a mechanics shop anywhere, and if there was, Leo could never find it due to the disorderly arrangement of the streets and buildings. Seriously, the architect needed to invest in a ruler or something. Annabeth would have lost her mind.
So what had originally been a search for a Home Depot turned into a scenic tour through Tallinn, Estonia. Leo pretended he knew what he was doing, pointing fingers at particular buildings and giving them the ridiculous names his dyslexia tried to translate the words into. "That's called the Latragia," he announced, pointing do a tall white building with a top tier constructed of bright orange brick, "and the building next to it is called Grunglesponge."
Calypso knew he was joking, of course, but she humored him. She laughed at the dumb names he came up with and ignored the stares they got from strangers. Leo watched her eyes light up every time they turned a corner. She looked so much younger than an immortal goddess like this, like some Hephaestus kid who had just rediscovered Bunker Nine.
They continued on like that for a while, almost completely forgetting the real reason they were scouring the city. It didn't matter to Leo that they were lost in Tallinn. They could have been in any city, in any country on any continent and it wouldn't matter. Calypso didn't seem to mind either, not that she would have much of an opinion. Leo figured that, as long as they were screwing up together, they wouldn't screw up too badly.
As they walked, they passed more buildings, some with smaller French labels. Leo had grown up speaking Spanish, but the languages were so similar that Leo had little trouble understanding what the signs said, excluding his dyslexia. One vaguely translated to "Garden Store" from what he could read. He didn't think much of any of these establishments until they passed a small, run-down old shack of a store crunched snugly between two grandiose buildings. It seemed out of place for such a clean neighborhood and normally Leo would have ignored such an insignificant little store. But for some reason, the way it faded as soon as he looked away caught his attention. Unless he was looking directly at it, the store wasn't there. He couldn't see it through his peripheral vision.
Leo's curiosity got the better of him. He strayed from the path, approaching the old building. Calypso followed impulsively, but she seemed less than enthusiastic. Leo approached the building slowly, glancing up at the old wood sign nailed to the roof. There were three languages on the sign and, because none of them were French, Leo was surprised he could understand one. In large, unreadable letters was the Russian translation, below that something Leo recognized as Latin. At the very bottom was a Greek translation that read: Ilmarinen's Forge.
"I found what we've been looking for," Leo announced, but for some reason he found himself hesitating to enter. Maybe it was because Calypso was hanging back, or maybe it was because there was a Greek and Latin translation. On top of that, Leo was a considerably powerful demigod traveling with a goddess-nymph—they were bound to attract some attention. This building obviously had some Mist or something shrouding it from the view of curious mortals, but Leo knew that if you ever found exactly what you were looking for in a foreign country, then you should probably turn around and get away from whatever it was as soon as possible.
So Leo did the logical demigod thing: he entered the shop.
The inside of the store was cluttered and dimly lit. Shelves lined the walls, the metal pieces and parts coated in metal. To the left was a shelf with a sign that said "ON SALE" in the same three languages as the sign outside. That shelf was stockpiled with competed sculptures of all different shapes and sizes. There were a few bronze flowers, an expansive array of silver animals, but Leo didn't see any pieces of gold. It was the one metal he didn't see represented in the room. Some of the creations around the room seemed to follow him with their eyes, but Leo waved the idea away. He wondered what kind of blacksmith would run this shop. Maybe a fellow son or daughter of Hephaestus? Obviously, the owner had some affiliation with the gods if his shop was shrouded in Mist. Maybe Hazel wasn't the only follower of Hecate.
Calypso stayed close to him, like she felt something was off. Leo couldn't place it, but he knew something wasn't right too. The name "Ilmarinen" didn't sound familiar, and it didn't sound very Greek. But Leo could be wrong—he usually was. Still, something here put him on edge.
There was a loud and sudden clanging noise, like someone was hammering a helmet from the Camp Half-Blood armory. Calypso jumped and the hairs on the back of Leo's neck stood on end. He kept a hand near his tool belt and approached the back of the store carefully. No one stood at the front desk, but a golden light glowed from an open doorway to a room in the back. The clanging got louder as they neared.
Leo moved toward the door, but Calypso grabbed his hand to pull him back. Leo jolted to a stop, turning to look at the goddess. Her gorgeous eyes held a warning. "Leo, what are you doing?" she whispered harshly. "You cannot just walk in!"
Leo opened his mouth to reply, but just then the clanging stopped. There was a shuffling noise beyond the threshold of the back room and a shadow loomed in the doorway. Heavy footsteps fell, getting closer. Leo and Calypso back up instinctively, gripping each other's hand like a lifeline.
This is stupid, a voice in Leo's head argued. You came in here looking for parts for Festus. There's nothing wrong with this place! Don't a such a baby.
That would have been good advice for a person smarter than Leo. Sadly, Leo was preoccupied by the advancing shadow in the doorway and was definitely not a son of Athena.
He pulled his hammer from his tool belt as the person emerged from the back room.